“Grandmother didn’t want to do it,” Silver said, because it was important Valentin know that, “but she had no choice. I had to know my greatest weakness so I could protect myself.” She thought back to the child she’d been. “I screamed and screamed and screamed until I lost my voice.”

Valentin’s expression grew ominously dark. “Ena—”

“Hurt far more than I did, though she’d never admit it.” Silver knew, was the one who’d woken cradled in her grandmother’s lap, being rocked like a far younger child. “She had no choice. I had to understand the danger. Because, you see, unlike those with normal hearing, those of Designation Tp-A can’t block out sound by plugging the ears.”

Valentin’s face was all craggy lines now, his voice so rough it was barely human. “A for audio?”

“Yes.” She brushed back his uncontrollable hair. “The sound I ‘hear’ comes in via a psychic pathway. No one really knows how it translates into sound—audio telepaths are so rare that research on the sub-designation is nonexistent.” What was the point when it had long been considered a death sentence?

“You’re saying the noise will overwhelm you if you allow your shields to fall?”

“That’s what happens to any pure telepath who lowers her shields.” A roar of crushing noise. “The telepathic noise of the world is chaos—depending on a telepath’s strength and the number of unshielded people in the vicinity, it could mean being overwhelmed by tens or hundreds or thousands of minds. Millions of random thoughts, no rhyme or reason to it.”

Valentin kissed her again, his chest rumbling with the bear’s agitation and his voice increasingly primal. “Like being in an extremely scent-rich environment for a bear changeling,” he said. “Lock one of us in a perfumery, and we’d be in physical pain within a very short time.”

“Exactly.” Silver petted his shoulders, the muscles hard as rock with tension. “Too much input through channels that are meant to process that information—as a result it can be controlled through various methods. You could squeeze your nose closed; I could slam down telepathic shields.”

Valentin nodded.

“It’s also a matter of degrees.” Silver had had a lifetime to think of this. “If I want to use my telepathy without being overwhelmed, I can. I simply have to adjust the strength of my shields.”

“That doesn’t work with audio telepathy.” Not a question, because her alpha bear was too smart not to have worked out where she was going.

“It’s either all or nothing.” Silver pushed back his hair again for the simple pleasure of touching him. “I can block it, or I can have it open. That means when my audio channel is fully open, all I hear is noise. I could be alone in the middle of a national forest with not a single mind in the vicinity, and it wouldn’t matter.” Silver had done exactly that so she’d be certain of her hypothesis.

“In such a situation, I hear the rustle of the trees, the fall of the water, the crackle of the earth settling, magnified a thousand times over for every tree in the forest, every drop of water, every foot of earth.” Nature turned into a brutal hammer. “If I didn’t have my shields, it’d take a minute at most to crush my mind; cause of death would likely be an aneurysm or just pure shock.”

Valentin’s hand tightened in her hair. “Why are you hearing Nova and Chaos if you block the audio channel?”

No more time. No more hope.

“The shield is crumbling.” Like a brick wall with parts eaten away. “Right now, my audio telepathy is at a point where I can use it. Though it’s irregular, like a radio channel broken up by static, I can hear actual conversations, separate one voice from the other, one strand of sound from its neighbor.” It was a painful glimpse of what her ability could’ve been if it weren’t so impossible to control.

“It’s astonishing,” she said. “I’m so deeply aware of the world. The whisper of the wind through the trees, the way the leaves rustle, the scrabble of small creatures in the forest, the laughter of one of your clanmates as he runs from a chasing friend . . . Is that what it’s like to be changeling?”

“The world is music around us,” her bear told her.

Heat burned Silver’s eyes until a droplet rolled down the side of her face. Valentin leaned down and licked it up. “Don’t you cry, Silver Mercant.” It was a rumbling order. “Don’t you cry.”

“I didn’t know I could.” She kissed his jaw, his cheek, her heart breaking for this man who would move mountains for her. “It’s beautiful what you said, about the world being music around you.” Nuzzling against him, drinking in the tactile contact as if she could take it with her into the darkness, she drew in his scent.

Valentin nuzzled back; the affectionate contact made more tears roll from her eyes. He kissed them away, growling once again at her to “stop it” and yet his touch was tender, his kisses so gentle they hurt. “Why?” he asked at last.

Silver needed no further words to know what he was asking. “It’s emotion.” She clamped her palm over his mouth when he would’ve spoken.

Scowling, Valentin licked her palm.

She wanted to smile, couldn’t. “Because of the lack of research,” she told him, “I don’t know how or why, but audio telepathy has always been linked to emotion. Pre-Silence, audio telepaths were considered extinct. We simply didn’t survive childhood.”

“Not even the weaker ones,” Valentin asked after she dropped her hand, “the ones who would hear less?”

It was a good question, a smart question. “As far as I’ve been able to determine, audio telepathy only appears as a secondary ability and only in high-Gradient telepaths.” Which meant powerful telepathic channels. “The oldest surviving pre-Silence audio telepath who was identified as such was three years old. Chances are very high that others died before ever being identified as Tp-As.”

“Then you go Silent,” Valentin said, the words hard. “If it will keep you safe, keep you alive, you stop feeling and you go back to Silence.”

Silver’s throat was crushed glass. “I can’t.”

“Don’t you argue with me on this.” He gripped her jaw. “You go back.” An alpha’s command, wild storms in his eyes. “I’d rather have a frosty Silver alive and well than a feeling, loving Silver dead in a box. You shut it down. Be who you were before you decided to lower your shields.”

She loved him so.

Silver had never truly understood love before this instant when she knew it, like a bowstring snapping tight inside her soul. With that one potent glimpse, she saw the other strands of love in her heart. For Arwen. For her grandmother. Even for her parents. All shining bright. All unbreakable.

“You go back to being ice-cold, Starlight.” Valentin’s words were unyielding, but the pain in his big body, it was a dark turbulence. “You go back.”

She cupped his face in her hands, his bristly jaw a familiar sensation against her palms. “I’m not being stubborn, Mishka.” She used the family nickname as a gentle tease, but there was no joy in her. “I’ve realized over the past hour that I can’t.” The knowledge seeping into her in a slow wave until it was unavoidable.