Except Canto.

A buzz in her blood, she took a moment to compose herself before going to speak to Ruhi. “I’m heading to a meeting. If Father asks, mention it’s the Mercant matter. Tell Lalit to speak to my father if he pushes for information.” She glanced at her watch. “Actually, have an early day. I’ll let my father know.”

Ruhi didn’t argue—she didn’t like dealing with Lalit when Payal was away. “I have some work to finish, but I can log in from home.”

Leaving the other woman to gather her things, Payal made her way to her apartment. She didn’t intend to change—her wide-legged black pants and simple sleeveless red top with a vee-neck would be fine for the meeting. She’d come down for only one reason—to open up the book of tax law and touch her fingers to the wrapper she’d pressed within.

It wasn’t about the wrapper. It was about the care it indicated.

Obsession, whispered the part of her on which hung her sanity, this is the start of an unhealthy obsession.

Her hand clenched on the book. Closing it and returning it to the shelf before her mind could spiral, she checked her makeup and hair in the mirror—checked her armor—then teleported to the meeting spot.

Canto was already there, waiting for her in the shelter. He’d parked his chair within a circular arrangement of five other seats. So she’d be meeting with four others today.

“There you are,” he said, the galaxies in his eyes warming as if there were a candle within. “Look, I got you this.” He held up a small brown box.

Though she had choices, and even though the scent of him disturbed her on a primal level, even though he could look at her and know too much, she took the chair right next to him. Because it was Canto. “What is it? Something for the meeting?”

“No.” A faint tug of his lips that tore open places inside her that had long scarred over. “A gift.”

She should’ve treated it as a possible threat, but it took all her control not to grab the box with feral glee. After accepting it with conscious care, she lifted the lid. Inside sat a small artwork of a cake, such as she’d seen in the windows of human and changeling bakeries. It was coated in pink with sparkles of silver, and cascading over one side were tiny flowers made of edible material.

She couldn’t breathe.

“You want to try a piece now?” Canto was turning to look over his shoulder. “I have a plate and a knife back there.”

“No.” It came out a rasp. Coughing, she managed to find her voice again. “No. I’ll take it with me.” Where she could be alone with the chaos he’d incited inside her, the raw wave of emotion that threatened to swamp all that she was, all that she’d built herself to be.

Getting to her feet in a jerky movement, she closed the box and put it in one of the small cubby-style shelves built into the side wall of the shelter. Every movement felt jagged and hard, her body an automaton pulled by strings out of her grasp.

Unable to inhale past the shards in her lungs, she strode out of the shelter.

Before

“Well?”

“She’s responding positively to the drug regime. In fact, the results of her cognition and comprehension tests put her in the ninety-ninth percentile of her age group.”

—Report on Payal Rao (age 7) to Pranath Rao

THE SMALL GIRL sat in the room where they’d locked her up and stared at her hands. They bore no scabs or cuts, the scars from her previous marks having faded away. She was too young to think in terms of metaphors, but she felt as if the scabs and cuts on her mind were fading, too.

The fuzzy edges had become sharp, the broken thoughts whole.

Putting her hands on the soft stretchy cotton of her black tights, she looked at the wall in front of her, and she made herself think. The doctor had said she could soon have her own proper room, where no one would lock her inside.

She wanted that—but she’d seen Lalit spying on her from around the corner. He was waiting for the doctors to stop watching her; he’d hurt her again if she let him. So she had to make sure he never caught her alone—and she had to make her mind stronger and stronger, so he couldn’t make her lose her thoughts again.

Don’t give the monsters the satisfaction of seeing you give up.

“I won’t,” she whispered to the memory of the boy who’d said such nice things to her, and who’d looked at her like she was strong and brave and not wrong in the head. “I won’t, 7J. I promise.”

Chapter 15

Project Sentinel is authorized to proceed.

—Unanimous decision of the Ruling Coalition

CANTO WAS USED to waiting. A man couldn’t work in surveillance and not build a tolerance for patience. He was also good at absorbing a lot of information and processing it down to the most critical factor.

But Payal screwed with his calm, turned his patience to dust.

His eyes went to the box that held the cake.

He’d done something wrong, but he couldn’t figure out what and it was messing him up. He’d held on to her dreams for an eternity, waiting for the day when he would see her again; to be able to give her this small piece of what she’d wanted, it had made his fucking heart jump like an excited cub’s.

“Shit.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “Get it together, Canto.”

Checking on the time, he saw that several minutes remained until the others would begin to arrive. He moved out of the shelter and down to where Payal crouched by a bed of succulents, quietly rearranging the stones. Last night, after she’d left, he’d looked at what she’d done and hadn’t been able to see anything of substance.

Yet he’d known she hadn’t simply been moving stones around without reason, so he’d taken an image and had his computer analyze it. It had linked her design back to a precise mathematical model.

Patterns and grids were the baseline of Payal’s mind.

“I screwed up, didn’t I?” he asked roughly, because this mattered. She mattered.

Payal moved three stones before responding. “I can’t—” She broke off, started again. “I function in this world because I work inside a defined set of parameters, within a framework of rules that keep me from becoming erratic and without reason.”

Canto waited, unable to see where she was going.