“Pavel Mayakovskevich Stepyrev,” she said, eyes flinty, “are you accusing your parents of mistreatment?”

“Aw, Mama, no.” Pavel wrapped his arms around his mother. “I was just—”

“Being a bear,” Silver inserted.

The other woman’s lips twitched. “You want the truth? My mate and I had to carry this menace and his twin strapped to our chests for weeks. They’d howl like banshees anytime we dared put them down.”

Pavel, still holding her, kissed his mother on the cheek. “I love you as much today as I did then, Mama.”

His mother gave an exasperated shake of her head. “My charming troublemaker.” Pulling him down by the ears, she kissed him on both cheeks. “Go find Yasha and tell him I expect you both at the family quarters for dinner tomorrow.”

Nodding a friendly good-bye at Silver, the older woman continued on her way. Pavel rubbed the back of his neck, looking more like a sheepish toddler than a grown dominant. “Your parents still treat you like you’re five?”

“No.” Silver didn’t have that type of relationship with her mother and father. “My grandmother, on the other hand, occasionally forgets I can look after myself.” As now, with the investigation into who had tried to kill her.

“What about your brother?”

“You hurt him and I’ll turn your brain to soup without blinking.”

Rocking back on his heels, Pavel scowled. “I’m the one who needs protecting—he totally fooled me with his sweet pretty-faced exterior.”

“You seem to have survived.”

“I’m a bear. I can handle claws made of ice.” With that, Pavel jerked his head toward where a group of people were bringing out boxes. “Want to help with the party setup?”

Silver nodded, though she felt as if she’d lost a layer of protection out there with Moira, a layer of shielding she hadn’t even been aware existed.

She was put to work untangling the strings of lights the clan intended to put up as decorations. She’d just finished when Valentin walked back into the Cavern. He was stopped by several of his clanmates, all clamoring for information about the newest member of the clan.

Grinning, he put two fingers to his mouth, let out that piercing whistle. “The cub is fine,” he said in the ensuing hush. “Healthy and cuddled up to his mother. He’s going to need a little extra care for a while, so Nova will be less available for nonemergency matters. Visitors will be permitted from tomorrow in small groups. Lizabeta will put up a list outside the infirmary where you can sign up.”

“What’s his name?” Pieter asked in a quiet voice that nonetheless carried.

“That’s up to Moira and Leo to announce,” Valentin said, then clapped his hands. “Back to work now. And I don’t mean party prep if you’re assigned to other duties.”

Silver was still looking in Valentin’s direction when the knot of people around him dispersed, so she saw the small dark-haired woman who went to him. Unlike everyone else, her face wasn’t suffused with joy. This emotion was bleaker. Going into Valentin’s arms, she just held on tight as he held her in return, his own joy fading away like water rolling off a slope to leave only craggy rock.

Silver looked away from the silent tableau to give Valentin and the dark-haired woman some privacy. Others were doing the same—and she saw pain mirrored on more than one face. Even Pavel, the always laughing joker, had a brutal tension to his jawline as he worked with single-minded focus.

And Silver still didn’t have the right to know what would take the laughter out of a clan of bears who never seemed to stop smiling.

That irrefutable fact settled in her gut like a rock.

In an effort to distract herself, she decided to get an update on the investigation into her poisoning. Arwen.

Her brother took a few minutes to reply. I was in a meeting with three of our cousins, he told her. All were present when the poison was planted.

Do you believe it was one of them?

All three are ambitious, particularly Hunter.

He’s very loyal to the family.

He was against Kaleb’s inclusion.

Yes. Hunter Mercant had argued that they could trust only blood, that Kaleb Krychek was too ruthless a predator to allow into their midst. He wasn’t the only one who didn’t agree with that decision. Even you remain uncertain of Kaleb.

Yet I backed you when you made the call—I trust you to know him far better than any of us. Hunter didn’t back you. He voted against Krychek.

That doesn’t equal disloyalty. Hunter had always had a strong personality. Our aunt Ada was also against the measure, and none of us would ever question her loyalty to the clan or to Grandmother. Because to harm Silver was to harm the line of succession Ena Mercant had personally put in place.

Agreed. But we have to ask these questions, Silver. No matter how much it may hurt.

Arwen only ever betrayed his emotional nature with those he knew would never use that nature against him. Even now, with Silence having fallen and the empaths a power in the PsyNet, he kept his own counsel much of the time.

Today, Silver found herself asking something she hadn’t to this point. Have you made friends with other Es, Arwen? People who understand how your mind works and who can help you decompress? She was a vault with Arwen’s secrets, would protect him to the death, but she’d always been tied to Silence.

Her brother didn’t answer for a long time.

Chapter 27

I’M SLOWLY BEGINNING to do so, he said at last. I’ve formed a growing friendship with an empath named Jaya who works out of the Maldives, as well as a Russian empath named Ruslan. But they both know me only as Arwen, an E of no particular lineage.

I understand. Sometimes it was difficult to gauge if a person wanted a Mercant for the Mercant’s skills or personality, or if it was about gaining access to the Mercant network. The latter was how it had begun with her and Kaleb, but their relationship had undergone a fundamental change years ago.

I’ll tell them the truth, Arwen said. But not yet, not until our friendship is secure, and the fact I’m a Mercant won’t change it either way.

The good thing is that Jaya is completely apolitical—she probably won’t have any reaction to my last name except to ask if my family treats me well. A sense of a smile in Arwen’s voice, something he rarely betrayed on the psychic plane. Her family is like ours, very close-knit.

According to Jaya, they’re also half-crazy, but in a good way. Arwen sounded confused about the latter—he clearly needed further exposure to StoneWater bears. Her mate is an Arrow who I’ve been avoiding because he’d undoubtedly dig up my family connections. He is very protective of her.

Arrows and empaths, it was becoming a familiar pairing, the most dangerous predators in the Net protecting the most vulnerable Psy of all. Or perhaps, Silver suddenly thought, it was the other way around: Es using their ability to love to pull the Arrows out of the blood-drenched shadows in which they’d lived for so long.

What about Ruslan? she asked, making a mental note to check up on both Es to be sure they were no threat to Arwen. Is he apolitical, too?

Ruslan cares mostly for very old things. He’s an archaeologist. I can see him asking for access to our archives to track down an old artefact, but he won’t reach for power through me.

Good.

“Who’re you talking to?” Valentin’s deep rumble of a voice, his hand touching her nape in a blatantly public caress before he took a heavy rope of lights and passed it up to a bear on a tall ladder.