Fated Blades (Kinsmen)

Despite his wishes, her family had tried to achieve synchronization multiple times over the next generations. She herself had tried. She always thought their battle dances had to be the key. They were the cornerstone of their training, and she was sure they were meant to be danced in pairs, so she studied them and even recruited her brothers to help. She failed. One would’ve thought that two secare siblings close in age, like she and Karion, would be the ideal candidates, but none of the Adlers had ever synchronized with each other.

She studied Matias through her half-lowered eyelashes. And here was a secare who somehow sensed which way she would lean and how she would strike.

It wasn’t true synchronization. It was . . . killer instinct. Mutual understanding between two predators forced into battle together. Imagining anything more was dangerous and foolish.

He glanced at her. A handsome man with hazel eyes and a killer’s instinct . . .

She really had to stop. At least she had an excuse for her bout of temporary insanity. So much had happened today. It felt like a week had passed since this morning. Was it even still the same day?

“It’s still today, isn’t it?” she asked. Oh, now that was a perfectly lucid question.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Feels like an eternity ago. How long was I out?”

“A couple of hours.”

“How long to Adra?”

He checked the display. “About two and a half hours. Might be more. There’s a storm coming in. We’ll have to swing south to go around it in about ten klicks.”

Getting out of the villa had taken some doing. The atrium had an emergency skylight, a safety measure mandated by the government so if a fire occurred, birds and other wildlife could escape. Matias had activated it through his link with the Drewerys’ servers. They’d gone through it at a ridiculous speed, expecting the Vandal gunships to follow. Matias had taken over the SAMs and was prepared to lay down cover fire, but the two sleek craft were nowhere in sight. She had a feeling their pilots were in pieces, either in the atrium or in the hallway. Or possibly in the office.

To both her and Matias, killing was like breathing, simple and natural. Uncomplicated. Slicing through human beings was after all the reason for the secare’s existence. Children in their families started martial training as soon as they could follow adults’ commands. She was three when she’d learned her first dance.

The act of taking a life was physically easy. The aftermath, not so much. The enemies had been armed and trained, and each of them had ended plenty of lives on their own. Still, she felt uneasy. Hollow and flat. Usually sleep helped, but she must not have gotten enough.

Matias had gotten even less.

She stretched and sat up straighter. “Let me drive.”

“It’s fine.”

“You have to be tired.”

“I’m not tired,” he assured her in a patient voice. “I’m fine.”

Aha. “So, you’re going to do the man thing?”

“What man thing?”

“The one where you heroically decide to pilot the entire distance and then be tired and irritable and expect special treatment for it.”

He gave her a flat look.

“I’m perfectly capable of piloting an aerial,” she said. “I’ve piloted them since I was twelve years old.”

“Who let you do that?”

“My grandma. You flew to the Davenports, then to the villa, and now you’ve been flying for another two hours. I know you’re tired.”

He sighed. His fingers flickered across the console, and her own console lit up. She took a couple of seconds to orient herself, checked the plotted course, checked the radar, ran the math in her head on the storm bypass, and nudged the stick, altering course slightly. The aerial responded instantly.

“Smooth,” she said.

“I have them custom built.” He leaned back into his seat, reclining, raised his arms, and braided his fingers behind his head.

Matias in repose. She wished she could take a picture. Her brothers would lose their minds.

“Have you thought of what happens when we get to Adra?” he asked.

The festival was massive. Finding either Cassida or Gabriel even with the latest facial recognition software would be impossible. They had to rely on human psychology instead.

“Everything you told me about the Vandals suggests that subterfuge isn’t their strong suit.”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

His pose was still relaxed, but his expression hardened. Every time the Vandals were mentioned, Matias snapped into battle mode. Something had happened between Matias and the Vandals. Something beyond simply being warned about the danger they posed. He braced himself like a man who had been exposed to that danger firsthand. She was dying to know what it was. But Matias was a deeply private man. He trusted no one and revealed very little, and when he allowed her a glimpse into his thoughts, it felt almost like a gift. A small acknowledgment of the camaraderie they shared as partners. She didn’t want to press him for it. It would mean much more if he decided to tell her on his own.