Suriana had spoken in a rapid burst, as if she’d had to psych herself up to get out the words. She collapsed in the aftermath, her shoulders hunching inward.

Someone hurt her. Cold, crisp Payal in his mind.

His parched cells drank in the psychic touch. Yes. I haven’t figured out who yet, but I will.

Payal gave him the slightest nod. Because she’d committed, and when Payal committed, she gave it her all. Suriana was one of hers now.

“I always felt something.” Ager’s voice was a bit croaky but not tired—as if this gathering had given them a new lease on life. “I don’t know if it was because I was raised around people who were alive prior to Silence, but I’ve felt tendrils of emotion in the PsyNet all my life.”

“I’m the same,” Bjorn admitted. “It wasn’t difficult to throw off the shackles of Silence. They never fit well, though I’m of the generation that had the dissonance embedded in our minds—for you young ones, dissonance is a pain loop designed to punish Psy for feeling emotion.”

He winced, as if being hit by that programming for daring to speak of it. “But it’s been fading in strength for a long time under the weight of what I do as an anchor. I don’t think the Councils bothered to program dissonance into As after us. Our shields are impregnable—even were we to cry and laugh, nothing would leak into the Net.”

Arran had gone motionless as Bjorn spoke, a whiteness to his jawline. Canto was certain Arran had been so programmed. He hadn’t been pulled out of martial training until he was eleven and someone finally realized he was an A.

For an initialized anchor to be punished for emotion when droplets of emotion had leaked into and run through the pathways of the Net even during Silence? They were fucking lucky Arran and Bjorn were sane.

He made it a priority to find out how to disable that programming. Because these people were his now, too. Payal and he, they had this in common: they were possessive about those they claimed.

He wanted to throw back his head and yell his fury up at the sky. Because the first person he’d ever claimed was her. And she was the one person he could never have. Not if he was to keep his promise. Not if he was to be the knight on whom she could depend to defend her against all threats—including the one in her mind.

Chapter 18

Cor meum familia est.

My heart is family.

—Motto of the Mercant family

THOUGH PAYAL HADN’T looked at Canto, didn’t need his answer when it came to emotion, he knew the others did. “I didn’t see the point in pretending to be Silent when I so obviously wasn’t.”

Ager gave him a curious look. “No one has ever questioned Ena Mercant’s Silence.”

Canto could’ve blocked the reference to his family, but if he wanted commitment, he had to commit in turn.

“You can’t expect to receive if you don’t give,” Arwen had said once. “No one likes feeling exposed.”

Coming from an E who wore his heart on his sleeve where family was concerned, it had made an impact.

“My grandmother is many things.” Canto’s respect for Ena was one of the foundations of his life. “First and foremost, she is a warrior for our family. No Mercant will ever be betrayed to outsiders—not even the ones who don’t fit the mold of so-called perfection.”

He made eye contact with everyone but Payal—because shit, he needed time to handle that. “That’s who I am and where I come from and what I want for us as a group.”

“Big goals,” Arran muttered.

Suriana stirred. “It would be nice, to have a group I could trust without question.”

“After so long, I am content alone,” Bjorn said, exchanging a quiet nod with Ager, “but a union of minds in sync … Yes, I see how it could make things better for the future of all As.”

“You gonna pretend you’re Silent?” Arran challenged Payal.

“I understand and feel emotion.” Cool as ice. “But I’ve trained myself to keep it at a distance. I function far better that way.”

Canto wanted to argue with her about her stance, wanted to ask if she’d ever considered anything other than a total shutdown of her emotions, not out of arrogance or his own need, but because his childhood had shown him that the environment in which a person grew could alter everything about how they thought, what they believed.

He would not be this Canto had he come to adulthood in the household of his father.

That Payal’s mental wiring was distinctive, he didn’t doubt. But she’d also had to learn to wall off her emotions in order to survive her childhood. There were suggestions—hidden, underground—that Pranath Rao had either killed or arranged for the death of his firstborn. Add in her psychopathic surviving brother, and that wasn’t a home in which a small, sensitive little girl could endure without hardening herself.

“Fascinating.” Ager flexed then closed their hand back around the head of their cane. “You realize you are what the architects of Silence actually envisioned? A being born with emotion who can nonetheless keep that emotion from overwhelming her.”

“No,” Payal said with her customary directness. “If you go back and read up on the original aims of Silence, it best matches a psychopathic personality profile.”

A bark of laughter from Arran that made Suriana jump and Bjorn jerk upright. But the other anchor wasn’t looking at either of them. He was grinning at Payal. “I definitely want her representing us,” he said to Canto, his body more relaxed than Canto had ever seen it. “Can you imagine her using that take-no-shit voice against Krychek?”

“It’s not about ‘against,’” Payal said before Canto could reply. “The members of the Ruling Coalition aren’t our enemies. They are allies.”

“Agreed,” Canto said. “Their only mistake was in not bringing anchors to the table—but that was a decision put into play generations ago, well before any of us were born—and Designation A played a major role in our invisibility.” Canto wasn’t about to allow his designation to skate on past mistakes.

“So,” he said, “do we have a consensus? That we’re now a team that represents anchors, with Payal as our public voice?” Their general forged in a burn of ice and survival.