Fated Blades

CHAPTER 7

The rain kept pouring, unrelenting. Ramona watched it soak the forest steeped in night shadows. Here and there, bioluminescent moss and lichens glowed with faint silver and lemon yellow, tracing the bigger tree limbs. The soothing white noise of dripping water mixed with the crackling of logs in the fire. In this forest filled with rain and darkness, their temple was a dry oasis of warmth and light.

A couple of meters away, Matias slept on the ground under a thermal blanket. She’d rolled hers up and stuck it between the small of her back and the wall. Now she leaned against it, using the cushion to support her aching back. Her whole body felt like one giant bruise.

They had gone out into the rain again as soon as she sealed the cut on his arm and harvested some evaner limbs, slicing them into logs. Strangler burned hot and fast, great for an intense flash of heat but not good for sustaining fire. And they needed to keep it going, or they would have to cut themselves every time it went out.

They changed into dry clothes—she into a light exercise suit, loose shirt, and pants made of warm but breathable fabric, and he into a terrain combat suit that fit his powerful body like a glove. She had done her best not to stare.

They pooled their resources. Matias had managed to grab the crash kit from the aerial on his way out. It gave them two purifier bottles, two days of rations, thermal blankets, portable charger, first aid kit, and field wipes, for which she was eternally grateful.

They’d drunk the temple spring water from the purifier bottles, secured their supplies, and then Matias had stretched out on the temple floor and fallen asleep almost instantly. She was amazed he had lasted that long, with the injuries and that mad sprint through Drewery’s ridiculous mansion. She had taken a single blast from the sonic cannon, and the impact had nearly shattered her bones. He’d taken two. When she looked at his knee two hours ago, it was the size of a red peach and the color of one. She’d injected him with a cocktail of anti-inflammatory painkillers and an accelerated healing booster. If he could avoid falling on his knees in the next week or two, he would be good as new.

She glanced at his supine form. He had an interesting face, all harsh angles, devoid of softness. Matias had a resting kill face. Even when he wasn’t trying to intimidate, he projected a natural grimness that promised swift and brutal retribution.

But right now, asleep, he was relaxed. His expression lost its severe edge. When he forgot to scowl, Matias was a handsome man.

She wondered what it would be like to kiss him. What would his eyes look like when she touched his lips? If she melted that ice and let out the fire, how hot would it burn?

Ramona sighed. She wasn’t in the habit of deluding herself. She liked looking at him and listening to him, she liked the way he thought, and when he thawed enough to show rare splashes of humor, she had a hard time turning away.

She looked out at the woods shivering behind the gray curtain of the rain. Back when she was a young woman, before Gabriel, before the engagement she didn’t want and marriage she had to endure—when that Ramona dreamed about her future husband, she had imagined someone exactly like Matias. He was everything she wanted. Competent. Smart. Dangerous. Decisive. Loyal.

That last one stung so much. She could have forgiven Gabriel so many sins if only he’d been loyal. If only he’d cared for her. She was starved for affection. She had pushed herself so hard trying to get the seco generators to production, and now she was running on fumes. What she needed most was a partner she could rely on. Instead, she had Gabriel.

When she looked back at her life of the past four years, it felt grim, a foreboding sketch in black and white. The color didn’t vanish overnight. It was a slow, gradual desaturation brought about by small choices.

But right now, she saw color. She was beat up, bruised, and tired, but the world was vivid and bright again. It wasn’t Matias, although he was definitely a catalyst. It was the prospect of freedom. The way she’d led her life had gotten out of control. She had to take charge of her own existence. This thing, this mockery of a marriage, which hung around her neck like a heavy weight, had to end. Whatever her future would be, Gabriel would not be a part of it.

Neither would Matias. He was a Baena. That wasn’t something either of them could overcome. She had to get him out of her mind.

She’d only known him for one day, anyway.

He’d thrown his arm in front of her to shield her from the crash. What a dirty move. That bastard.

“What time is it?” Matias asked.

“A few minutes before midnight.”

He sat up, grimacing. The painkiller must have worn off. “Any luck on the uplink?”

“Yes.”

He studied her face. “Hit me.”

“There is a Vandal cruiser directly above us in midorbit. They claim that one of our satellites suffered a mechanical malfunction and collided with their ship. They are ‘performing repairs.’”

