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

At the same time, she could see why the Ruling Coalition had come to their foolish decision. Perhaps she’d been hasty in ordering attacks that so significantly weakened critical PsyNet structures. But to fragment the PsyNet? No. Never.

She sat, thought. She wasn’t like her children, many of whom were so out of control that she was the only leash on their violence. Not only was she rational, she had telepathic backups of her personality in place should the awesome Scarab power within overwhelm her at any point. A small price to pay for untrammeled power tempered by reason.

Today, she used that sense of reason to make the decision to ask her children to stand down. The Silence of the Scarabs would lull the Psy into a sense of complacency and security, leaving them all the more vulnerable for the strike to come.

The Architect began to make detailed plans, giving no consideration to the fact that the PsyNet was now so damaged that it was beyond being able to heal itself.

In her mind, the Net sprawled endlessly, a black sky unalterable and unbreakable.





Chapter 8



As we walk into a world with emotion, we must accept that for some of our people, it is too late. They were born in Silence, raised in Silence, scarred by Silence. To expect them to forget or “get over” a lifetime of conditioning and interact at the emotional level that may become the norm is cruel—and the Psy have too much cruelty in our past already.

—PsyNet Beacon editorial by Jaya Laila Storm (Medical Empath and Social Interaction Columnist)

CANTO COULDN’T STOP himself from watching Payal. It was no longer about the shock of coming face-to-face with the phantom he’d been hunting for so many years; it was her. The line of her profile, the way she’d allowed her spine to soften in her concentration—but most of all, the intensity with which she looked at the data.

As if absorbing it into her brain for later recall.

Telekinetic memory.

This wasn’t only that. This was Payal Rao, the woman who’d become the CEO of a family where loyalty meant nothing and betrayal was to be expected. She’d had to be smarter, tougher, more ruthless.

And alone. Always.

His hand fisted—at the same instant that she said, “How accurate is this model?”

“Margin of error of a percent at most,” he replied, the numbers burned into his brain after all the times he’d checked and rechecked his data. “I did the survey twice to confirm.”

Payal didn’t respond, her attention on the model.

It gave him time to study her.

She appeared as absorbed as she’d been as a child when she’d drawn precise grids on the screen of her bulky old organizer, the act appearing almost meditative. And once, when they’d been permitted outside for exercise, he’d watched her pick up leaves that had fallen to the ground, begin ordering them by size and color.

“Everything fits together, like a puzzle,” she’d said when he joined her. “But the pieces have to be in the right places.” Deep frown lines between her eyebrows, the tangle of her hair half falling over one eye. “I like to put the pieces in order.”

He’d have thought it a desperate attempt to find control in a situation where they had no control, but she’d always looked so content when she worked with her grids and organized those leaves.

She’d clearly noted a pattern about adult Canto—because, his anger about it aside, she treated him with suspicion due to a dangerous and skilled cardinal who was a stranger. As a threat. Full stop.

His mobility level didn’t factor into her equations as a negative when it came to her assessment of his strength. It wasn’t that she didn’t see the chair. Her comment about his successful surgeries had made that clear. But Payal hadn’t fixated on it like so many Psy. To her, it was just one element of the whole pattern that was Canto.

His chest expanded on a rush of air.

He hadn’t realized until that moment that he’d been holding his breath on a psychological level, waiting for her to hurt him. Because she could.

Fuck.

Canto had stopped being concerned about the opinions of others long ago. The PsyMed psychology specialist his grandmother had made him see had told him that his “distancing behavior” was a coping mechanism for the “unusual circumstances of his life to date.”

In other words, Canto didn’t give a fuck because his father had slated him for death when he proved imperfect. The Mercants had brought him back from that enraged and broken edge, but he still cared for the opinions of very few.

Payal Rao would always be one of those people.

Foolish and illogical and goddamn stupid when he hadn’t seen her for decades, but it was what it was; he’d been forever altered by her courage and refusal to surrender. The only way his emotions toward her would change for the worse was if she proved to have become a monster.

Head of the Rao empire, Canto. That doesn’t happen by being kind and generous.

His grandmother’s voice, what he imagined Ena might say were she able to hear the direction of his thoughts. But the thing was, Canto knew Payal could be dangerous. He was alive because she was dangerous.

When she raised her head at last, her eyes were obsidian. Heavy processing power, psychic and/or mental. “That’s why I’m tiring quicker,” she said, as if they were midconversation, her voice clipped. “Because there’s almost no overlap in my entire country. The secondary anchors can’t take the weight a hub-anchor is built to handle, so the hubs are under unrelenting pressure.”