PAYAL’S gut churned.

7J. 7J.

Half of her had begun to believe that the boy whose hand she’d held had been a figment of her manic and disturbed mind, a fantasy she’d created out of a need for care of any kind.

It was clear Canto hadn’t known her identity as 3K until she’d blurted out his ID in a moment of shock that had devastated her control. Now this man knew more about her than anyone else in the universe. Even her father wasn’t fully aware of all that had happened—all she’d been—in that hellhole where he’d abandoned her.

She could still remember every question 7J had asked her as they sat there, waiting for the inevitable. Not test questions. Not questions to dig up information he could use to his advantage. Just questions about her dreams, about food she liked, about what made her happy.

It had been the first time in her life anyone had wanted to hear her speak.

Inside her crazed, lost mind, she’d secretly called him a friend. Had the adult Payal permitted her Silence to fall when emotion became legal, she might’ve felt pity for that small, lost part of herself. So deprived of kindness and care that she’d turned fleeting interactions into a friendship. The boy on whose shoulders she’d laid her foolish childhood dreams had been so thin, his body no longer responding to his commands.

Only his eyes had never changed: fierce and fascinating and … protective. She’d probably misread them. She’d been an insane child after all. But … he’d given her food, saving things from his own meager meals to tuck into her hand when no one was looking.

That thin boy with fierce eyes had grown into a man with long legs and strong, wide shoulders, his arms ropy with muscle. Veins stood out along the olive skin of his forearms, and his thighs pushed up against the faded denim of his jeans. The latter meant he either had a level of lower limb mobility or used machines to exercise those muscles.

Regardless, that kind of strength couldn’t be achieved overnight. He had to have maintained a punishing regime over many years. She’d do well to remember that—it was an indication of relentless determination and stubbornness.

People that driven didn’t give up on a goal.

Right now, his goal was to rope her into a position that would take her time and attention away from the Rao empire. There was still so much she needed to do there, so many changes she had to make to ensure that Karishma could come home—and that no more innocents would die or suffer.

As for Canto’s question, she decided on an honest answer after calculating whether it could be used against her in any way and deciding it couldn’t; the paper trail had been wiped clean. “My family almost lost an heir to an accident, decided they might be able to bring the flawed one up to scratch after all.”

Varun’s car accident had saved her—but it had signaled the beginning of the end for her brother. It was during his recovery that he’d had the time to start fomenting traitorous thoughts. All that downtime to see how tightly their father held the reins, and to chafe against Pranath’s control.

“Your shell profile is brilliant.” Canto sounded like he was gritting out the words, his tone crushed gravel. “You’re in childhood school photos at a time when I know you were with me. The images aren’t the sharpest, but add in all the other details and the shell holds.”

“My deceased brother Varun,” she said. “He was gifted at such photographic and computronic manipulation. My father also had the money to grease plenty of palms. The teachers were bribed to ‘remember’ me after the fact—and it didn’t matter if the children didn’t. After all, I was only six when I was pulled out of that prison masquerading as a school.”

Payal had a reputation for bluntness, but this was the one topic on which she didn’t speak. To anyone. To be so open … it made her chest expand, her breath suddenly huge. “What happened to you?” She’d been too young to search for him, but she’d never forgotten the boy who’d held her hand and asked her about her dreams as if she had a right to those dreams.

She’d also done a number of clandestine searches on cardinals with unusual eyes, but of course, he’d never come up.

“My grandmother came looking for a grandchild who’d vanished without a trace.” Canto shoved a hand through the short strands of his silky black hair.

“You weren’t hers, though. All your documents state you belonged to the Fernandez family.”

“Ena Mercant never forgets her children or grandchildren—and no one is permitted to sentence us to death.” He shrugged, the motion fluid with muscle. “My father tried to lie his way out of it, because in his arrogance, he’d broken their contract. He didn’t survive that lie.”

“A formidable woman.” Too bad no one like Ena had existed for Payal; she’d had only Pranath Rao, who’d considered her an “unfortunate” mistake.

The Rao line’s tendency to birth strong Tks—and hold on to them against the might of the Council—was a powerful element of their identity. But they’d birthed no cardinals in the line until Payal. And she’d turned out to be mentally defective. “Was it the physical deterioration that made Fernandez hide you, then sentence you to that place?” A private question, but it looked like 3K and 7J were answering such questions.

“It had a strong role to play,” he said. “I had seizures as an infant, couldn’t walk until age three, and even then my coordination was problematic. But the final straw was my mental state—I began to hear voices.”

Payal’s breath caught, a hard lump in her throat. “Delusions?”

“No. It turns out I was hearing the NetMind before my initialization as an anchor.” He leaned forward, forearms braced on his thighs and the steel color of his shirt stretched across the breadth of his shoulders. “I’ve done some research, and it’s a rare but not unknown phenomenon with child As.”

The NetMind was a neosentience and the guardian and librarian of the PsyNet … or had been, until it began to disintegrate into chaos. Payal hadn’t sensed its presence for a long time.

Canto turned those galaxy eyes on her. “And you? Why were you abandoned?”

Payal never spoke about this. She couldn’t do so, even to 7J. There was too much risk that he could use it against her—because unlike with Canto, her sanity or lack of it had nothing to do with the NetMind.