Chapter 4 - The Shield of Bone
The older girl shifted her weight.
It was a microscopic movement, just a slight twist of her left hip.
Her left arm came up.
She didn't raise it aggressively.
She slid it horizontally through the air, locking it rigidly across the chest of the smaller shape hiding behind her.
Her arm was painfully thin.
The elbow joint protruded sharply, a harsh angle of bone pushing against the dirty skin.
Her hand flattened out.
The fingers were stiff, forming a solid, physical barrier between the stranger in the black coat and the smaller girl.
It was the instinct of a mother bear, compressed into the body of a six-year-old child.
She didn't look back to check if the younger one was there.
She knew.
She could feel the smaller girl's forehead pressing into the center of her spine.
Silas watched the muscles in her thin arm tremble.
It wasn't a tremble of fear.
It was the physical failure of a muscle that had been held rigid for entirely too long.
She was a living gate.
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And she had no intention of opening.
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