“Ha ha. You know Piero’s wife would brain me with her hockey stick if I dared make eyes at him.” Stepping forward, she hugged Bo.

He squeezed her back. They weren’t talking about the degrading chip in his brain, the one that was likely to lead to his death in a matter of weeks, but that bleak reality was there every time he looked into his sister’s face. As was his own knowledge that Lily’s death would follow his if they didn’t find a solution. She’d been implanted after him but was now well outside the safe removal period.

Their parents didn’t know—that was something the two of them had to decide soon. Whether to warn them . . . or to let them enjoy this time with Bo and Lily without that dark shadow hanging over every moment.

“Have you eaten?” He flicked her hair back from her face after they broke the embrace. “Your favorite bakers have just put out a fresh batch of pastries.” The place was a few minutes’ walk from the other side of the bridge, on their way to the meeting with Krychek.

“Are you Psy now?” She poked at his abdomen. “How can you have seen that on the walk from the office?”

“Social media,” he said with a straight face. “They post a picture every time a fresh batch comes out of the oven.”

Her lips twitched. “Who told you?”

“Niall.” He grinned. “He passed me as I was walking here. He was stuffing his face with a hot-from-the-oven croissant at the time.”

“Done. Let’s go.” Turning on her heel, she began to stride away, her black coat sleek and her feet clad in little red boots. “Hurry up, slowpoke!” She threw him a laughing look over her shoulder . . . and that was when he saw it.

The red dot centered on her forehead.

Ice crashed through his system, but Bo didn’t freeze. He ran. “Get down!” The words were barely out of his mouth when he slammed into his sister, intending to take her to the ground.

They didn’t make it.

The bullet hit his back, smashing through his body in a blast of searing pain that seemed everywhere at once; the momentum crashed them through the old bridge wall and into the canal below. He took Lily with him, her body held tight in his arms. She’d be safer in the water, where she could use the light and shadows to disorient the shooter.

The water closed over their heads, bubbles everywhere.

He kicked up, released her. He didn’t think the bullet had gone through his flesh to hers, but he searched for damage nonetheless. “You hit?” he asked, finding it a little hard to breathe.

Shaking her head, Lily gasped for air. “How did you know?”

“I saw—” Bo began when his heart gave a jerking thud and the world blurred.

Lily screamed at the same moment. “Bo!” He felt his body sliding down into the water, felt Lily clutch at him to keep him afloat. Other hands joined hers soon after, hauling him up, but he couldn’t speak, his vision nearly all black.

“Bo! Hold on! Help is coming!” Desperate hands searching for the cause of the pain shredding his flesh.

In the back of his mind, a mind that had a deep knowledge of weapons, Bo knew the bullet had been designed to fragment inside the body, causing maximum damage. “Lily.” It was nearly soundless but she heard.

“I’m here, Bo.” Her voice shook. “Just hold on.”

“My brain,” he managed to say. “Use it.”

His vision collapsed. He felt his heart give one more beat.

Then . . . nothing.

Chapter 41

Hope, you audacious beast, you dancing moonbeam, you loyal canine, I miss you.

—Adina Mercant, poet (b.1832, d.1901)

A WEEK AFTER her release from the hospital—a full month following the operation—Silver knew intellectually that she’d lost a part of herself both she and others had valued, but she didn’t experience any sense of loss. She felt nothing even when she went through memories tagged as powerful by her previous self, the concept of emotions just that: a concept. Foreign, difficult to grasp.

Her mind was cool clarity, devoid of anything extraneous. At least when she was awake. It was only when she was asleep that things went awry.

She dreamed.

She’d always dreamed, even in Silence. Arwen’s impact. The truly Silent didn’t dream. Or that was what the populace had always been told. If that were true, Silver shouldn’t be dreaming. It wasn’t as if she had any intention of willing the biofusion filaments to create a new, safe pathway to her emotional core. Silver saw no reason to feel when she was so much more efficient in her current state.

Her decisions during her emotional period were difficult for her to comprehend.

Why, for example, had she found the bear alpha so intriguing? Genetically, he wasn’t a male she should consider for reproductive purposes—the children were unlikely to be high-Gradient Psy . . . though they would also have the ability to shift. Having a Psy-changeling child would be to her advantage as someone who worked with the other races, but it wasn’t a big enough advantage for her to attach herself to a bear clan for life.

Look at how laissez-faire the bears were in how they lived life. It simply did not mesh with her measured, calculated approach. She found it impossible to understand why she’d been happy living in an enormous cave system. Happiness itself, of course, was a concept she no longer understood. She had the words for it, but not the internal comprehension she’d once had. It was a lack she was willing to live with given the myriad advantages.

Her logic was sound.

Yet, night after night, she dreamed of Alpha Nikolaev—and in those dreams, she sensed his hair-roughened skin sliding against hers, drew his earthy scent into her lungs, woke feeling as if she’d been entwined with a big, warm male body. Her sleep was deep and calm. It was only when she woke that confusion caught her in its grip.

“It’s apt to be an echo of emotion,” her grandmother had told her when Silver mentioned her dreams two days earlier. “The brain often fights losing pieces of itself.”

It made perfect sense. Ena’s next statement, however, hadn’t been as rational. “Are you certain you don’t wish to attempt to reactivate your emotional center?”

“Of course I’m certain. I’m far more efficient this way.”

“Efficiency isn’t everything, Silver. I learned that when Arwen was born.”

Silver was still attempting to process her grandmother’s statement as she dressed to return to work. She’d overseen her team remotely to this point, but had decided it was time to go into the office. It was too early according to Dr. Bashir, who continued to oversee her healing, but Silver felt capable—though she would maintain a close eye on her stress levels to ensure she didn’t sabotage her return to health.

It was also why she was still home at nine forty-five.

A slightly less intensive schedule wouldn’t be problematic, since it had become clear to her that she could achieve even more now than she had prior to the operation. She hadn’t realized how much energy caging her Tp-A abilities sucked up until the act was no longer necessary.

Ready, she walked into the kitchen area of her apartment to mix up a nutrient drink. The kitchen was large, full of sunlight, the build optimized for the changelings who were the main tenants of this complex. The latter was how Valentin must’ve got in to slip a card under her apartment door two days earlier.

That card sat on her small dining table.