Page 40 of Synnr's Ride

Jori looked down, and as soon as he saw the blood, the wound started hurting again. He scowled. "Bar fight. Someone got in a lucky shot."

He reached for the open med kit and pulled it his way. There was plenty of gauze and med gel.

"A knife?" Her voice was cooly professional, but with a quaver of something underneath.

"Broken glass." That moment of the fight flashed back before Jori's eyes, and he winced.

"Let me do that." Hanna grabbed for the gauze as he was turning her way, and her hand brushed up against his wound.

For half a second, nothing happened. Then his vision whited out as he felt power that wasn't his own blast through him.

His wings flared bigger than they ever had, so strongly that he thought they might reach the ceiling. His vision cleared, and Hanna was his mirror, eyes wide and mouth agape, wings twice their normal size for a breath before they shrank back down to what he was used to.

Something clattered to the floor as Jori came back to himself. He slowly looked toward the sound and saw Kark, Zilly, and every other member of the gang staring at them.

Kark broke out into a wide grin. "Bring out the good stuff, Zilly my girl! We just witnessed a Match being made!"

Zilly was frozen in her seat on Kark's lap for another heartbeat before she bolted up and hustled to the bar, reaching for a bottle on the highest shelf and then grabbing another for good measure.

A Match.

Jori's mind stuttered to catch up. He'd never submitted his data to the Matching database, never particularly cared to find a Match of his own, even if a Matched pair could go far in the military.

Now his Match sat before him, a failed Apsyn spy who was only doing this mission in the hope of gaining her freedom.

A beautiful spy whose eyes were wide and staring at him as if he had some answer she couldn't grasp.

He wished he did. He wished he could find some word to say, something that would make this make sense.

How could Hanna be his Match? How had he not known?

Or had that been the force pulling them together from the very first?

Not every Matched unit was sexual or romantic, but a lot of them were. Could the attraction stem from that? Or was he just looking for excuses?

Hanna broke their locked gazes and reached for the gauze, a wide smile crossing her face. "Can you believe it, babe?" Her voice pitched high and she called him babe, a reminder they were still on the job, they still had parts to play.

He couldn't fail her.

Why was her hand cut?

He choked the question down as he saw her discreetly wipe some med gel across her palm before she tended to his arm. Matches sparked on blood to blood contact, which was why it was rare to accidentally Match. But his wound and her scraped palm were enough.

Zilly poured out shots from a fine Apsyn spirit that glowed faintly red and smelled like flowers. Once Jori's arm was bandaged, he reached out and grabbed his shot.

Hanna took her own and they clinked them together, smiling broadly as they downed the drinks to the cheers of the gang.

Kark launched into a story after that, talking about Vanen and the Matching balls they used to throw before the system of the Match database was founded. Jori tuned most of it out. Kark's obsession with glorified Apsyn history might give insight into his motivations, but that wasn't Jori's job. He was here to find out exactly how Kark was planning to harm Osais and stop him.

Matching wasn't part of the plan.

And it couldn't affect anything.

But as Kark babbled on, Jori reached out for Hanna's hand and turned it over. The med gel was slathered over half her palm and already beginning to knit the slash on her palm closed. It had to itch like mad, but she didn't show it.

Jori grabbed clean gauze and wiped away the excess gel before reaching for a dressing and pressing the bandage over the thin wound. He lightly ran his thumb over the smooth material to activate the adhesive.

Hanna shivered, and it had nothing to do with pain.

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