“They knocked out the satellite to make sure we don’t call for help, shot us down, and now they’re waiting to see if we survived.”

“That sums it up. The Orbital Traffic Control had put a hole in their plans by launching the replacement satellite, which is why we have the uplink, and they made them shift to higher orbit, but the cruiser is hanging above us.”

“Well, it’s a good plan.” Matias stretched his injured leg and winced. “How long before the OC shifts them to a different lane?”

She smiled. “They have three cycles to comply, or the OTC will board them to assess and repair any damage themselves. That leaves us with a few options. One, we can file a formal report and ask for an investigation to be launched.”

“Pass,” he said.

She agreed. A formal spotlight on their activities was the last thing they needed.

“Two, we can get ourselves rescued. Your family or my family, take your pick.”

“Pass.”

She agreed again. “According to my OTC contact, the Vandals are too far out to pick us up with their sensors. Too much biomass and too much cloud cover. They would have to launch a probe, and with the OTC scrutinizing their every twitch, they won’t chance it. Right now, the Vandals don’t know if we’re dead or alive. They’ve registered the crash, they think we’re dead, and they’re doing their due diligence. But a moving aerial is a lot easier to spot than two humans in the old woods with a smoke-absorbing temple.”

“Which leaves us with the third option,” Matias said. “We play dead for three days, until the OTC chases the Vandals off.”

“It would be best if they thought we wouldn’t crash their party in Adra.”

Matias glanced at her. “Why do I have a feeling that more bad news is coming?”

“Janus got back to me.”

“The immigration guy with the spaniel?”

“Yes. We thought there were twenty-four Vandal ‘asylum seekers’ in Dahlia. We were half-right. Drewery had managed to push the second group through two days ago. It took a while for them to process, but they made planetfall this morning.”

“How many are waiting for us in Adra?”

“Fifty-four.”

His expression went blank.

The moment the Vandals recognized her and Matias, they would attack. They would hesitate to murder a senator’s daughter in public, but if she and Matias showed up, all bets would be off.

If the two of them boarded a vessel crewed by fifty-four people, Ramona wouldn’t even pause. In the crowded confines of a ship, they would go through any number of combatants like they were practice dummies. At the festival, out in the open, in front of thousands of bystanders, they would be overwhelmed and massacred. The Vandals wouldn’t even have to close in. They could just catch them in a crossfire. The seco shields weren’t omnidirectional. They could shield their front, but not their back.

Going to Adra was a death sentence. Even if they tried to hunt down the Vandal patrols to winnow their numbers, killing them without being noticed with thousands of tourists on the streets was impossible. And as soon as a patrol failed to come back in, the Vandals would go on full alert.

They could mobilize both of their families. Well, they could try. They’d have to explain that the research got stolen, how it got stolen, and who stole it, and then they would have to convince the families who had been enemies for centuries to work together. They’d have to beg, cajole, make promises, convince, and threaten, all of which would take too long, and in the end they would fail, because Matias was a Baena. If he convinced his family to work with hers, the Adlers would never accept that alliance.

Even if they succeeded by some cosmic miracle, their net gain would be six secare, only two of whom had recent battle experience. It would be a slaughter. And while the civilian authorities turned a blind eye to kinsmen disputes, the moment civilians got hurt, they would have a lot to answer for.

“We need more intel,” he said.

“I called Karion. If the Vandals are in Adra, he will find them.”

“Will he do it quietly enough?”

She turned her head and looked at him for a second.

“A dumb question,” he said. “Forget I said anything.”

Her brother would do it quietly. Karion was subtle, meticulous, and merciless.

The rain stopped. The last drops rolled off wet leaves, falling to the ground. The sky turned clear, and above them a universe glittered in a spray of stars. The Silver Sister, the smaller of the two moons, slipped out from behind retreating clouds, spilling a gauze of white-gold light onto the forest.

The temple turned transparent, the blue of its walls vanishing into the darkness. Only the silver web remained, glittering seemingly suspended in empty air. Under the trees, hundreds of rukta flowers unfurled, their translucent red petals revealing whorls of glowing white petals within. A delicate, sweet scent spread through the air. The forest turned ethereal, a magical place from one of the fairy-tale shows she used to watch as a child. She breathed in its fragrance, merged with its magic, and felt herself relax, muscle by muscle, as if inhaling the night air had purified her, purging fatigue, stress, and worry.

