by Nalini Singh
HOURS after she’d finally run from Kaleb, her stomach convulsing as she fought the urge to retch, Sahara lay in a fetal position in her own bed, beneath three blankets that did nothing to negate the frigid cold in her chest, in her bones. She should’ve been long asleep, but she couldn’t get Kaleb’s voice out of her head.
I was there for every second of their torture and deaths.
The way he’d said it, it was simple, absolute fact. No room for negotiation or subtlety. Even if he hadn’t actively helped—and she knew that was a vain hope, no matter how much she wanted it to be true—he’d known what Enrique was doing long before it had come to the attention of the changelings who had eventually executed the Councilor. She’d never blame the innocent child Kaleb had once been, but he’d kept this silence even after he became an adult with full access to his telekinetic strength; he’d protected his mentor, his teacher.
“Loyalty is everything.”
A fury of backsight spun into her mind on the heels of that distorted vocal echo, and as always when her mind saw the past, she was an uninvolved bystander . . . except this time, the subject of her vision was a younger version of herself. Her just-above-the-knee-length tunic a sedate gray over a neat white shirt, black ballet flats on her feet, she walked down a leafy avenue shaded with cherry blossom trees in full bloom, the light tinged a soft pink by the delicate flowers.
Sahara recognized the uniform as that of her junior high school. From the way she’d done her hair—a single neat braid that reached the middle of her shoulders—as well as the type of satchel she wore over her shoulder and the bruise on her arm, she knew she was fifteen and on her way home after a vigorous game of baseball in her last-period physical health class.
One of her schoolmates had thrown for the plate, caught her on the arm instead as she slid home. He’d been very apologetic, but Sahara had been truthful when she assured him she was fine. Simply because, as a Psy, she had slightly weaker physiology than humans or changelings, didn’t mean she was easily breakable, or that she couldn’t take the normal wear and tear of life. As it was the body that supported the mind, physical exercise was a routine part of every Psy student’s life.
It was the official reason why Sahara took dance classes three times a week.
“Memory,” Sahara whispered in a bed far from the school where she’d once played baseball, understanding the fragment of backsight had segued into a hereto hidden memory.
As she walked on that far-off day, she took in everything around her, from the falling petals of soft pink to the occasional hover-capable car on the road. She’d always liked the dappled shade created by the heavily blooming trees, though to admit that would have been to sentence herself to corrective conditioning, so she’d hidden the fracture in her already unsound Silence and continued to take pleasure in the myriad hues of spring.
The fact was, she was temperamentally unsuited to the Protocol. It just couldn’t sink its hooks into her, no matter how hard she tried. And she had tried. As a small child, she’d wanted to be like everyone else, had been diligent in practicing her mental exercises. The latter had had some effect—she’d been able to pass for Silent, though she had always thought Faith suspected.
Faith! Red hair. Cardinal eyes. Her gifted cousin who had kept her secret.
Fifteen-year-old Sahara nodded hello at a passing human classmate when he waved to her from his bicycle. Such actions were permissible in order to maintain social harmony, but the truth was, Sahara enjoyed interacting with different types of people. It was why she’d chosen to attend a school that wasn’t specifically geared toward Psy, though when she’d made the request to the head of her family unit, she’d focused on the school’s world-class foreign-languages program.
She wasn’t the only Psy student, the school’s academic track a brilliant one, but they were a definite minority. It gave Sahara countless opportunities to mix with people who lived outside Silence. The girl she liked best in her class was a gifted human pianist. The music Magdalena could create carried a haunting passion that went beyond notes and keys.
Sahara also had a changeling classmate who could do things on the sports fields that should’ve been impossible. Though Sahara’s mind was scalpel sharp, her educational workload far more advanced than that of the rest of her class, her fingers couldn’t create music that made the soul soar, her body couldn’t move with the grace of a changeling’s. But that didn’t matter when she danced. It felt like flying.
