Ronan half rose. Kord grabbed his elbow.
“Patience, Brother.” Abruptly he stood, drawing the attention of all the crew with his silence.
“I gladly surrender my place,” Kord said in a deep, carrying voice, “to my brother Ronan.” He held up his hand and drew an exquisite ornamental knife from some hidden pocket in his shipsuit. With its blade he slashed his palm and let the blood drip into the glass of clear water beside his plate. He lifted the glass and offered it to Ronan.
Ritual. Ronan recognized it for what it was, and what it must mean to the young warrior. Kord offered the comradeship of human ve’laik’i, a binding made not of birth in House or Line but of choice.
Ronan knew what he did when he lifted the glass and drank the water. He held Kord’s gaze, took the knife, and slashed his own palm. Kord tasted his blood, raised both glasses, and tossed them over his shoulder.
“It is done,” he said. He cleaned the knife with a cloth and tucked it back inside his shipsuit.
“Bravo,” Janek said, clapping. “Deeply moving, indeed.”
“My enemies are his, and his mine,” Kord said, taking his seat. “Remember that, Persephonean.”
“Gentlefolk,” Cynara said, “We’ve had enough drama in the past few days to last until the Opal Tides run black as space. Peace at this table.”
“Peace at this table,” Cargomaster Basterra muttered.
“Peace,” Kord echoed. He leaned toward Ronan and tilted his chin toward Janek. “Watch your back with that one, Brother. He already rides the sword’s edge with his insolence to the Little Mother, but she has forbidden me to challenge him. He will try to bring you down.”
“Because he fears my intentions toward the Concordat.”
“Many Persephoneans hate Kinsmen and their kind, even those who remained with the Concordat. He sees you as Kinsman, whether you are one or not. I believe that he wants this ship for himself, and hopes that by taking you aboard, Cynara endangers her captaincy.”
“Does she?”
“She does not answer to Janek, or even the Archon of Persephone. The Pegasus belongs to the Alliance.”
“And the Pegasus is important.”
“It is not my place to speak of it. The captain will explain when she judges the time right.”
Ronan relaxed in his seat as if the topic held no interest for him. “As you say.”
The slight tension went out of Kord’s posture. “You desire the captain,” he said.
The unexpected question upset Ronan’s facade of indifference. He sat up. “I do not understand you.”
Kord chuckled. “Come, my friend. You must know she favors you.”
“She has done me honor.”
“She favors you, man. Are you sand-blind?”
Ronan did not misunderstand. On the shuttle, before he had remembered the truth about himself, Cynara had reached into his mind for the first time. That touch had not triggered his memory as had the encounter on Bifrost. Only later, lying in the infirmary, had he realized what she had discovered.
Pieces of his childhood, yes, and faces of those shaauri who had befriended or tormented him. But she had also witnessed his encounters with the Kinswomen who had come at Kalevi behest to serve his needs. She had felt what he felt then, the full measure of his lust and hunger for companionship.
And she had not turned away in disgust. It had been as if she lay with him in his bed in Ain’Kalevi, as if her body accepted his caresses.
The second mental joining on Bifrost had been brief and deep like a spear-thrust, piercing his carefully constructed defenses and withdrawing just as swiftly. He had been too close to death to fully comprehend it. But it had forged a new bond between them, just as her kiss had awakened his body.
That bond was his advantage and his potential undoing. Cynara did not know how well he recognized her desire for him. She rejected such weakness in herself, but it was so obvious that even her closest ve’laik’in—her friend—perceived it.
Because of Cynara, Ronan had access to everything he had forgotten—had been made to forget—before he had come aboard the Pegasus. He had subdued young Bhruic and made himself invisible to the crew even before he had any understanding of how or why he did so.