Now, there is a sequence of interaction between the two in Book 1, but it’s complicated. They start off the story on opposite sides of the coming war. While she and the other prisoners who escape are on the run, Khira goes off on a little side mission thing to get someone important. But she ends being followed and confronted and fought to a standstill by Silena (who is masked and her armor gives no clues as to her identity or gender).

Silena brings Khira back to Azura, fulfilling the terms of her contract with the Triad. Silena does stick around because the Triad has more work for her to do, considering that Khira has turned traitor and the rest of Khira’s special ops unit is now dead.

As Khira is imprisoned and tortured and mistreated, Silena (under her mask and alias), visits her, originally just to talk. But then they start to be more open with each other, Khira is still very cautious b/c she’s in prison, but she’ll tell Silena about missions she ran and share details about her former missions. And Silena starts to bring Khira extra food and water, or medicine after a brutal questioning sequence, or a blanket. And it’s the brutal treatment that Khira is subjected to that begins to change things for Silena, bringing up memories of someone from her past.

When Khira’s friends come to break her out of prison, Silena helps her. The rescue attempt goes awry, but Silena manages to aid Khira and her compatriots without drawing attention to herself, leaving only a note for Khira, saying “I’m so sorry.”

That’s the entirety of their interactions for When Shadows Fall.

In the planned second book, they have another single interaction. It is absolutely crucial to the plot and its point in time is fixed.

Khira is infiltrating a ball in Azura, searching for intel when she’s accosted for a dance by a beautiful woman (Silena). Khira knows that the resistance has a man inside, but didn’t know it was a woman and assumes the woman aiding her is the ‘inside man,’ which technically Silena is, but she feeds information through a middleman. Khira doesn’t suspect, until later, that the woman could be Silena’s true identity, not her alias.

They share a short, heated dance and that’s their interaction in Book 2.

Until the very end of Book 2. Silena has decided to turn her skills to the resistance but was captured by the Triad’s forces. Khira and co find her imprisoned on a Triad base after they destroy the weapons being built there. Khira tenderly removes Silena’s helmet so that they can get her medical help and that’s when she finds that Silena is [ALIAS] and the woman that she danced with.

Understandably, that’s a shock.

Book 3 is when they start to work together and start to fall for each other (slowly).

But I really want to get more interaction with them into the earlier books because I love writing them as a pair. But I can’t think of a way to do so. There’s no way to do that without drastically altering the plot.

Every single interaction between them, from B1 with their fight to their conversations in the prison to B2 and their dance has immense repercussions and is monumentally important to the plot.