Page 100 of Storm Echo

“Is it that obvious?” Soleil said with a look up at Ivan that held the same primal possessiveness Ena had seen when Valentin looked at Silver.

Healer she might be, but she was also a predatory changeling with her mate.

When she turned back to Ena, her eyes were no longer human. “Ivan is beyond lucky to have you in his life, Grandmother. Thank you for loving him as a boy so he had the heart to love me as a man.”

Only a healer would say such a thing to Ena Mercant, a ruthless matriarch whose Silence was meant to be flawless. Truly. How did her grandchildren keep doing this to her?

“Come,” she said, “let us walk and get to know one another.”

Ivan stayed quiet as the two of them spoke, and the more Ena learned of Soleil, the more she began to realize that this woman had a spine of steel. Of course she did; no weak-willed creature would’ve broken through Ivan’s refusal to admit that he was worth more than a life in the shadows.

And it was those shadows about which Ivan told her when they began to talk of his ability. He’d already mentioned to her that his shields were fragmenting, but she hadn’t realized the situation was this bad. “Excuse me?” she said, her tone frigid, when he told her his plans for the psychic cage.

“Don’t worry, Grandmother,” Soleil muttered, her arms folded and feline eyes narrowed. “I already told him that’s not an option.”

If Ena had not already approved of Soleil, she’d have passed the mark at that instant. The thin woman across from her was not playing when it came to Ivan’s safety. “Show me the shields,” Ena said.

They spent the next twenty minutes going over every technical detail. The problem was that Ivan appeared to have thought of all possible options, tested them, and confirmed that they wouldn’t work.

Ena’s heart thudded in her mouth, her mind filled with the memory of his small and cold hand in hers as she walked him out of the sterile room where he’d been taken after his mother’s death. That too-quiet, damaged boy had become a man of courage and loyalty who’d found happiness at long last.

Ena refused to let him down now.

But even Ena Mercant, she realized in the darkest part of night, many hours after she’d left Ivan and Soleil in the forest, couldn’t magic an answer where none existed. No one in the world had a brain like Ivan’s, and the problem wasn’t in the structure of his shields or their complexity. It was in the fact that his ability was morphing at a rate far beyond the capacity ofanyshield to contain.

It was as if the power he’d named the spider had beendesignedto penetrate shields—Ivan’s and everyone else’s. But such a neural design made no sense in the Psy world. It might have if Ivan could control it from his end, the power a dark one but a power nonetheless. But Ivan had never been able to control it … so when it broke free, it would enmesh him as much as any one of his targets.

The sea crashed below her home, smashing at the rocks, while Ena ran headlong into the realization that this time, she might not be able to solve the problem, might not be able to save a member of her family.

Chapter 47

There’s a minute possibility that the DNA trace is failing because the DNA involved is classified. I would put the chances of this at under 0.1%—because we’d be talking about such highly classified DNA files that it’s getting into the Council superstructure.

Those individuals keep a steely grip on their familial connections. No one vanishes unless the family wants them to vanish—and in those cases, the vanishing is final. I’m not giving up, but even we don’t have the connections to get to a small number of those classified files, so let us hope that 0.1% chance is so unlikely as to be negligible.

—Rufus Mercant (2071)

IVAN WOKE WITH the birds, while the world outside was yet dark. Soleil was curled into him, her hand on his heart and her body warm with life. But inside him spread a growing chill.

A secret part of him had hoped his grandmother would have an answer he hadn’t considered, but he’d seen the truth in her gaze before she left yesterday. He knew she’d have stayed up through the night, would’ve tapped all her contacts in the hunt for a solution, but even his grandmother couldn’t fix the unfixable.

A stirring beside him, Soleil yawning and rubbing her face against his chest. “It’s early.” It was a very feline complaint, the cat that lived inside his mind grumpy with it.

He massaged the back of her neck, her hair silky and thick under his fingers. “It’s time, my Lei.” His psychic reservoir had reached full charge. “I need to return to the ChaosNet.”

Soleil went motionless for a long moment before she rose up onto her elbow to look down at him. “Eat first,” she murmured, her eyes dark with the knowledge of what he risked today. “Go in as strong as possible.”

He nodded, tugged her down for a kiss. They’d loved again with their bodies in the night, and he hoped that there would come another dawn where he could lie with her in their home and kiss and caress and pet her. But today, they both rose after that kiss, to ready him for the task to come.

They ate breakfast on the verandah, by the light that poured out from their living room. Because while the birds were awake, the sun was far from rising. Afterward, Soleil laid her head on his shoulder, her hand locked in his, and said, “Remember, I’ll be here to pull you out at any stage. Just call me through the mating bond. I’ll hear now that our bond is complete, I’m certain of it.”

Ivan had thought to go inside their aerie, lie on their bed, but now made a different choice. “I’ll go in from here, surrounded by the trees and the birds.” He turned to look at her. “You like it here.”

She shifted to meet his gaze, her own fierce and wild. “I love you, Ivan Mercant. You’ll kick those Scarabs’ butts.” A hard kiss. “I’ll get you a cushion for your back, and if I feel anything going wrong, I’m going to haul you out.”

“I know.” He felt her love for him, her fear for him, in every cell of his being. She didn’t seem the least afraid for herself, even though whatever happened, it would impact them both. “Te amo, ma chérie, today and tomorrow and always.”

She swallowed hard at his use of the lovingly mixed-up language of her childhood. “Come back, Ivan. But if you can’t, I’ll walk with you wherever you go.”

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