Gideon laughs. "Right, okay," she says. "Note to self: next time, grip better—or at least pull faster." Maybe she could find some, like, grippy gloves, or get Kade to make her some? Still, just getting a hand on him was more than she'd expected to do.

She doesn't give Lan Wangji a lot of time to get his feet under him; taking off running, she ricochets herself off the top of the fence around the practice yard and sails as upward as she can get, swinging her sword in an overhead chop to try and knock Bichen out from under him.