It wasn’t the same, having Aden’s arms around her while her mind was numb with aloneness, but the incipient rage took a wary look and withdrew from the surface of her thoughts. Aden wasn’t its target, and the contact, the feel of his muscled body pressing against hers, his strong arms around her, was a living barrier to the nothingness that threatened to suffocate her.
And it was Aden, the first person who had ever treated her as a sentient being worth knowing. He’d asked her opinion on things at a time when others had seen her as a vicious monster to be broken to the bit. He’d told Zaira her ideas had value. Later, he’d also ordered her not to lose herself in the hard black box that was Arrow training.
You, Zaira, are priceless as an individual. Don’t ever permit them to erase you.
In Venice, she had an Arrow who’d imprinted on her as a result of a catastrophic drug error—Alejandro followed her orders without question, would die for her in a heartbeat. While Zaira would always question Aden if she didn’t agree with him, she sometimes thought she’d imprinted on him in a similar way: for her to ever turn against him, Aden would have to betray her in ways of which he was simply incapable.
Where she had a twisted conscience at best, he was that shining knight human and changeling children read stories about. The good man who would fight on the side of right and who would never abandon those to whom he’d pledged his loyalty. She knew he could be ruthless, had witnessed it, but Aden’s ruthlessness fed into his overwhelming protective instincts, never into the selfish pursuit of power or glory.
Stepping in the path of danger to protect him had never been up for discussion for Zaira. It was an absolute fact: as long as she lived, she would do everything in her power to keep Aden safe. Coldly planned murder, torture, she’d do whatever was necessary in an eyeblink. He might not agree with her actions, but she was quite willing to disobey him should his life be on the line.
Every white knight needed a deadly black sword at his back.
Relaxing against him on that thought, she allowed the heat of his body to seep into hers. It wasn’t protocol, but Silence had fallen, so they broke no laws. There was also no risk to the unforgiving and constant discipline that kept her sane and nonviolent; this was an aberrant circumstance that would cease to exist as soon as their brains recovered from the trauma of the implants.
Zaira couldn’t afford to believe anything else, the idea of endless aloneness a horror that made the rage inside her threaten to boil over into unthinking insanity. “Are you in distress, too?” she asked Aden while maintaining a white-knuckled grip on the sleeping death that lived within her.
“How do the other races deal with this silence in their minds?” he said in response.
“Maybe that’s why they make so much physical contact.” She’d never before come close to understanding the tactile nature of the humans and changelings. Being physically close to Aden wasn’t like being in a psychic network. It was more immediate and oddly more intense despite the fact that there were only two of them in this physical network.
Aden moved his hand to the back of her head, but the strength and warmth of his palm in such a vulnerable location didn’t rouse her instinct to fight. Always, she’d thought that if she was trapped again in any way, she’d fight. However, she’d never considered the depth of her trust in Aden, never understood that being held wasn’t always a prison. “I heard the healer. Your leg was injured.”
“I’ve survived worse.”
“You’re supposed to keep your partner apprised of your situation.”
“Not if the partner will then argue against the best course of action.”
Zaira opened her mouth, closed it a heartbeat later. His decision had saved both their lives—she would’ve never made it out without his help, and he’d be dead from the implant had he gone out on his own. Sliding her arms around him to strengthen their two-person network, she listened to his heartbeat strong and steady under her ear . . . and thought that perhaps the other races understood a truth she’d only just realized: that even a tiny physical network connected by trust held a potent, raw power.
Chapter 14
“I NEED TO shower,” she said a long time later, the howl down to a low whisper she could almost ignore and the rage curled up in a drowsy sleep deep inside her psyche.
Releasing her, Aden watched her walk toward the only internal door in the aerie.
Behind it, the facilities were neatly laid out, small packages of soap and shampoo on the counter that held the sink. One package was labeled as being for females, the other for males. Zaira didn’t know why men and women would need different cleansing supplies, but she used the female set because she liked the pale blue shade of it.
Liking anything had been prohibited under Silence, but Zaira had never been able to break her pre-Arrow habit of coveting pretty things. As a child, she’d once collected shiny components from organizers discarded in the family’s recycler; she’d made herself a toy that sparkled in the thin beam of sunlight that seeped through the narrow window high up in her cage.
Her parents had taken it mere days later, taken the only pretty, shiny thing she had.
A month after she met Aden, he’d noticed her staring at a faceted black button he’d taken from his pocket. Exending his hand, he’d given it to her. “You don’t have to hide it,” he’d said when she curled her fingers over it. “I’ll tell the trainers I gave it to you to anchor you to the squad.”
Holding it so tight the edges cut into her palm, she’d said, “Why are you giving it to me?”