That was who she was as she walked home from school that day—flawed, happy, smart enough to know that intelligence wasn’t everything—and who she was when she chose to turn off the road in favor of a path through a quiet park. No other students walked here, but there was birdsong in the air, sunshine in the sky. She felt no concern, was utterly confident of her safety, and excited.
So excited!
* * *
SAHARA sat up in bed as the memory dissolved, leaving her with a single luminous piece of knowledge that tore apart her earlier doubts about her mental health. Her and Kaleb’s relationship might be a thing of darkness, but it hadn’t come into being because she was sick and damaged and struggling to survive.
She had met Kaleb before. A long time ago.
Not once.
Many times.
Every year on her birthday, he’d waited for her in a hidden curve of that pathway, and . . .
Her eyes went wide. Pushing off the blankets, she went to the right side of the bed, lifted up the mattress, and pulled out the small treasure she’d concealed there out of habit, she’d been protecting it for so long. She’d gone so psychotic when a guard tried to take it from her as a punishment that he’d been fired—because Sahara’s hysteria had left her useless to her captors for days.
She’d still been cooperating to a certain point at that stage, in the hope that she could lull them into a false sense of security. That plan had failed, but after the mania of her reaction, no one had ever again tried to take her treasure from her, even during the worst punishments—as if they were afraid of fatally breaking her. Still, she’d stopped wearing it, hiding it in knots she created in her clothing.
Now, it glittered in the lamplight, a charm bracelet of shining platinum.
“Thirteen,” she whispered and touched the key she knew was meant to represent the endless choices open to her.
“Fourteen.” An open book. That was the year her ability for languages had become apparent, French as easy for her to understand and use as Cantonese and Hungarian—as long as she was taught by a fluent speaker of the language, rather than using computronic aids. Intrigued teachers had theorized she had some type of unheard-of psychic ability that allowed her to unconsciously absorb languages from those around her, never realizing how close they skated to the perilous truth.
“Fifteen.” A tiny globe that represented her dream of seeing the world.
“Sixteen.” She touched wondering fingers to the dancer who leaped into the void with abandon, her arms raised above her head, pure joy in her expression.
Four, only four.
All from the man who now held her captive.
She sat on the edge of the bed, the bright metal warm in her palm, the charms of exquisite workmanship. It was the kind of gift that could be taken in many ways, the majority of them troubling, given Kaleb’s connection to Santano Enrique, as well as the six-year age gap between Kaleb and Sahara. It mattered nothing now that they were both adults, but at the start, Kaleb would’ve been nineteen to her thirteen.
Except . . . for her the bracelet was associated with hope and a rare, incandescent joy. There was no hint of a taint, none of the ugliness that might mean Kaleb had been grooming her as a future victim. Even the idea made her stomach revolt, as if she’d done a terrible insult to something indescribably precious.
Kaleb would never hurt me.
Closing her fingers over the lovely present given to her by a familiar stranger wreathed in shadows, Sahara realized she had a choice to make: to
trust in the emotions engendered by this bracelet—a bracelet she’d guarded and treasured for seven long, agonizingly lonely years, or to listen to the coldly rational part of her that reminded her Kaleb had walked hand in hand with a murderous monster since childhood.
* * *
IN spite of the late hour, he was working at his desk, his dark hair pristine, his steel gray shirt unwrinkled in the slightly yellow-tinged light from the table lamp that provided the only illumination in the room. Looking up when she came in, the roiling darkness she’d glimpsed in the bedroom yet visible in his eyes, he said, “Yes?”
The dead calm of his voice had her hesitating, the decision she’d made a painful hope she couldn’t bear to have crushed.
“Sahara,” he said at her silence, “if you’re here for a reason, speak. If you’re not, leave.”
Swallowing at the cold warning that told her not to push him, she took a seat in the chair on the other side of his desk. He watched her with the unblinking gaze of a predator so deadly, the world had never seen anything like him. “Where”—she wet a throat gone dry as a desert sun—“where are the rest?”
