He looked once again at the image of her he had onscreen, though he’d told himself to stop obsessing years back, when he’d first done a run on her. She was of Indian descent. And she was a cardinal. Those were the only two traits she shared with 3K. That small girl had been a storm of emotion and passion, nothing about her contained and sophisticated.
Children changed, grew up. But for 3K to be Payal Rao, she’d have to have had a total personality and temperament transplant. No, she wasn’t the one for whom Canto searched—and fuck, yes, he knew 3K had to be dead, but he couldn’t stop looking. She’d saved him. How could he just abandon her?
But whoever 3K had been, her family had scrubbed her from the system with such brutality that even the might of the entire Mercant network hadn’t been able to locate her. Canto might have begun to doubt his memories and believe her a ghost—but he had a scar over his left tibia that was a physical reminder of the warped “school” that had been his home for five hellish months that had altered the course of his life.
Payal Rao, in contrast, had been educated at a private girls’ school in Delhi. Because he was obsessive, he’d checked the records, even located the class photographs.
There she was on the attendance rolls and in the images. The photos from her earlier years were blurry and of low-resolution—that had raised his suspicions until he’d looked back and seen that all the school’s uploads from that period were of the same low quality. Her name had also shown up on athletic and extracurricular lists.
According to Canto’s grandmother, Payal had even been considered for a Council position at one point. “Nothing official,” Ena had said. “But Santano Enrique noticed her intelligence and ambition. In the end, the Council decided that Gia Khan and Kaleb made the better candidates. My guess is it’s because Payal appears to have a black-and-white view of the world. Gray isn’t her strong point.”
And politics in the time of the Council had been all about the gray. Canto could do gray—he was a Mercant, after all—but not only did he prefer the shadows, Payal had a presence about her that couldn’t be counterfeited. She took over a room, was a cold burn of determination.
Canto wanted that icy flame on their side.
He wasn’t planning to give up if she didn’t respond. This was too important.
“Mercants never give up,” Valentin had rumbled to Canto once. “You just get sneaky.” A scowl on the bear alpha’s square-jawed face. “Sneaky-cat Mercants.” Then he’d smiled with unhidden delight. “Beautiful sneaky-cat Mercants. My sneaky-cat Mercant.”
Canto hadn’t needed to turn to see that Silver was walking toward them. Valentin Nikolaev made no bones about the fact that he was madly in love with his mate. To most people, Silver probably appeared cool and standoffish in return. Most people didn’t know Canto’s younger cousin.
Silver would cut out the heart of anyone who dared hurt Valentin.
It had been unexpected to see her fall—yet not at the same time. Because Canto knew about Arwen, about the Mercant who’d altered the course of the Mercant family … altered the shape of Canto’s heart.
Without 3K, he’d be dead.
Without Arwen, he’d be a bitter, twisted monster.
He’d protected Arwen in turn, paid back that gift. He’d never been able to do anything for 3K, and it would haunt him till the day he died.
“Fruitless obsession will lead you to your grave, Canto,” he muttered, repeating words his grandmother had said to him.
Ena had also added: “Mercants have a gift for obsession. It’s led to prison sentences, epic heroism, great works of art, and madhouses. Choose your path.”
Turning to the screen to the left of his workstation with a scowl, he brought up the Trinity Accord Convention newsfeed. As he watched, Silver delivered her speech with poise and confidence. She gave no indication that she was in any way intimidated by being in a physical forum filled with the intelligentsia of all three of the world’s races.
Psy. Changeling. Human.
Neither did she appear the least ruffled by the knowledge that her speech was being broadcast to every corner of the globe. As director of EmNet, the worldwide Emergency Response Network, she’d learned to live in the spotlight and use it to advance the aims of EmNet.
“We will fail if we permit petty squabbles and power plays to divide us. There are those who are counting on your minds and hearts being small and mean and without generosity. They intend to break the world by putting pressure on those fracture points. Do not allow it.”
She walked off the stage on that crisp order.
Pushing away from the main workstation, Canto rolled back the wheels of the chair designed for his long and solid frame. It had a hover function for those times when access was otherwise impossible—but as he’d wanted a streamlined chair devoid of armrests, those controls, as well as his backup computronic brake controls, were on a small side panel on the right-hand side of his seat.
Black on black, the panel mimicked the curve of his wheel and looked at first glance to be nothing more than a design feature. As it was, Canto rarely used the hover mode, far preferring to manually operate the chair.
The constant physical motion helped keep his upper body strong. Not that he relied only on that. He’d set up a full gym in another section of his home, complete with a robotic physiotherapy device that helped him exercise the legs that were a part of his body, but that he couldn’t feel.
He had, however, long ago rejected the full-body robotic brace designed for bipedal motion. Of a far more streamlined design than in its original iterations, the brace worked well for many. Canto wasn’t one of those people. The few times he’d tried it, he’d felt as if he had insects dancing on his spine and buzzing in his brain.
“Electro-biogen-feedback loop,” the robotics expert had muttered. “Might be caused by the innovative wiring in your spine.”
Whatever the cause, Canto far preferred his sleek black chair with its highly maneuverable wheels. Heading to another area of his large, windowless, and temperature-controlled office area—a place Arwen had termed his “computronic dungeon”—he picked up his phone and sent a message to Silver: You were brilliant.
Pride was a conflagration inside him.
Canto had said “fuck it” to Silence long before its official fall. That was what happened when a child empath lived inside your airtight anchor shields, and the PsyNet flowed through your mind in an endless river, bringing with it the flotsam and jetsam of the lives of millions of people, powerful and weak, brave and cowardly, good and bad.
Then there’d been his childhood—the school had been the final part of a play that had run since his birth, and it had nearly broken him. Without 3K, without the example of her stubborn fury and refusal to surrender, he might have given up. But if she, so small and physically far weaker, could fight on, he had no excuse. But the fight had burned any hope of Silence right out of him—he’d run on pure rage.
Sometimes, in his dreams, he still heard 3K laugh, though he’d only ever heard it once in real life. In a moment when their teacher had turned his back and Canto had made a face mimicking the man’s bulging eyes and puffed-out cheeks when he laid down the rules.
Bright, brilliant laughter, unafraid and wild.