Everything always had to be difficult with him.
“They are lawless.”
Kira blinked in surprise both at the description and the fact that he’d deigned to answer when she thought he wouldn’t.
Moreover, his choice of words was an interesting one. The term “lawless” didn’t necessarily mean something bad.
There were many areas in Consortium space where the law of humans didn’t reach. One of the things she’d learned over the years was that a place without law didn’t always lack justice.
There were many faces to justice, and it was up to those frontiers to determine what that looked like.
In Kira’s opinion, they did a better job than the Consortium sometimes.
“You are as unhelpful as ever,” Kira told him.
She’d hoped for more. Something that might give her insight into the other.
Alexander smirked as he patted Kira on the shoulder. “Maybe if you’d taken my advice about keeping a low profile that would have changed.”
twenty-four
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kira muttered as Alexander started toward Selene. “I did an excellent job of keeping a low profile.”
Jin’s guffaw was loud enough to make Kira flinch. She took an uneasy look around to make sure nobody heard. Luckily, most of those present seemed too lost in their own thoughts to pay any attention to what was happening around her.
The journey to make it this far had taken a toll on some. They were too busy remaining upright to care about anything else.
Good. One less problem to worry about.
“If you think the way you settled your duel wasn’t flashy, you’re fooling yourself,” Jin said after he’d finally stopped laughing.
“I have no idea what you mean,” Kira muttered as she shot a glare at the tunnel that would eventually spit out Raider and the other two.
What was taking them so long?
Devon and Joule had left before her. They should have been here by now.
Jin chortled, the lu-ong’s tail flicking against her wrist in amusement. “You survived a death blow.”
“It wasn’t real,” Kira said.
“Doesn’t matter. It felt real. Your body thought it was dying,” Jin responded. “That makes it real enough. Yet, you didn’t fall. Instead, you acted like you’d suffered a bee sting. How do you think the Tuann will react to that?”
Kira hated when Jin sounded logical. She wasn’t used to him being the sensible one in this relationship.
In retrospect, she probably should have found a different method to accomplish her goals.
“The wanderer didn’t fall either,” Kira pointed out defensively.
It took willpower to ignore the signals your body was sending you. It showed he possessed determination on par with Kira’s or that he’d faced training as brutal as what she’d undergone.
Perhaps both.
“You're still an idiot,” Jin retorted. “We’ll talk about how suspicious he is later.”
Kira grimaced. Why was he suddenly so focused? Normally, he would have let himself be distracted a dozen times by now.
“Did you really think no one would notice?” Jin griped. “You might as well have stuck a sign on yourself that says ‘Look at me.’ You overcame death. If that’s not dramatic, I don’t know what is.”