His eyes didn’t move off her.
Trembling within, she lifted her fisted hand in front of her. Platinum shimmered in the golden light as her fingers fell open. A moment of absolute, endless silence, and then Kaleb blinked and the stars were back in his eyes.
Not breaking the eye contact that threatened to brand her from the inside out, he laid his right hand palm-up on his desk. Seven charms lay on his skin between one heartbeat and the next. Biting back tears as the most secret part of her keened in joy, she leaned closer, hand rising.
He drew the charms away.
Anger flashed, hot and raw. “They’re mine.”
“That’s not how it works.”
Scowling, and wanting the charms, she sat back in the chair as he stood and moved around the table with that deadly grace that always drew her eye, her body taut with a very adult tension. Breath shallow, she slipped the bracelet over her wrist, snicked the clasp into place, and held out her arm toward him. “Now.”
Leaning against the desk in front of her, he lifted his hand and a single charm appeared between his fingertips. “Seventeen.”
“A compass.” To find my way home. Heart breaking, she looked her fill of him as he finished hooking the charm onto the bracelet, and again, she asked herself who he was to her. Who had he been to her, this beautiful man who might be so deeply damaged as to be forever broken?
Chapter 15
HE GLANCED UP, a lock of hair falling across his forehead, midnight dark against his golden skin. For a fleeting instant, she saw the boy he’d once been, all silky hair and quiet eyes, and she knew the memory was true. Her and Kaleb, whatever it was that tied them together, it had begun long before she was thirteen, begun when they were both children.
“Hurry,” she whispered, helpless as her other hand rose to push that errant lock off his forehead.
He didn’t move away, didn’t repudiate her touch. “Eighteen.” A second charm appeared between his fingers.
She twisted her head this way and that to try to see what it was as he hooked it into place, but he deliberately blocked her sight. She saw the reason why when he straightened. “An unsheathed blade.” What he had become the day she vanished.
“Nineteen.” He began to hook the charm on before she saw the telekinetic fetch.
A small home.
The rock that was her heart grew heavier. “Twenty.”
“Twenty.” This one, he let her see.
A tiny heart formed of a deep blue stone, so very beautiful it made her breath release in a sigh. “Sapphire?”
“Tanzanite.” His eyes met hers. “Rare. Unique.”
A frozen heart, she thought, her wonder swirled with a haunting sorrow. His heart or hers?
“Twenty-one.”
An hourglass.
“Twenty-two.”
A fragment of jagged obsidian, edges smoothed only enough not to cut her skin.
“Twenty-three.”
A single, perfect star.
Frowning, she looked up at him. “I don’t understand.”
He hooked the charm into place. “Only this star matters.” His thumb brushing over her inner wrist. “Should it be erased, no other has the right to live.”
“I’d line the streets with bodies before I’d ever hurt you.”
A wave of black rushed through her in a nightmare of understanding. “What’s twenty-four?” she managed to ask through the roar, curling her wrist close to her chest.
“As yet undecided.”
“I know what I want.” This battle was one she had to win, not only for the future of the world, but for herself, for Kaleb, for what they might have been . . . what they could be.
A waiting silence from the man who would’ve annihilated an entire civilization in vengeance for her, ending the lives of millions, innocents and sinners alike.
“A sheath for the blade,” she whispered.
The stars faded into black. “That might not be possible.”
It can’t be too late, she thought again. She refused to let it be too late, refused to believe he was forever gone, the damage permanent. “I want jewels on the sheath, bright and colorful.” And hopeful.
“It’ll require considerable work,” he said softly, the obsidian of his gaze holding her own, “might even be an impossible task.”
“Are you surrendering, then?” It was a question as soft. “Walking away?”
Kaleb’s response held a possessiveness that might yet keep her a prisoner. “I will never walk away from you.”
