Fated Blades (Kinsmen)

She wondered if he felt the woods the way she did. If their beauty touched him.

There were only ten meters between them. She could get up, cross the distance, and kiss him. It would be worth it just for the look on his face. But if she did that, she wouldn’t stop. He wouldn’t stop. They would have each other here, in this holy temple, with only flowers and trees as their witnesses. Nobody would ever know. But they could never do it again.

Why did it have to be you, Baena? Why couldn’t she have met someone like him but without the poisonous last name?

The answer came to her as if the forest had breathed it in her ear. She wanted him because he was secare. He was sharp, smart, and thoughtful, and yet when the occasion called for it, he acted without hesitation. On the entire planet, nobody but Matias would do.

She had to say something, or she would walk over there and do something she’d regret. “What’s the deal with you and the Vandals?”

She wanted to talk.

Matias glanced at her, perched against the wall, her gray athletic suit draping the contours of her body. The light from the fire tinted her right side with warm orange, the moonlight painted her left with bluish silver, and the nearly weightless fabric of her suit shimmered slightly. Her dark hair fell loose on her shoulders, and her eyes were blue like the leaves of evaners. She looked beautiful and alive, as if the planet had exhaled its magic and conjured her from its breath to taunt him. He wanted to touch her to see if she was real.

The woods spread for many kilometers around them, steeped in night shadows and glowing with delicate color. The temple sat within them like a tiny man-made island, and their fire was its heart.

It felt like they were the last two people on the planet, just him and her.

It was a dangerous fantasy. It swirled in his mind, until he could think of nothing else. Lying a couple of meters away from her was torture, so he got up and moved to the other end of the entrance to put more distance between them. Sitting like this, he could still watch her, confident that he would crush any temptation to touch her before it got the better of him and made him move closer.

And now she wanted to talk. They were sitting too far apart for a conversation.

It had to be a test. Life or fate or the universe was testing him, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to pass.

He got up and approached her. Five meters, four, two . . . this would do. He didn’t trust himself to get any closer. He sat on the stone floor of the ramp, outside the fire’s light, letting the night obscure his expression. He wasn’t sure what she would see in his eyes.

“An answer for an answer?”

Ramona sighed. “Must everything be an exchange?”

“Yes. Everything is an exchange. Everything is transactional. You breathe in, you breathe out. You train, you get stronger. You do someone a favor, and they reciprocate. You should know that better than anyone, Lady Spider.”

“Fine. What do you want?”

Everything.

“In your restaurant, when I told you that I had no guarantee that you wouldn’t stab me in the back, you told me that I had no room to talk of betrayal, considering where and who I came from. I want to know what you meant by that.”

She mulled it over. “I suppose you’d find out eventually. You have a deal. History for history. Start with why you left the planet.”

This woman always went for the jugular. He settled into a comfortable position on the floor.

“My father’s death broke my mother. One morning we woke up, and my aunt greeted us at the breakfast table in her place. She served us a hava crumble she’d baked that morning and explained that our mom needed some time away. That she was going to be gone for a while, until she dealt with everything. I remember she kind of waved her hands around when she said ‘everything.’”

“I can actually picture that. Your aunt is quite frightening.” Ramona shivered.

He imagined himself walking over and putting his arms around her. “My aunt is a lovely person.”

“Lovely but frightening.”

He thought about it. “That’s probably fair. I realized two things, one good, one bad. The bad thing was that me and my sister were included in the everything. We were a burden, like the family, the business, and the house. I never saw my mother in person after that.”

It still hurt. Fifteen years later.

“Is she . . . ?”

“She’s alive. I get timely medical reports from her annual checkups, and occasionally the villa where she stays requires renovations or repairs. I pay the bills. She refuses my calls.”