Shards of Hope (Psy-Changeling 14)

“If I’ve never been Silent, then neither have you.” Zaira’s emotionless discipline wasn’t something external that had been forced on her. It was an internal winter of the soul, one she’d chosen in childhood in order to survive.

Her hand moved under his as she flexed her fingers, fingers that had to be stiffening up. “I took pieces of Silence, used those pieces to build a cage to keep the rage and the insanity inside. The cage shattered in the RainFire aerie and I’ve been trying to rebuild it since. I’m failing.”

Aden took the first clear breath he’d taken since leaving RainFire. “You say you have the madness, but what I saw today was anger.” He didn’t know why she’d attacked the male but her raw fury had been unmistakable.

“I was totally out of control.” Stark words. “If you hadn’t pulled me off that man, I would’ve killed him.”

“And if you didn’t have anger inside you, you’d be inhuman.” He thought of the classified recordings he’d seen, recordings made by her family during her punishments for purposes of “monitoring the progress of the education program.” It had been sadism, pure and simple. It was her father who was a Neve, but he’d clearly found his perfect partner in Zaira’s mother. The two had enjoyed watching Zaira suffer. And she had suffered.

A small girl, fine boned and with dark eyes, dark hair, trying futilely to protect herself against belts and canes and whips.

In the later recordings, she’d simply curled into herself like a turtle inside its shell, taking the blows on her back and arms and legs. Until they’d forced her hands up above her head and beaten and beaten her as she spun suspended from a hook in the ceiling. Her blood had soaked her shift, splattered the walls.

And Aden, for the first time in his life, had understood rage. Even then, believing himself Silent, he’d understood rage. He’d been glad her parents were dead, that she’d beaten them to a pulp. If she hadn’t, he would’ve gone out that day and done it himself. As it was, he had gone out and made sure no other Neve child was in the same situation. The warning he’d left for those who might attempt such horror in the future had stained the air with sick fear.

“Your anger is honest. It’s real.” He had to make her understand that it wasn’t her fury at fault; it was her refusal to accept it. “Ivy says that the things we hold inside, the nightmares we stifle, have far more power than the things we expose to the light of day.” He hadn’t betrayed Zaira’s trust by asking specifically about her, the question a general one, but he thought Ivy knew. She was an empath—she saw into hearts, even ones stunted from years of deprivation. “Accept your anger, Zaira, and you’ll strip it of its power.”

Zaira was quiet for a long time. “I don’t believe you.”

Aden realized at that instant that Zaira would believe his words only when he proved them true, and the only way he could prove them true was if she didn’t retreat, as he could already feel her doing. “Don’t go.”

“I can’t leave this desert until Vasic returns—though I will try to walk out eventually.”

“Will you face me?”

Not an immediate response, but she did eventually turn.

“Don’t go,” he said again, bringing his hand up to lie against her face. “Don’t step back from the world again. Don’t leave me alone.”

Dark eyes that hid so much. “I’ll give my life for you.” Fingers pressing to his lips when he would’ve spoken. “This is my peace.” Her breath brushed his skin, so warm and alive even when she was shutting down in front of his eyes. “Let me live it. Let me be as normal as I can be.”

Aden had spent his life fighting. For his Arrows, for the Net, for a better future . . . and for Zaira. He could’ve done so forever, but right then, he realized he couldn’t when his battle would be at the expense of her sanity and her peace. He would not make her feel hounded, would not make her feel as if she wasn’t good enough, as if she was too broken for him.

He would take her exactly as she was, because one thing was true, would always be true: “I’m yours.” It was his turn to stop her words. “Just stay with me,” he said. “In any way you want.”

“You deserve better.” Rough, broken words.

“There’s no one better than you.”

“I’ll be the best soldier you ever have,” she repeated in a shattered whisper.

“I know.” It would have to be enough.

Chapter 36

BLAKE HAD BEGUN to “court” Beatrice. He’d started quietly by calling her into his office and commending her on her performance during a weapons drill. The truth was that she’d been average—not good, not bad. Acceptable. He’d praised her nevertheless and he thought he might have been the first person ever to do so.

The following day, he’d attended her hand-to-hand combat session, and spent time with her afterward, offering her personal tutelage. They’d spent two hours alone in an outdoor training area, and he’d been careful to encourage her, mimicking things he so often heard Cris saying to her students. The need for such approval was a weakness, but he’d chosen Beatrice because she was weak.

First he had to build her up, make her look to him for approval . . . then he had to break her down so she stopped thinking for herself and became his creature. That was why he’d berated her for a mistake toward the end of a session, after making sure he’d been nothing but encouraging and complimentary to that point. She’d all but crumpled inward. When he’d told her it was all right, that she could learn to correct her error, she’d agreed to another hour of instruction.