Shards of Hope (Psy-Changeling 14)

Waiting until she was sure Jojo was capable on the frame, Zaira stepped up to the wall and took the first grip. Ten seconds after she began, she realized it was a much more difficult course than appeared at first glance. For someone with a shorter reach like Zaira, it was close to impossible.

Perfect.

When she slipped, she was aware of Jojo crying out.

It was . . . odd that the child should care so much about a near stranger, but it cost Zaira nothing to make the effort to respond. “I’m fine,” she said, feeling the strain in her abdomen. She ignored it. It’d be worth a dressing-down from Finn to unleash some of her pent-up energy. “This is a difficult climb.”

“Yup,” Jojo said. “Cat climb.”

Zaira’s mind clicked, the almost unclimbable difficulty of the course suddenly making sense: the cats must use their claws to compensate. Since she had no claws, she used the comparative lightness of her body to swing off one hold to the other. Again and again and again. It was a climb that required extreme concentration, logical thinking, and a careful use of strength.

She was cognizant of sounds behind her, and she kept a peripheral eye on where Jojo played on the frame, but the climb held the majority of her attention.

Never was she unaware of individuals who might become a threat, but she evaluated the overall threat level automatically and assigned it a negligible rating. It was becoming increasingly clear that these changelings didn’t want to kill or harm or torture her or Aden. RainFire had offered help simply because it was the right thing to do.

So she climbed until her biceps were quivering, her hamstring muscles and quadriceps tight, and her new skin painful. By the time she hauled herself up to sit on the top edge, she had the feeling she would be getting a serious dressing-down from Finn. Gathering noise from below had her looking down to see a large group clapping—for her.

Jojo was jumping up and down and waving.

Zaira lifted her hand and moved it in a wave motion for no reason except that no one had ever indulged her as a child and she thought of what it would’ve meant. A single instant of kindness could’ve changed everything, could’ve kept her from becoming a murderer.

•   •   •

ADEN watched Zaira wave at Jojo. Others might’ve been startled at seeing his normally ice-cold commander do that, but Aden had always noted how Zaira treated the young. She wasn’t warm and cuddly, but if she was in the vicinity and a child needed something, she’d provide it.

In one case, she’d broken the arm of a trainer who’d been about to do the same to an eight-year-old boy. After that, Ming ensured Zaira was never around any of the training centers. Aden wanted her to help him choose the teams to run what was now a centralized training area for the same reason. Zaira’s thinking might be problematic in a number of senses, but never when it came to the welfare of children.

“If I hadn’t seen that,” a male changeling said from beside him, “I wouldn’t have believed it.”

Aden glanced at the man, who’d introduced himself as Theo. “What?”

“That fucking climb.” The brown-eyed, black-haired changeling whistled. “It’s built to be completed using claws. Never seen anyone do it without.”

“She’s an Arrow.”

“Don’t tell me you can all do that. I won’t believe you.”

No, they couldn’t all do what Zaira had just done. Zaira was unique and not simply in the physical sense. As she began to climb down, Aden found himself moving closer, but he made sure not to go so close that the changelings would notice.

Remi came up beside him, his eyes trained on Zaira. “You want us to put a net under her?”

Zaira slipped right then, caught herself, hanging precariously from one hand.

“No.” One thing Aden knew about Zaira—she wouldn’t want herself to be seen as weak by strangers—not in any way. If he permitted that, it’d be a breach of trust she would never forgive. “She has it under control.”

He had to consciously regulate his breathing as Zaira continued down. Ever since he’d touched Vasic and Ivy’s bond, he’d felt his Silence slipping away and he hadn’t fought hard to hold on to it. He knew he could still be the leader the squad needed without that straitjacket.

Except, according to Zaira, the fact that he cared for each and every life under his command was no secret in the squad. It was also something his parents would term a serious deviation from their aims and plans. More than that, they’d see it as a failure. Marjorie and Naoshi had created and molded Aden for a specific purpose; he had achieved that purpose, but he’d done so on his own terms—and the depth of that success continued to perplex his parents.

To them, he had always been the child who was a pale shadow of the one they wanted. Their aim had been to create a merciless cardinal telepath who could take on even a Councilor. What they’d got instead was a solemn, quiet boy who registered as a 4.3 telepath on the Gradient, along with an even more minor M ability. A child who had been permitted into the squad only because of his parents’ stellar records and because he was useful in a secondary capacity.

Someone needed to be trained as a field medic for his year group—why not the disappointingly low-Gradient child of two Arrows? After all, that child was already loyal to the squad and understood how it functioned. His appointment to the medic position would also free up another more powerful child to devote his or her full attention to combat training.

Aden could still remember his mother’s hands on his shoulders as she hunkered down in front of him when he was nine years old, on the eve of her and his father’s planned “deaths.”