Katya’s stomach sank, actualized by not much more than a tensing through her posture and what felt like an immense frown taking ugly shape across otherwise rather pretty features. She resembled a wounded fawn for the briefest of moments then; wide eyed and frozen in place by nothing as crude as a hunter’s arrow or predator’s tooth but something that had very clearly gored the woman all the same. Abating the urge to flee -or cry perhaps- with a tightly clenched fist, she’d pass this off by smoothing over the leather grain of her jerkin, avoiding the thickness of where a letter still nested. Full of lies it’d been. Not even very convincing ones, at that. Yet, she’d followed them, led either by nose or polite insistence at hidden, secret place of her heart toward answers. Answers to questions she’d very pointedly never asked.<br/><br/>In the end, what had it taken? A mysterious stranger, an impassioned message and the willful ignorance of those who’s fate was now tied to hers by thread the color of blood. Another of those waves came then. Warm and intense from her chest, radiating outward until the tips of her fingers went numb and she found herself staring dumbly back at Lady Ireena.<br/><br/>You fool. She cursed herself.<br/><br/>You absolute, careless, sloppy fool.<br/><br/>“That’s …madness.” Was all she managed through a near whisper. She probably could have lived with stabbing Teo -the gypsy woman- then, if it wouldn’t have completely dismantled her guise of the helpless lamb. It was easy enough, she figured, to detail the circumstances of their doom when she’d only ever known it. Glibness, defense mechanism or not, rubbed Katya in a way she cared little for. On another evening, in another town, one not infested with the living dead and vengeful, malevolent spirits, she might’ve had more patience for her. And, if not patience, certainly tolerance that’d stay her urge to scream. At Teo, at Ismark, at all of them if only to expel the burning fury that still scorched her heart.<br/><br/>Only Esperanza would have likely escaped her ill-informed wrath. Out of a guilt that had already worked itself well into her fibre and hung near as sour as the stench of death from the festering streets.<br/><br/>Her sister?<br/><br/>No. That was madness. And these people were insane.<br/><br/>“I …have this.” She offered, slipping a fleur shaped blade halfway from its leather sheath. Feigning unfamiliarity with it took a bit of effort, wielding the weapon backward first before orienting it properly in her small hand. “I don’t suppose this will save my life if it comes down to it. I can use a bow…” her voice dropped, taking with it a pair of dark eyes that timidly preferred the floor. “But it’s been years since I’ve tried.”<br/><br/>In truth, she was excellent with a bow. She doubted if she’d be able to replicate Bucren’s specific brand of close-quartered efficacy with one but would still have preferred something with a bit more range in her arsenal. The ability to pinpoint and lacerate the more vital regions of a human body did her little good when the enemy apparently had no need for the stuff. Leaving her with a good dagger, a promise of more and the best defense she could afford in those moments.<br/><br/>Plenty of meat shields.