So, that is the glory of the temple. We give the ancients so little credit.

Matias rose and came to sit across from her, leaning on the other side of the doorway. He moved completely silently, his terrain suit shifting with blue and indigo as it mimicked the forest. His face was calm. Everything she knew about him told her that he was chewing on the problem, trying to dissect it into manageable pieces. But none of that effort was reflected in his expression.

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.”

“Your mother ran away from home.” Ramona stared at him, incredulous. “She left you.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“I remember when it happened. Our family made a big deal out of it. I was twelve, which means you were fifteen years old, and your sister was seventeen. Your mother abandoned her children. We all thought she simply stepped down as the head of the family. I didn’t know . . .”

“Nobody knows outside of a few close members of the family. Nobody wanted to advertise that she’d suffered an emotional collapse.”

Kinsmen were obsessed with hereditary genetics, and they gossiped.

Ramona grimaced. “We would’ve done the same. I can imagine what would’ve been said if it became public. ‘Ava snapped. What if she passed her mental instability to her children? Will they crack under the pressure if you cut them deep enough?’ It would be like tying up a bleating lamb in the middle of the woods.”

“Exactly. My mother was seen as weak by the family. Nobody said it, but the silent judgment was deafening.”

“Do you think she was weak?” she asked, her voice soft.

“I think she needed help in the worst way. With enough trauma and grief, anyone can be broken.”

Ramona looked away. “Did you help her?”

“My aunt tried. I’ve seen the records. Psychiatrists, psychologists, grief counselors, the abbot of the Blazing Mountain Monastery . . .”

Ramona raised her eyebrows.

“Like you said, my aunt is lovely but frightening. Unfortunately, you can’t help someone against their will. My mother refused all of it, especially the calls from my sister and me. She wanted to be free of anything that reminded her of my father, including her children. In the end, we could only respect her wishes.”

Ramona frowned. “You said you understood two things—one good, one bad. What was the good thing?”

He grinned at her. “I realized I could leave.”

She chuckled.

“Until that moment at the breakfast table, I hadn’t known it was possible. It hit me like a bolt of lightning. I could just leave. I could just go somewhere else, where I wasn’t the son, the nephew, the heir. Zero pressure, zero expectations. So, when I turned eighteen, I split.”

“Where did you go?”

“To Calais V. They have a mercenary hub there. One of the crews needed a warm body, so I got hired. They didn’t care where I was from. They didn’t want to know my real name. As long as I did my job and didn’t cause too many problems, they were happy to have me. They liked my reaction time, so they trained me as a pilot. I was with them for five years.”

“Did you have fun?”

He leaned toward her, and she mimicked his movement. The space between them was so small now that if he reached out, he could stroke her soft cheek with his fingertips.

“I had loads of fun.” He winked at her.

She smiled and leaned back.

“I’ve seen the entire sector. It was a job, and sometimes it was dangerous, but we always had a good time. People who were bad at their jobs died or got fired. Everyone who was left was pretty damn good. I was one of them, and I was pretty proud of myself.”

“So what happened?”

“The Opus Massacre. I told you about it. Nine thousand miners slaughtered.”

She nodded. “I remember. The Vandals killed the children and marked the body count on their armor.”

“Shortly before the Vandals attacked, the colony had sent out a ship, two hundred and fifty passengers and forty crew. Half of the passengers were recent graduates going to Raleigh III to attend the academy there. None of them older than eighteen. Some of the others needed advanced medical treatment, some were visiting family. The usual thing.”

The tremor in his right hand was back, but his voice remained measured.

“They joined the civilian fleet in Danube System and sat there for a week until it assembled. Fifteen vessels—four Leviathan freighters, some frigates, and the rest random small fries—all going almost all the way across the sector. Three mercenary companies banded together for the convoy, us and two others. With that much muscle, most pirates would let us pass, so it was easy money. Three weeks of being bored, then a nice payday and a few days of liberty to blow the money.”

The tremor was obvious now. He squeezed his hand into a fist.

“We were making a transition between jump points at Nicola. Nine hours of slow flying across a deserted star system to get from one jump gate to another. We were almost to the jump point when the Vandal fleet came out of it.”

