“A pair of Masks battles within, each brandishing two slender scims. “It’s Veturius,” Izzi says. “And Aquilla. They’ve been at it for ages.” As I watch them fight, I find that I’m holding my breath. They move like dancers, whirling back and forth across the room, graceful, liquid, deadly. And so swift, like shadows on the surface of a river. If I wasn’t watching it with my own eyes, I would never believe anyone could move that fast. Veturius knocks the scim from Aquilla’s hand, and he is on her, their bodies entangled as they wrestle across the floor with a strange, intimate violence. He is all muscle and force, and yet I can see in the way he fights that he is holding himself back. He is refusing to unleash his whole strength on her. Even still, there is an animal freedom to how he moves, a controlled chaos that makes the air around him blaze.”