Free Bitter Night by Diana Pharaoh Francis

eyes dropping. Dangerous as she was, she was also ridiculously shy. She was exactly what Max would expect the daughter of a geisha and a terminator to be.

    Oz slid into the seat opposite Max. “Want company?”

    “Do I have a choice?”

    He smiled broadly, taking a drink from the milk jug. “Nope.”

    “What happened to you last night?” Niko asked. He sat at the table across the aisle, kicking his feet out and slouching down, tapping his fingers on the table in a drumbeat.

    Akemi sat across from him, her hands folding together on the table, her back straight. She watched Max from beneath lowered lids.

    “Trouble, of course,” Max said, rubbing her forehead.

    This was the hardest part of the role she played for Giselle. She liked Oz. She liked Niko and Akemi, though Akemi continually treated Max as some sort of half-god. The problem was that she did like them and she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to care. She didn’t want Giselle to have any hostages against her good behavior. But she’d lost the knack for keeping them at arm’s length. It had been easier in that first fifteen years. She had spent so much time running or laid out on Giselle’s altar that she hadn’t had a chance to get to know the other Shadowblades or Sunspears before they got killed in the line of witchy duty. Once she’d stopped running, she’d learned all she could about combat, strategy, tactics, and most especially about the world of magic’she had a mission. She wasn’t going to die doing Giselle’s dirty work until she could kill the witch-bitch herself.

    That’s when the rest of the Shadowblades and even a lot of the Sunspears started looking up to her, asking her for help, for advice. For years Max had been Prime in name only and finally had to take on the role for real or watch her friends die from sheer ignorance and inexperience. But the job came with confessions of fear and misdeeds, longings and hopes, grudges and frustrations. It brought them closer to her. Every day it grew worse. Attachments of the heart, drilled in with titanium screws she didn’t know how to dislodge. Worse, she wasn’t sure she wanted to anymore. Beneath the table, her fingers brushed across her pocket, feeling the cold of the hailstone. Maybe she didn’t have to. Maybe there was a way out without destroying everything she’d come to care about. There had to be a way.

    She gave them the bare bones of her night’s activities. As she finished, Magpie delivered a plate of enchiladas and Max dug in.

    “This could get ugly. Selange isn’t going to take this sitting down.” Oz pointed out the obvious while stealing one of the folded tortillas on the edge of Max’s plate.

    Max pointed her fork at him. “Touch my food again and I’ll eat your hand.”

    He smirked. “Might be worth it. I always wanted to know what it would be like to have your mouth on me.”

    Akemi made a squeaking sound of disbelief and Niko snorted.

    Max set her fork down carefully, pressing her hands flat on either side of her plate. She stared at her plate for a moment. Then she looked up at Oz. He looked wary, knowing he’d tested a line. Another day she’d have tossed back a razor remark or broken his jaw for him. But today ...today she’d been given the first real hope for freedom.

    A daring she hadn’t felt for years swelled in her chest. It was heady. Oz flinched as Max pushed herself upright. She leaned over the table, stopping mere centimeters from him.

    “All right then,” she said, then closed the distance, pressing her lips to his.

    Oz went rigid, then kissed her back. Their tongues touched tentatively, and Max tipped her head. He reached up, holding her face with his fingertips as if afraid she’d break, or maybe he was afraid she’d bite him. He tasted of milk and mints, and his tongue was deft and light. A sense of dizzy wonder rushed through Max. Like she was back in college with a future full of possibilities.

    She pulled away slowly.