He remembered it as if it happened yesterday, the wail of alarms and the sudden armada materializing on the screen.

“I was piloting Wasp, a light patrol vessel. Basically, a scout ship with a jump drive, two cannons, and a crew of four. For the nine-hour run across an empty system, it was just me and the gunner. We were on the bridge. One moment there was nothing, and then the mass signatures started flooding in. A cruiser, three heavy destroyers, ten frigates. The biggest ship we had was a light destroyer.

“The Vandal commodore sent out a message on the open channel, so every vessel in the system heard it. They wanted the mining ship. Just that ship. He wouldn’t say why. ‘Just give us the ship filled with kids, and we’ll let you pass.’ We didn’t know about Opus then, but it didn’t smell right.”

Ramona’s eyes were huge. He looked into them and kept talking.

“Kurt Summers, the man who headed our outfit, was the convoy leader. He knew the Vandals by reputation, which was why we were told to steer clear of the SFR. I had him on one screen and the Vandal commodore on the other. Kurt sent out a battle plan over the secure channel, and then he told the Vandal commodore that they wouldn’t be giving up the ship. He must’ve thought the SFR wouldn’t take a chance on attacking a multisystem fleet. The commodore said, ‘In that case, do not blame me for being impolite.’ I saw Kurt’s face drop, and then his destroyer went supernova. The screen turned white.”

“What happened next?” she asked softly.

“Hell.”

He wanted to leave it there, but a bargain was a bargain.

“They tore us to pieces. We were outnumbered, outgunned, and outcrewed. They launched missile barrages, one after another. The first salvo ripped through the convoy like it was plastipaper. Vessels broke to pieces. Drives exploded. Once they crippled us, they closed in and shredded what was left at close range with particle beams. Pass after pass, even after ships went dark.”

It was playing out in his head again—the blinding explosions of missiles, the debris hurtling past at catastrophic speed, the SOS calls from the smaller barges as they frantically tried to flee only to be chased down, the screaming over the open channel . . .

“How did you survive?”

“I quit fighting.” And there it was. He’d said it. “After the third missile salvo, I spun us around, fired a short burst from the engine, and killed it. We suited up, and I vented the ship. We drifted off through the debris field, our drives seemingly offline, trailing air.”

“You played dead?”

He nodded.

“How long?”

“Four hours. Until the Vandals left the system.”

She clenched her fists. “They couldn’t have gotten away with it.”

“They did. Oh, there was a massive stink. Speeches were made. The SFR was slapped with sanctions and paid some reparations. But in the end, none of the four planets involved in the merchant fleet wanted to pick a fight with militant maniacs armed to the teeth. The SFR makes war. That’s what they do. They train for it. They are prepared. The biggest fight Raleigh III gets involved in concerns whose name will be listed first on the latest research paper.”

“That’s unbelievable.” Outrage sparked in her eyes.

“That’s what happened. We thought we were badasses. And then the Vandals came through and showed us that we weren’t shit. We never had a chance. It was the first time in my life I felt helpless in a fight. Everyone I knew was dead. I came home. I couldn’t protect the merchant fleet or people who fought side by side with me, but my family needed me, so I became the man they required. And now you know.”

“I envied you when you left. I was fifteen, and I so wanted to trade places with you. I’m kind of glad I didn’t.”

He looked up at the night sky. “We are sheltered here on Rada. We live in our cozy homes, grow dahlias to impress our neighbors, and have our small feuds. This planet has never known a full-scale invasion by a superior military fleet. Most of us have never known war. I have seen firsthand what an orbital kinetic bombardment does to a city. The moment that salvager showed up in my office with the seco research data banks, everything else in my life no longer mattered. I knew then that I had to develop that tech and I had to control it, because if someone like SFR gets their hands on seco generators, they will become invincible. They will massacre system after system until they drench the sector in blood. As long as I breathe, neither the Vandals nor their parent asshole republic will ever touch it.”

She stared at him in silence, her eyes wide.

“Your turn,” he prompted. “Tell me why I have no room to talk about betrayal.”

Her face shut down. “It’s ancient history. It’s not important.”

“I want to know.”

“Matias . . .”

“We had a deal. Pay up.”

“Don’t make me tell you.” She almost begged.

