Sophia was part of a tight fraternity of current and former Js, but this, too, was an element of her identity. To be welcomed in … It meant more than she’d realized. “Thank you.”

“Do you want to take the lead on the research?” Canto’s haunting eyes held her own. “I’ll put you in touch with Ager, who is one of our oldest members, and I’ll forward you what we know about the volcanic eruption that killed twenty anchors, but the historical can’t be our priority.”

“I agree.” The Net was falling apart too quickly. “You have to focus on the now. I’ll take care of the historical hunt.”

“We also need to start working on a plan to reintegrate Designation A into society,” Payal said. “It’s going to be a difficult task—many of us are near agoraphobic after a lifetime of being told we needed to be sheltered.”

“Ask the Es for an assist?” Sophia suggested.

“A good idea, but their workload is already significant.” Payal looked off into the distance, and Sophia could almost see her mind working. “If it’s to last, it has to come from us,” she said finally. “From within.”

“What do you think the reaction will be? How many As will make the attempt?”

To her surprise, Payal said, “All of them.”

Canto’s face was grim. “An anchor’s job is to protect the Net. If that means leaving the walls of safety, so be it.” He glanced at Payal.

Who picked up the thread at once … because these two were bonded. It was a hum in the air between them, a quiet knowledge the NetMind whispered into Sophia’s ear.

“The correct question,” Payal said, “is how many will succeed and how many will fail.” No expression on her face, but Sophia knew her well enough by now to know that meant little. “Some of us have no knowledge of how to be free—those As are akin to caged animals, knowing only their enclosures.”

Sophia flexed her hand, staring down at the black of her glove. She’d never been isolated like an anchor, but she’d been in a cage nonetheless. “If there’s hope,” she said, raising her head to meet Payal’s eyes, “they’ll try and try again. As long as there is light in the darkness, a reason to keep fighting.”

For her, that hope had come in the form of Max. Her lover. Her husband. Her mate.

But love wasn’t a jealous thing, and from its roots had grown so many other tendrils of affection and love and joy. Sophia wanted that for Canto and Payal and every other anchor in the world. “Give them that hope. Let your bond blaze like a candle in the dark.”

Chapter 40

To forget our history is to forget ourselves.

—From The Dying Light by Harissa Mercant (1947)

CANTO AND PAYAL took Sophia’s advice to heart, pushing away the weeds around their bond so it burned a glowing azure that was a beacon. There was an infinite amount of work to do, so many bricks to lay to build a strong new foundation for Designation A, but every spare moment they had, they spent together. Neither one of them said it aloud, but the ticking clock in Payal’s brain accompanied them every second of every day.

Not many more days and she’d have to return home to ensure that her anchor point stayed stable—and to get a shot of the medication that was a leash on her life. The thirteenth day after she’d arrived in Moscow, and she’d used up the second dose Pranath Rao had couriered over.

One—maybe two—more days till she went critical.

Canto had used her access passwords to break into the Rao systems, had even managed to work his way into her father’s private files, but Pranath Rao was a smart man. There was nothing useful in the available files.

“He’ll have it in his head,” Payal murmured, pressing a kiss to Canto’s shoulder as they lay face-to-face in bed, both of them bare to the skin.

Intimate skin privileges were extraordinary, but this kind of affectionate contact, it was better even than that. Especially now that Payal sometimes just went to him and said, “I need you.”

He’d open his arms, and she’d curl into his lap, and he’d hold her until she could breathe past the panic building in her brain. Because that panic hadn’t magically disappeared after her continuing work with Jaya. It had too long been a part of her to be so easily vanquished.

She still had agitated episodes at times, but increasingly, she could now calm herself down rather than going into a chaotic spiral. Jaya had taught—was still teaching—her tools to help herself. It was the best thing the empath could’ve done; Payal understood and valued such strategic mental work. Her recalibrated medications were also helping her to maintain a more even keel in day-to-day life.

The hardest thing she’d had to learn was that it was all right to be a little different.

“Quirky isn’t a bad thing, Payal,” Jaya had said as the two of them walked through a wooded area cool and green. “Some of the most admired people in human and changeling societies are the ones who walk to the beat of their own drummer.”

Then there was Canto. He kept telling her he adored her exactly as she was—reminding her that she’d been his favorite even when she’d been totally feral. The latter held weight because it was true. She could still remember the pieces of dried apple thrust into her hand, the way he’d found methods to give her hints to questions asked by the teacher, how he’d held her hand that final day.

How he’d remembered her.

Payal didn’t know when she’d be willing to allow her true self out in public, but she let Canto see her more and more. So when she felt the urge to lean over and kiss his nose, then nuzzle at his throat, she did it. He chuckled and cuddled her tight and almost suffocatingly close, exactly as she liked. “Are you sure you’re not a small changeling bear? A sun bear, maybe?”

She pretended to claw him, the game one she would’ve never played with anyone else, lest they see it as a sign of mental instability. But with Canto, she was free. She didn’t have to pretend.

Growling in his throat, he made as if to bite at her. The two of them were rolling around the bed, skin sliding on skin and breaths mingling, when Nikita Duncan’s cool voice entered her mind.

I have unlocked and reinitialized the archive.

PAYAL and Canto had together decided it’d be best for her to be in the tech room when she went into the archive, in case she needed to meet with the others on visual comms.