The heat had teeth.

It bit at the back of her neck, bit deeper still into the wound in her side, and gnawed, gnawed, gnawed at her. The wound was fresh, and so was the morning, and she was running out of blood faster than she was running out of people who wanted her dead. There were three left. No—two. One had made the mistake of moving before her, and now he was crumpled in the dust with a bullet for a backbone.

Dove stood still. Her hands itched at her sides, fingers flexing, empty, hovering by her holsters. She didn’t need to look at them to know they were trembling. The body wanted what the body wanted, and right now, hers wanted to lay down in the street and be done with this long ass day.

But there were two left.

And they were watching her.

And so was the rest of the town.

She heard the creak of a sign shifting in the wind. The distant clatter of hooves. A whisper that had no business carrying in the heat like this.

A standoff.

Dove blinked the sweat from her lashes. The blood loss made the world slow, but she had learned to live on the edge of things, and this was no different. She cataloged them: the man on the left, a wiry thing, nervous, gripping his pistol like it might get up and run away from him. The man on the right, taller, more certain, with the confidence of someone who had won fights before but never against her.

They were waiting for her to die on her own.

She bared her teeth at them.

“You girls ain’t worth my bullets,” she said.

And then she drew anyway.

One-two. Two shots, two bodies. She holstered her gun before either of them hit the ground. The first went down fast, toppling sideways like a poorly strung marionette. The second stayed up for a second longer, staggering, looking at her like he had expected to have more time. But time was never a guarantee with her. Then he was gone too.

Dove swayed on her feet.

The street was quiet.

She smelled gunpowder and blood, and she thought about sitting down, just for a moment, just long enough to breathe. But there were still eyes on her. She was the Widowmaker. A woman like her didn’t sit.

Dove turned.

The heat had made the edges of things blurry, but she was sharp, sharper than the glint of the knife in Dove’s boot, sharper than the fire in her ribs where the bullet still made itself at home.

Dove rolled her shoulders, exhaled slow. The motion made pain jolt sharp through her side, but she only let it show in the narrowing of her eyes.

Dove tipped her hat back.

Smiled a slow, lazy smile.

“You’re still standin’ there,” she said.