“Ramona, you promised.”

She shut her eyes for a second, then opened them. “Have you ever wondered why two secare families ended up on the same planet in the same province?”

“Coincidence? Rada is beautiful.” To battle-hardened secare, it must’ve seemed like heaven.

She took a deep breath. “When the secare unit was made, the Sabetera Geniocracy offered them the Pact. Once the war was over, each secare would get one million credits and one hundred acres on the Sabetera world of their choice. After the end of the Second Outer Rim War, the Sabetera Geniocracy decided that secare were too dangerous to be freed. They went back on their word. They tried to kill the secare, but the unit had advance warning and they scattered.”

Suddenly he had a bad feeling.

“The Sabetera was determined to exterminate them. They made a deal with the five strongest secare in the unit to hunt down the others in exchange for money and power. Every secare knows these names, and they make sure their children learn them as well, so the treachery will never be forgotten. The five traitors are Whitney May, Hee Granados, Katia Parnell, Leland Dunlap-Whitaker, and Angelo Baena. Their hands are stained with the blood of their battle brothers and sisters.”

He felt a rush of cold.

“The Baena family settled on Rada because Angelo Baena chased my great-great-great-grandfather, Ray Adler, to this province. He was going to kill him and collect the bounty. He fell in love with a woman from Dahlia and chose to settle here instead, but not before he killed my great-great-great-grandmother. That’s why when Ray’s children grew up, they tried to wipe out your family twice. That’s why there can never be peace between our families, Matias.”

She rose and walked away into the forest.

Ramona was troubled.

Last night, he’d waited until she came back. She wasn’t gone long. She came in, settled under her blanket, and closed her eyes. He sat for a while, thinking things over, connecting the scattered bits and pieces of what he knew about his family into a picture and failing to make sense of it. He’d studied the family records with due diligence when he was an adolescent. It was part of his mandatory education, taught to him primarily so he could map out the complex interactions between the Baenas and the rest of the powerful families in the provinces. There was no mention of betrayal. No mention of becoming highly paid hitmen or hunting down fellow secare.

There were large gaps, however.

Finally, he went to sleep.

He woke up because she moved. Morning light bathed the woods. He saw her go into the forest again, and when she returned, he heard rustling behind the south wall and went to look.

Ramona had found the terrace.

All First Wave temples had one, a semicircle of stone floor where the outdoor part of the services had been performed centuries ago. The forest had attempted to claim it, but the terrace was raised, and it mostly succeeded in just wrapping it in vines. Ramona must’ve decided to clear it, because he found her cutting the vines away. He helped. They worked for the better part of the hour in silence until a crescent of white stone emerged, thirty meters wide and thirty meters long. Now she dashed around it, striking at the imaginary enemies.

Matias watched her out of the corner of his eye as she cycled through fight stances. She moved like water, smooth, seamlessly flowing from attack to defense and back to attack again, her seco snapping into blades one moment and morphing into shields the next. He recognized the stances. She was testing crowd-control forms.

He’d done the math this morning while dragging the vines off into the woods. The numbers were not on their side. Fifty-four Vandals. Hundreds of potential civilian casualties. Right now, he saw no way around it.

They needed more information. Until they knew more, there was nothing to be done. He’d pushed it out of his mind, but it clearly ate at Ramona. There was distance in her eyes. She wasn’t defeated. He had a feeling Ramona refused to acknowledge that concept. But she was grim and focused, like a cornered animal baring its teeth.

That look in her eyes bothered him. He wanted to make it go away. To fix everything.

He didn’t know how, and it was driving him up the wall.

Ramona stopped. “Thirty.”

He raised his eyebrows at her.

“If we are caught by the Vandals out in the open, we have about thirty seconds before they flank us and lay down intersecting fields of fire. Even if we charge them, they will fall back, fan out, and take us out.”

She picked up her bottle and drank from it.

His own estimate wasn’t much better.

Ramona tilted her head and studied him. “Can you dance?”

“Of course.”

Dancing was a mandatory part of their training. Four dances in total, each with its own tempo, passed down from generation to generation. It was martial arts set to music, designed to improve balance, flexibility, and timing and to teach flawless transition between battle forms. Enemies who witnessed secare dancing usually didn’t live to tell the tale.

“Dance with me,” she said.

