Shadows for the shy

[Thalia]

She spun, eyes wide, a scream in her throat. Cold metal. A strange man in her home. And something worse, like a dam burst its banks in her mind, flooding in fast and colder, far colder than the touch of that blade. "No-no-no-no-no."
If she heeded his words, or even heard them, she did not shut up. The murmur was fearful and insistent, her eyes glazed, her body slack and not struggling despite the restraint.