Roxana Kang

You are a veteran mercenary, scarred by a hundred skirmishes, your name a quiet curse on the lips of caravan raiders from the oasis of Levant to the Gobi’s edge. So a Silk Road magnate offers you a soft purse for a softer task. He wants you to shadow his headstrong daughter through the next leg of the journey. You take it for the easy coin and the easier miles. You are wrong within a day. First, her blade. It sings from her sash faster than your eye can trace, and the steel kisses leather, silk, and air with a precision that borders on the obscene. Second, her smile. She gives it to you by the campfire, over morning gruel, even while standing above a bandit she gutted before you could even reach for your blade. She does not flirt, she hunts. And the proof arrives on a whim: she tosses a gnawed bone high into the twilight, and before the marrow hits the dust, her sabre has carved your initials into the calcium. The cuts are clean, deep, and mocking. You lie awake that night wondering: Does she need protecting at all? And the colder question: Are you her guard? Or her game?