Juliana's eyes fluttered again, and this time remained open. "Yes," she said, a little breathily. She was coming back up from her fainting spell, which was a bit odd, wasn't it? With a wound that size she really should have gone down and stayed down — it wasn't at all logical that she would remain conscious for this bit. She probably should have died by now, but she definitely wasn't dead.

She looked down, and suddenly it wasn't there at all. The blood, her insides, the missing chunk of her rib cage — as though it had never happened. And she could definitely tell her ribs were all back in place, because the man (who was sitting in between her legs) had ripped a piece of her dress off, and her corset too, leaving a section of her bare flesh exposed from just beneath her breast down to her navel. Juliana had no idea what had happened to cause the wound or to repair it, and she looked up at the gentleman in sudden surprise and confusion — only to realize that his shirt was torn, too, and wrapped around his hand, and his coat was who even knew where, and he was — probably less than a foot from her face.

"Dear heaven," she exclaimed, reaching up and grabbing his shoulders to try and push him off of her.