“Yeah!”

Canto put him on the wooden floor of the balcony. “You know where the snacks are.” He kept a stash suitable for small bears in a lower cupboard—the assortment courtesy of Arwen. “Chaos, how many things can he choose?” He’d learned that lesson when he hadn’t set any restrictions the first time—Chaos had had to deal with one moaning and stuffed-full cub.

“Two.” Chaos’s voice was the one Canto had labeled the “bear parent” tone. No argument. No playing. Do as you’re told.

Dima ran inside with a big whoop.

Grinning, Chaos hauled over a chair to sit next to Canto and held out a fist for him to bump. The bears, notwithstanding their reputation as rough and tough troublemakers, were highly intelligent and conscious of the Psy aversion to touch. They took “skin privileges” dead seriously.

Even the drunk bear who’d ended up in his lap had asked permission. He’d said yes because he’d been worried she’d otherwise face-plant right onto the asphalt.

Canto liked the changeling idea of skin privileges, of physical contact being considered a gift.

Payal’s face flashed in his mind, her skin so smooth and soft looking, her lips lush.

His abdomen tightened, his nerve endings afire. Not ready for the raw physical surge, he almost missed Chaos’s question.

Having leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the deck railing, Chaos said, “You sure you don’t get lonely out here?”

It was a quintessentially bear question. They lived in a sprawling den that Canto had been sure would drive Silver insane—yet his cousin was thriving in the midst of a nosy, loving, and occasionally insane pack that loved to throw parties.

“Arwen and Pavel dropped by yesterday for lunch, day before that it was my grandmother, and now you two,” he growled as he stripped off the gloves he wore to increase his grip during manual use of his chair; they also protected his palms from constant friction. Now he flexed his fingers and said, “How the hell is a man supposed to get peace and quiet?”

Chaos laughed, big and booming. “You do a good grumble. Almost like a bear.”

Small feet running back.

When Dima came around to Canto’s side, he saw that the boy held four snacks, not his permitted two. Surprised the small bear had disobeyed his father, he waited for Chaos to discipline him. But then Dima took a pack of dried apple slices from his stash and held it out to Canto. “You like apple.”

“Yeah.” Heart stretching inside his chest, Canto took the pack, then rubbed his hand over the boy’s tight curls.

Smiling, Dima ran over to give his father a pack of something called licorice allsorts that—to Canto—looked like tiny multihued bricks. “Look, Papa, your favorite.”

Chaos hugged his boy to his side. “You sure you don’t want it?”

“No, I got cookies and this.” He looked a bit dubious at his choice of dried mango strips, but determined. “I go play with Canto’s blocks now?”

“Sure.”

After the boy was happily involved in the play area Arwen had set up on the deck for Canto’s small visitors, Canto said, “You must be proud of him.”

“Every day,” Chaos said quietly, so much love in his voice that it made Canto ache deep within.

With no one in the Mercant clan currently parenting a small child—the youngest Mercant at present was sixteen—Canto had rarely even thought about children before coming to StoneWater territory. Now he knew he’d gut anyone who laid a finger on Dima or any of the other small souls in StoneWater.

Apparently, he had more Ena Mercant in him than he’d realized.

Beside him, Chaos tore open his child-sized bag of sweets. Canto did the same with his apple slices, and in the time that followed, the two of them just sat there, talking now and then, but mostly listening to the trees while Dima talked to himself as he played. It was a good feeling, sitting with a friend … but Canto’s mind kept being torn away to Delhi, and to a woman who appeared to have no safe haven.

His entire body threatened to knot with rage. He’d find a way to protect her—even if he had to do it in stealth. In saving his life, she’d gained herself a Mercant knight who would always, always be in her corner.

Before

I dream of him every night. And yet he isn’t in my arms. I should’ve never even looked at the proposal Fernandez sent through. I should’ve listened when Mother advised me to talk to multiple others who had been in my position.

I thought I knew better, thought I understood who I was and how carrying a child in my womb would affect me. I was wrong and I must live with that.

—From the private journal of Magdalene Mercant

“I’M SORRY.”

“Why?” He made his voice hard, as hard as he was trying to make his heart. “You did everything legal. You had no responsibility to me.”

The small woman with eyes of hazel brown and hair of moonlight gold didn’t look away, didn’t get up and leave. “It was my responsibility to ensure that no harm ever came to you. In that, I failed.” Cool, clear words, with no edge of excuse. “I am a Mercant—and no one gets to hurt our children.”

He refused to believe her, refused to be vulnerable ever again even though he was scared and lonely and nothing in his body was working right. “Okay, fine. Can I be alone now?”

“I deserve your rejection, but that won’t stop me from being your mother. Whatever you need, I will provide—including protection.”

He stared out the window of the hospital suite rather than answering, his heart beating too fast and his skin all hot. “I hate you,” he bit out. “I hate you.”

“I know.”

Chapter 11

Naysayers shout that Silence will favor the psychopaths among us, but they do not understand the intricacies of the safeguards built into the protocol. They stand in the path of progress out of ignorance and fear.

—Catherine and Arif Adelaja, Architects of Silence (1951)

PAYAL WALKED OUT of the conference room after her meeting and almost ran into Lalit. Her brother—taller than her by a foot, wide of shoulder and hard of jaw, his hair stylishly cut and his cologne crisp—stopped and did up the button on his navy suit jacket. “Agreement reached?”