Aurora Burning (The Aurora Cycle #2)(107)

Yes. It did.

Just as it will absorb the galaxy if we permit it.

Yes, I nod. It will.

We must escape this cell, Tyler Jones.

I raise one eyebrow. The scarred one. For extra effect.

I’m glad you’re here to tell me these things, Saedii.

Was that sarcasm, little Terran?

I shrug. My sister inherited most of it. But some rubbed off on me.

Her eyes narrow again at the word inherited. She looks at me long and hard. Glittering eyes framed by dark lashes and dark paint. Her stare lingering maybe a fraction too long on my bare chest.

Listen, I know these pecs could run for president and win, I think to her, more than a little annoyed. But you could be a touch less obvious about getting an eyeful. In case you missed it, we’re in it up to our necks here.

The Unbroken Templar tilts her head at that. Slowly, slowly leaning back on her bio-cot and stretching those long, bare legs out in front of her. I know what she’s doing. I know what she wants. I fill my head with a barrage of unsexy thoughts—my old bunkmate Bj?rkman trimming his toenails with his teeth, that time I caught myself in my zipper, my grandma’s underwear, huge cream-colored monstrosities, billowing like sails on the cl— I can’t help it. I glance down for a fraction of a second.

Dammit.

I look up into Saedii’s eyes again. Her split lips twist in a small smile.

I am not “getting an eyeful,” as you so eloquently put it, Tyler Jones.

She glances back at my chest, thoughtful.

I am wondering what kind of heart beats beneath those ribs of yours.

… Meaning what?

Meaning the foe of my foe is my friend. Meaning that despite the enmity and insult between us, I respect the trust you place in me to speak your secrets. And that there are secrets you are perhaps owed in turn. Secrets about me.

She looks into my eyes.

Secrets about you.

I frown.

… Me?

She gives a gentle shrug, toying with one black lock of hair as she looks me over once more. You and your sister, I suppose.

… What’s Scar got to do with this?

Twins, are you not?

Yeah, so what?

Jericho Jones escaped Syldrathi captivity before the battle at Kireina IV, yes?

My frown deepens. How’d you know that?

She smiles again. Your father held back a fleet twice the size of his at Kireina. It was the worst defeat we suffered in the entire war. Know your enemy, Tyler Jones.

I don’t—

Jericho Jones was a rear admiral less than a year after his victory. A warrior, born and bred, who fought the best of the Warbreed to a standstill and caused our fall from ascendancy in the Inner Council of Syldra. And yet, he resigned his commission. Became the strongest advocate for peace in your Senate. Why the change of heart?

I have no idea where she’s going with this. But something in her eyes urges me to run with it.

He made a speech about it in 2367, I tell her, pride swelling my chest. It still gets taught today at Aurora Academy. “I can no longer look my children in the eye without seeing the wrong in killing other people’s.”

She sniffs. A pretty lie.

I bristle. You watch what you say about my father, Saedii.

When I first spoke to your mind, you said you were not aware that those who possessed Waywalker gifts could speak to other people telepathically.

I shrug. I wasn’t aware.

Saedii shakes her head, mild contempt spilling into my mind despite her best effort to hold it in check. That is because we cannot speak to other people, Tyler Jones. We can only speak to others with the gift.

My stomach lurches. I don’t …

I am Warbreed by birth and troth, Saedii tells me. But … though I loathed her, I did inherit some of my mother’s talents.

She meets my eyes, her own glinting like glass.

It would seem your mother also shared her gift with you.

The thought knocks the breath from my lungs. My heart is thumping, mind spinning. But I’m trying to hold on to the threads in my head, stitch them together into a tapestry that makes some kind of sense, while Saedii looks on, cool and aloof.

We never knew our mom—I always wondered about her, but I could tell how much it hurt Dad to talk about her. I didn’t want to push it. And I thought we had a lifetime to ask him about what happened. Where she went.

But Dad was missing behind enemy lines for months. I admit it always struck me as kinda strange—for him to have turned from the Syldrathi’s greatest enemy into the man who argued strongest for peace. I guess part of me wanted to put him on a pedestal. The noble war hero who came to respect the enemy he fought against. To understand we’re all, in some essential way, the same.

But it would make a lot more sense if …

While he was captured, if he …

It’s funny being a twin. Sometimes I feel like I know what my sister will say before she says it. Sometimes I swear she can tell what I’m thinking just by looking at me. Scar and I were inseparable as kids. Dad said we invented our own language before we could talk. And the way my sister instinctively reads people—like books, like she can actually see into their heads sometimes …

“Maker’s breath,” I breathe aloud.

You do not have much of the look about you, Saedii says. Probably why your mother sent you away. But it is undeniable that you and your sister are possessed of a certain—her eyes flicker over my body again—grace. Height. Poise. You saw the images of my torture in your head. You can speak to me in my mind. I feel you in here—she touches her brow—as surely as you feel me. There is only one explanation, Tyler Jones.