"The rest, Ashaya, tell me the rest."
It was a relief to talk about Amara without having to obfuscate the truth. "We have an unbreakable twin bond - it's why she can always find me unless I'm shielding to the best of my ability." She kept her gaze on the distinctive red girders of the bridge rising up ahead, not wanting to face Dorian's anger.
Then his hand closed over the back of her neck and her stomach unclenched. She'd become strangely addicted to his brand of touch. Returning her gaze to him, she found his eyes heavy-lidded as he focused on tracing the line of her collarbone. Somehow, that made it easier to carry on. "The bond's been there since birth and it's not something anyone else has ever been able to detect. I don't know how much you know about psychic networks..."
"Some." He glanced up and the stroke of his eyes was a caress she could almost feel.
She barely stopped herself from reaching out to outline the perfection of his lips. "From what I've been able to discover, in the past, most emotional connections were visible in the PsyNet. Today, those links have been obliterated." No more bonds of love. Or even of hate. Just emptiness. "Each mind is now a separate entity."
"Yeah? Then how the hell does Keenan know you love him?"
"He doesn't." And that destroyed her. In protecting his life, she'd hurt his child's heart so much.
"Hell he doesn't." Dorian snorted. "That's why he pulled that stunt - he knew his mom would drop everything and run to him."
Ashaya felt something in the region of her chest bleed at that statement and the shock of it was so powerful, she almost surrendered everything. "There is a link with Keenan - but it's not visible, either." Her voice broke. "I think my attempt at maintaining Silence is what makes it invisible - I've stifled my own son's efforts to reach me."
"Stop." He squeezed her nape in a gesture that was as dominant as it was... tender.
It awakened even more of those conflicting emotions inside of her, the very things she needed to keep contained. Because when Amara started playing... "My twin will never kill me or put me in lethal danger, however harsh the game. In her own way, I think she loves me - I'm her only playmate, her only friend. But she might kill Keenan."
"Why? He's a child, more importantly, her sister's child."
Her heart rippled again and this time it was a different emotion, a wild, raw thing armed with claws and teeth. "Amara," she said, trying to ride the violent power of this new feeling, "doesn't see it that way. She thinks of me as belonging to her and of Keenan as an interloper." And that was a bizarre twist in an already twisted tale.
"Are you saying she's the real danger?"
"I'm saying that even if I somehow manage to hold off the Council, Amara will never stop hunting me. It doesn't matter where I go, she'll find me and she'll start to play her games, start to try and push me to the edge of sanity." She took a deep breath. "The most horrible thing is, when I feel, she becomes worse. It's as if my emotions feed her madness. I'm afraid she'll push me too far one day, make me hurt Keenan."
Dorian tilted her face toward him when she would've looked away. "What did she do to you, Shaya?"
"You keep dropping the A off my name."
"Do I?"
Another game. But this one held no intent to harm. "Dorian, your touch unbalances me, and that doesn't just make Amara worse, it strengthens our twin bond. If she gets inside me, she can see what I see, hear what I hear. I don't want her in this car with us." I don't want to share you.
Dorian couldn't ignore her plea - even if it provoked the leopard to vicious frustration. Shifting back to his side of the car, he took the chance to check they were on track to Tammy's house. "So, to chain Amara, you'll go through life half-alive?"
"If it will keep Keenan safe, then yes." A calm answer but her lips trembled before she pressed them into a firm line.
"She's a danger to a son you love more than life, and yet you protect her." Dorian couldn't understand that.
Then Ashaya said, "She's my baby sister, born a minute after me. I've been looking after her my whole life."
His heart just about broke. Because he knew about baby sisters. He knew about the kind of love that bond engendered, how it was set in stone, how the thought of harming that precious life was anathema. You forgave little sisters for things you wouldn't even consider forgiving others. But... "If she came after Keenan," he asked, "what would you do?"
"You know." A shattered whisper. "I would kill her. And it would destroy me."
That's the real reason why she ran, he thought, not because she was scared of Amara, but because she was afraid her sister would back her into a corner from where the only escape would be over her sibling's dead body. One hell of a mess. "How, Shaya?" he found himself asking. "How is that you're you and she's - "
" - a monster?" Ashaya completed. "I don't know. Don't humans believe in a thing called the soul? Maybe that element comes hardwired. Maybe we were just born with different kinds of souls."
Hearing the shredded heart she was trying so desperately to hide, Dorian wished he could reassure her that it wouldn't come down to sister against sister. But he'd lost his illusions a long time ago. Sometimes evil did win. Sometimes, baby sisters did die.
The image of Kylie's brutalized body was so fresh in his mind that when the dying woman staggered onto the road in front of him, he thought he was seeing a ghost. "Jesus!" He and Ashaya were both slammed forward against their restraints then hauled back as the car's sensors picked up the obstruction and brought the vehicle to a shuddering halt.