Heart of Obsidian

understood loyalty—no NightStar, even their most famous defector, had ever been publicly hung out to dry. As such, Sahara’s broken Silence would be noted in-house and kept scrupulously out of public view.
    “I’ll continue to shield you.” His own power was enormous, but as Tatiana had discovered, he also had the resources of the NetMind and DarkMind at his disposal. “No one will be able to enter your mind.”
    Sahara nodded, her profile delicate against the background of the windswept dunes. Alone, desolate. In a way that he hadn’t considered, and one that might be causing her excruciating pain. “Are you having trouble with the continued separation from the PsyNet?” he asked, conscious that to release her from his shields while her own were paper-thin would be to paint a target on her back.
    Pure Psy would term her an abomination in her broken Silence, and then there were the other predators. If, however, the separation was starving her mind as Tatiana’s cage had done, he’d quite simply eliminate anyone who posed a threat. Soon enough, people would come to understand that to attempt to harm Sahara was to sign their death warrant.
    “No,” she said, playing the shimmering black sand through her fingers with the concentration of someone for whom such sensation had been out of reach for an eon. “It’s safer and healthier for me to remain inside your shields until my own are at full strength.” A smile directed at him, one that held an open and deep tenderness. “And I’m not alone—you’re there, but you never intrude, never take what isn’t yours to take.”
    Even in the darkest part of his psyche, the part covered in blood and death, he recoiled at the idea of violating her. “I’ll maintain the shields until you say otherwise.”
    Sahara watched him with those eyes of blue midnight, and he wondered if she could see the ugliness that had shaped his stance. It was better for her if she didn’t. Some memories couldn’t be erased, some depravities too sickening to forget. Kaleb had survived by slicing away his capacity for empathy, for pity.
    Sahara wasn’t built to make the same choice, and so the memories would eat her alive. “Don’t,” he said. “You’ll regret it.”
    “I would never,” was the soft answer. “I would
never
.”
    Some part of her, he thought once again, remembered the promise she’d made him before the night a knife slid over and into her flesh and blood smeared his skin. And Sahara had never once broken a promise she’d made him. He was the one who’d done that, his betrayal unforgivable.
    Continuing to maintain the intimacy of the eye contact, her gaze holding a haunting sadness that he knew was for him, Sahara touched her fingers to his jaw in a featherlight caress, but when she spoke, it was to say, “Tatiana may have shared the truth about me with others—another reason for me to avoid the PsyNet for now.”
    “I could take you to her.” Subject Tatiana to the power of the very gift she’d tortured Sahara in an attempt to harness. “You can do whatever you like to her.”
    “I never want to touch that woman in any way, even on the psychic plane. She’s evil.” Quick, jagged words thick with revulsion. “She always spoke to me in such a cool, cogent way, but it was her orders the guards followed when they—” She cut herself off with vicious suddenness, the edges of her words torn raw.
    “I’ll find out what was done to you,” he said, knowing she’d stopped herself because of him, because of what he’d done to Tatiana and to the guard who had dared enter his home with the intent of taking Sahara. “Whether you tell me or not.”
    Sahara set her jaw, her expression no longer haunted but fierce. “I won’t push you deeper into the darkness.”
    He didn’t tell her it was too late, that it had been too late the first time they’d met. Because Sahara hadn’t wanted to believe him then, and she wouldn’t want to believe him now. That was who she was, as he was a man who had no compunction committing murder when it was necessary.
    Shifting his gaze to the wind-lashed waves thundering to shore, he said, “I’ll take you home.” He rose to his feet and accessed his memory banks to locate an image he’d updated three weeks before. Retrieval was simple—a mental trick that came naturally to most telekinetics—and an image of a tree trunk with an idiosyncratic pattern of knotholes was at the forefront of his mind a second