They were stranded in the middle of the forest with two days’ worth of rations, waiting for the battle cruiser above their heads to leave so they could get on with their suicide run, and she wanted to dance. Not spar, dance.

He shrugged. “Why not?”

She turned slightly, left leg forward, right shoulder back, left arm raised. He recognized the stance. The spinner. He’d never danced it in pairs. This would require some adjustment.

He circled her slowly, trying to figure out how to position himself.

“You look like you’re stalking me,” she told him.

“When I decide to stalk you, you’ll know.”

He moved behind her, mirroring her pose. She stood too close. If he moved his hand a few centimeters, his fingers would skim the length of her bare arm. It was messing with his head.

“Ready?”

He wasn’t, really. All he wanted to do was wrap his arms around her and pull her close. The space between them was so small, yet they couldn’t touch. None of the dances were designed for touching. They were designed for killing.

From here, they could spin in either direction. “Left or right?”

“Right.”

“On three. One, two . . .”

He triggered his implant. They spun right in unison, the fast melody playing in his head. One turn. Two.

Synchronization. She was trying to get them to harmonize and fight as a pair. It was the original way, the art that had made their ancestors nearly invincible.

He could see it now. The trajectory of their spins took them around the clearing in a wild zigzag. If they released the shields and tilted them, they’d become an armored whirlwind . . .

Ramona’s elbow swung at his nose. His instincts kicked in and he shied back, avoiding the strike by a hair. She tried to lean right, but his sudden lunge knocked her off balance. They collided and went down, him twisting at the last moment to save the injured knee.

He hit the ground and sprang upright. Ramona landed on her butt and stayed there.

He offered her his hand.

She took it, and he pulled her up, holding on to her fingers a few seconds longer than necessary.

“Never mind,” she said. “This was a dumb idea.”

“The idea was solid. The right idea, the wrong dance.” Matias took a few steps away from her and raised his arms.

She frowned. “Capa?”

He nodded.

She stood next to him and lifted her arms, touching her wrists above her head, her body completely extended. If their seco were out, they would have flared from their forearms like red wings.

The fast guitar tore through his mind, music like fire running down the detonation cord. His right arm sliced down and came back up as he turned right. He spun, raising his arms, and saw her glide next to him, her movements identical to his. They spread their arms, bent their right legs, twisting to the right as they thrust invisible blades into their opponents, then immediately to the left. A spike of pain hammered into his knee, but he didn’t care. He thrust his arm out, she did, too, and he grabbed her fingers on pure instinct and pulled her to him, spinning her as she came.

A jolt punched his palm, shooting through his nerves. It was the strangest feeling, as if his world suddenly expanded.

Ramona ducked under the glide of his arm, and they stopped and stared at each other.

“So that’s what that’s for,” he said. “That arm extension never made sense.”

Ramona’s eyes shone. “Again.”

They raised their arms. Right cut, turn, grab, twist . . . they came together in the flash. He planted his hand over the top of her right pectoral, she thrust her palm at him, and they shoved away from each other, propelling the momentum into a deadly spin. For a blink they were back to back, slicing at the invisible opponents, and then he caught her arm, raising it up and turning her left. Their backs touched.

The jolt rocked him again. He felt her move, knew where she would place her feet, and caught her as she glided over his extended leg, flexible, graceful, perfectly balanced, back to the front, cutting the phantom bodies on their flank, their linked arms giving her the greater reach.

They broke apart.

He wanted this woman more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. He knew he was staring, realized that everything he felt was written on his face, but he couldn’t make himself stop.

Ramona turned away and walked in a slow circle, trying to calm her breathing.

“Did you feel . . .”

She nodded.

“Is that synchronization?”

“I don’t know.” She stared at him helplessly. “It’s as if the seco recognized each other. It’s like an electric shock going through my arms, and suddenly I feel you. I know how you intend to move. I . . . to think that of all the secare in this universe you are my perfect match. We can never tell anyone. My family will disown me.”

He wanted to feel it again, the invisible current that bound them into one.

“We need to try this with seco,” he finally managed.

“Not yet.” She grinned at him. “I’ve grown fond of you, Baena, but slicing off parts of you to keep as souvenirs would be a step too far.”

He motioned to her with his hand. “Come.”

She laughed softly and raised her arms above her head.