Chops veggies fast

While Naomi rummaged for a bandage strip in a cabinet on the other side of the kitchen island, Ryn took the knife to onion, beets, carrots, and potatoes.
“I can hear you chopping like a maniac,” Naomi laughed. “Trying to murder the onion for hurting me?” When she turned at the sound of Ryn planting the knife point down, she took an involuntary step back at the sight of minced vegetables. “How’d you do that?”
Ryn shrugged.
“They were— They’re all done.”
Ryn nodded at her bandaged finger. “You’re too exhausted.”
Suppressing a reflexive yawn at mention of exhaustion, she narrowed her eyes. “Show me this time.” Fetching the cabbage, she tossed it underhand across the island.
Ryn thrust her knife through the cabbage, spearing it between them. “If you wish.” A thrill jittered through her whole body and she realized she’d decided something without ever thinking on it: to drop her social camouflage. It kicked her pulse, to know she was about to show her friend a secret—to expose it. Watching for a reaction, she was unsure if she’d see terror or shock or, perhaps, something better. As with their species’ mating rituals, this was a disrobing. Desire. That is what I want to see in your eyes.
Releasing the cabbage from its seat on her knife with a graceful roll of the blade, she halved it with a thunk to the cutting board.
Whether at the fluid gleam of metal or the sound, Naomi straightened, and for a slow-moving second, Ryn savored the blossoming surprise in her eyes. I like when your face does that.
The knife flashed in her hand. Let me make you do it again. She showed with the singing knife what she couldn’t with words, and she held back nothing: This is what I do. The lightning strokes made clean arcs at a speed no mortal could follow. Something the earth and sun took months to make whole, she had reduced to tiny, regular pieces in less than a heartbeat.
Naomi gripped the counter’s edge tighter at the sight.
Now you see. I destroy, and I am good at it. Ryn again planted the knife point-down to punctuate the act, and her friend breathed, as if having forgotten how until that moment. Her gaze seemed to drink the deva, realizing only gradually what she’d witnessed—and how little she’d been able to see.
Ryn had never done this before. Never… shown off. Even she was breathing quicker in anticipation. “Is it as you like it?” she whispered. Or did I show you too much?
There was stillness to her friend at first, and then—her mouth somewhat open—a look of quiet awe that pleased Ryn so deeply, so thoroughly, that she now understood why some gods craved worship. “Where’d you learn to do that?” Naomi asked.
“There was never a day I couldn’t do that.”


Chapter 12, Page 182-183