* * *
KALEB didn’t go to bed after Sahara left his office following an interaction he hadn’t ever thought would come to pass, not given what she’d learned of him, and the injuries done to her in the years of captivity. He should’ve known not to attempt to predict or judge her—Sahara Kyriakus had always had an unexpected and stubborn will. No other woman could’ve survived seven years in hell and come out of it with the strength to challenge Kaleb.
He waited an hour to give her time to fall into deep sleep, before getting up and rolling down the sleeves of his shirt to do up the cuffs. Picking up his jacket from where it hung behind the study door, he shrugged into it. His choice of clothing was another mask—it gave people a certain impression of him, an impression he intended to use tonight to ensure Sahara’s future safety.
No one was ever again taking her from him.
Ready, he discovered himself unable to leave before making dead certain she was safe and undisturbed in her rest. If he lost her now, after she’d returned to him at last, eyes of midnight blue holding a fragile trust he’d never again expected to see, there would no longer be any question about his sanity or lack of it. The world had no knowledge of the delicate hands that held its fate.
He made sure to position himself in the shadows by the door when he teleported into her room, not wanting to scare her if she wasn’t lost in sleep. Fear in Sahara’s eyes, he’d learned when she’d run from him earlier, burned worse than any acid Santano had poured on him when he’d been a boy. It was dangerous, that pain, could drown the world in blood, but Sahara had been the first, would always be the deepest, fracture in his conditioning.
It was a truth as pure and as inescapable as the wind.
The room was pitch-black, but his eyes had learned to adapt in the darkness of his childhood, and he had no trouble seeing her. Risking going closer when her breathing proved quiet and steady, he saw her face was turned sideways on the pillow as she lay on her back, the black strands of her hair silky and thick across the Egyptian cotton of the pillowcase.
It was the best money could buy. He’d made certain of it.
Hand rising, he almost touched the sleep-warm curve of her cheek before realizing it would wake her . . . scare her. He couldn’t risk that. Not now, when she’d remembered just enough to trust him on a basic level but not enough to brand him the mo
nster he knew himself to be.
“You are what I made you. There is nothing else.”
Visions of blood, bright and hot, spraying across his retinas, he teleported out and manually checked every door and window. Rerouting the perimeter alarms to feed into his cell phone once he was satisfied the house was secure, he made sure the siren remained active. If a breach did occur, he didn’t want Sahara caught unprepared. The filleting knife she’d hidden under her pillow would work fine as a weapon if he was delayed by a second or two, especially since he’d quietly sharpened it until it would take only a single swipe to sever the carotid or jugular.
Security check complete, he looked in a mirror to confirm his mask remained in place, hair combed neatly and suit jacket buttoned, before accessing his Tk to build the framework for a teleport more complex than his usual split-second shifts. As the search for Sahara had thrown into dark focus, his ability to lock onto people wasn’t foolproof. If the individual in question didn’t know who she was, the attempt would fail. It was no coincidence the enemy Tk had found Sahara after she came out of the labyrinth.
A small number of telepaths in the Net—not necessarily the strongest, but the most intelligent—had figured out that weakness, too. If Kaleb had to guess, he’d say that was how the entire Lauren family, now part of the SnowDancer wolf pack, had ensured the success of their defection.
Tonight, he had to locate another individual who understood telepathic camouflage: Tatiana Rika-Smythe, fellow ex-Councilor and a woman who knew how to lay false trails so complex, it had taken him years to navigate the twisted pathways and retrieve Sahara . . . and days to unravel the blueprints of the psychic vault that had concealed Sahara’s mind, hidden her from him.
He’d taken the blueprints apart piece by piece, and the more he saw, the more he’d recognized Tatiana’s meticulous brand of psychic construction. “Do you know the name of the person who held you captive?” he’d asked Sahara earlier that night, as she sat curled up in the chair across from him, the star finally on the bracelet where it belonged. “The one in charge.”