A smile that tried so hard to hold on. But he knew. “Katya?”
“I’m so sorry, Dev.” She blinked in a rapid burst. “I can’t feel my lower legs anymore.”
His entire body jerked. “No. Not yet.”
“Not yet,” she agreed. She couldn’t let him go. “We don’t have to worry about any other embedded compulsions—I’m not strong enough to be dangerous.”
“Ming?” A single harsh word.
“As long as Ming’s unconscious, his Arrows won’t be able to find me. He did too good a job of hiding me.” She’d been his pet project, his little perversion. “But when he wakes—”
Dev kissed her, halting her words. She surrendered, more than willing to delay the inevitable. Just a few more days, she thought, a few more hours with this man she adored to the deepest core of her soul.
Dev wanted only to hold Katya every second of every minute, but the director of the Shine Foundation didn’t have that luxury. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he told her the next morning as she lay curled up on the sofa in the sunroom of his Vermont home.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.” She glanced toward the hallway. “Your friend Connor will be here.”
“I can’t leave you alone when you’re so getting so weak,” he said. “Don’t ask me to.”
“According to your grandmother, I should disagree with you on principle, but you already have bags under your eyes.” Lifting a hand, she placed her fingers on his pulse in that way she had. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
He kept that promise close to his heart as he walked out the door. Cutting the travel time short by using a jet-chopper instead of driving, he arrived in New York twenty minutes later. His first task was to check in with Cruz. He’d talked to the boy on his cell phone a couple of days back, but it was good to see that dimpled smile on-screen.
“He’s even starting to like me,” Tag said when Dev transferred over to Cruz’s current guardian.
“You okay on your own?”
“Cruz is behaving. And Ti’ll be back after the meeting today.” A pause. “Good luck, man.”
Dev knew he’d need that luck as he walked into the meeting. With Jack having withdrawn his appeal for Silence, the fractious situation within the Forgotten had calmed, but it was by no means over.
“I can’t stop any of you who want to practice some kind of conditioning,” he now said to the men and women around the meeting table. “But here’s what I think—we found a way to help William, could be, we find a way to help the others, too.”
“Lot of coulds and maybes, Dev.”
He met Tiara’s distinctive eyes. “Case-by-case situation.” He’d thought this over, would go to the floor to save his people. “And Aubry had a point—can you honestly tell me you’d be happy living a life where you didn’t spend half of it teasing Tag? Jesus Christ, his balls must be fucking purple by now.”
“Way past,” Aubry muttered. “I’m pretty sure the pitiful things are about to fall off.”
Tiara’s cheeks went red as several people around the table snickered. But she wasn’t one to back down. “Since when are you interested in other men’s balls, Aubry? Something we should know, hmm?”
Another round of snickers as heads turned toward Aubry.
“Look at us,” Dev said, rescuing his second-in-command, “we’re on opposite sides and still able to laugh about it. That doesn’t happen with the Psy.”
A few nods, troubled glances. “But Dev,” another woman, a solid member of the board, said, “this is the tip of the iceberg. What if we can’t find a way forward?”
“The Forgotten have always been known for their courage under fire. We will find a way.” He had to believe that—not only for his people, but for his Katya. “I’d like to read you all something,” he said. “This is a letter that my great-great-grandmother wrote to her son. She was an M-Psy, her husband a foreseer. It’s dated November eighth, 1984.”
He waited to ensure everyone was listening. “‘Dearest Matthew,’ ” he read, “ ‘We buried your father today. Do you know what his last words were to me? “Damn stubborn woman.” ’ ”
A ripple of restrained laughter.
He continued reading. “ ‘You better believe it. I wasn’t going to leave my husband behind when the Council’s murderers came after us, no way, no bloody how. We only had two more years together, but those two will last me a lifetime.
“ ‘So now you know—you come from the stubbornest stock this side of the equator. No one is going to stop your star from shining.’ ” Putting the page on the table, he met each gaze in turn. “Zarina buried her husband, and still she fought for her children’s right to be free. How can we do any less?”
The meeting disbanded an hour later, with the unanimous agreement that they’d make no move toward any kind of a Silence program. The Forgotten had fought too long, and too hard, to give in this easily.