And they didn’t.
“Twelve hours,” she said. “Let’s give them a show they won’t forget.”
Outside, the city hummed. Inside TadpolexStudio, on that strange date written in neon, two artists stopped calculating and started something neither could name—something that would outlast every canvas they’d ever touch.
Raven leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, silver rings glinting on every finger. Her black hair fell in a sharp curtain over one eye. “I don’t brood. I calculate .”
“Raven, you’re brooding again,” she said without turning around. She was mixing a shade of blue that didn’t exist in nature—a color between midnight and a bruise.
Mckenzie’s throat tightened. She set the brush down carefully, then reached out and smudged the blue dot on Raven’s cheek with her thumb. “Show me.”
Raven crossed the studio, pulled the cloth off the canvas. It wasn’t a portrait. It was a storm—swirls of violet and gray, a single figure standing in the rain, hands outstretched, catching lightning. The face was blurred, but the stance was unmistakably Mckenzie: fearless, open, waiting to be burned.
Mckenzie laughed, low and warm. “You’ve been staring at that blank canvas for an hour. That’s not calculating. That’s terrified.”
Mckenzie stared for a long time. Then she said, “You see me like that?”
Mckenzie took Raven’s hand, paint-stained fingers lacing through silver rings.
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