I laughed.
It was the kind of observation that required intimate knowledge of Blair Davenport's operational psychology, and Hikaru had been on Blair's squad for six weeks before the merger. She'd watched Blair up close, seen the same cracks I'd seen in the cave, understood the specific frequency at which Blair Davenport vibrated between perfection and complete structural failure.
"She'll hold," I said. "She held in the Void Gate. When it mattered, she put her fire exactly where it needed to go."
Hikaru studied me over the rim of her mug with the focus of someone solving a problem that contained too many variables. Her red eyes caught the lamplight and threw it back darker, almost wine-colored, and the wire-frame glasses made her look like a graduate student evaluating a thesis proposal rather than a fugitive heiress with an A-rank blade hiding under compression bandages.
"You trust Davenport."
"I trust her ability."
"Those are different things."
