Last Guard (Psy-Changeling Trinity #5) by Nalini Singh

She didn’t stare at his chair when she reached him; no doubt she’d seen and processed the sight when she first teleported in. But she would comment. Most Psy did. It was rare for them to see one of their kind using a device that assisted with motion. The Psy as a race had some very ugly decisions in their past; those decisions included a goal of perfection that had been a de facto program of eugenics.

Now they were all paying the price for those choices.

Right then, Payal did begin to stare. Hard.

Eyes narrowing, he went to snarl at her to take a photo if she was that interested.

Then she said, “7J.”

And his entire world imploded.





Chapter 5



Tests confirm that the child’s unusual ocular structure has no effect on his vision.

—Medical report on Canto Fernandez, age 12 months (17 June 2046)

“YOUR EYES ARE like galaxies,” Payal said. “The white spots aren’t scattered across the black, but grouped in a highly specific and memorable pattern. You’re the only cardinal I’ve ever met with such eyes.”

Canto couldn’t speak, his throat drying up. He’d tried so hard to remember the pattern of 3K’s eyes, but he’d been a traumatized child, his memories too broken up to be of any use. “How can you be sure?” It came out harsh, a challenge.

“Telekinetic memory.”

Telekinetic.

It crystalized then, the unimaginable torture of what had been done to her. The most free of Psy hobbled by chains. He knew this wasn’t a lie or a con—only a strictly limited number of people knew about that school, and about what had taken place there. Yet he had to be certain. “Have you done what you wanted to do when you got free?”

A frozen moment before she said, “There are no blossom trees where I live.”

A tremor shook his psyche, and it was his turn to stare—this time, with the eyes of a man who’d been searching for her for three decades without success.

The knotted and overgrown bangs were gone; Payal’s wavy hair was pulled into a ponytail that gave the impression of being carefree while keeping every single stray strand of hair off her face. Undone, he estimated it would reach just past her shoulder blades. Her face was no longer thin and bony, her features filled out, and just as he wasn’t that scared and angry boy, she wasn’t the waif who’d killed to help him.

A pinch in the region of his heart, a startling sense of loss.

She glanced down at his chair at last. “So, you had successful treatment.”

No Psy outside the family who’d ever commented on his physical state had deemed it a success. But Payal hadn’t minced words as a child and didn’t do so as an adult. She meant what she said. “Yes.”

He angled his chair back around to face the water as she moved to stand at the edge, the two of them side by side. The blue was shocking to his vision now, the entire world in high contrast.

“I can feel everything except for my legs. Medics said if they hadn’t removed the spinal and other tumors when they did, it’d have been too late. I’d have died.” The tumors had been tiny spots of virulence, obscured by the normal machinery of the body until his grandmother ordered a massive battery of tests.

“How long were you in the infirmary?”

“Years, in and out.” He glanced at the line of her profile. “What happened to you?” The question came out raw, unadorned. “I’ve looked for you every day since.”

PAYAL’S gut churned.

7J. 7J.

Half of her had begun to believe that the boy whose hand she’d held had been a figment of her manic and disturbed mind, a fantasy she’d created out of a need for care of any kind.

It was clear Canto hadn’t known her identity as 3K until she’d blurted out his ID in a moment of shock that had devastated her control. Now this man knew more about her than anyone else in the universe. Even her father wasn’t fully aware of all that had happened—all she’d been—in that hellhole where he’d abandoned her.

She could still remember every question 7J had asked her as they sat there, waiting for the inevitable. Not test questions. Not questions to dig up information he could use to his advantage. Just questions about her dreams, about food she liked, about what made her happy.

It had been the first time in her life anyone had wanted to hear her speak.

Inside her crazed, lost mind, she’d secretly called him a friend. Had the adult Payal permitted her Silence to fall when emotion became legal, she might’ve felt pity for that small, lost part of herself. So deprived of kindness and care that she’d turned fleeting interactions into a friendship. The boy on whose shoulders she’d laid her foolish childhood dreams had been so thin, his body no longer responding to his commands.

Only his eyes had never changed: fierce and fascinating and … protective. She’d probably misread them. She’d been an insane child after all. But … he’d given her food, saving things from his own meager meals to tuck into her hand when no one was looking.

That thin boy with fierce eyes had grown into a man with long legs and strong, wide shoulders, his arms ropy with muscle. Veins stood out along the olive skin of his forearms, and his thighs pushed up against the faded denim of his jeans. The latter meant he either had a level of lower limb mobility or used machines to exercise those muscles.