Psy & Changelings 10 - Kiss of Snow

idea what I can do.” All this time, she’d been fooling herself that he wanted her despite knowing she was a monster. If he’d understood in truth . . . “You felt the intensity of what I earthed. Yet I can do this.” A single flick of her hand and X-fire encased a forest giant that had stood for centuries.
    Ash, fine as dust, rose into the air between one blink and the next.
    “Now you know.”
     
     
    HAWKE gritted his jaw as Sienna swayed on her feet. “That was a singularly stupid thing to do.” Grabbing her in a fireman’s carry, he threw her over his shoulder.
    “Put me down.” A weak protest before her body went limp.
    Worry tore through his veins, but he could feel her heartbeat, sense her breath. Focusing on that, he strapped her into the passenger seat before digging out his phone. “Sienna’s unconscious,” he said when Judd answered.
    The other man took a second to reply. “She’s fine. Her mind is intact.”
    Relief was a punch to Hawke’s gut. “I’m going to strip her hide when she wakes up.” Shutting the passenger door, he jogged around to the driver’s side and switched the phone to the hands-free comm mode before beginning the drive back.
    “It sounds,” Judd said when Hawke finished relaying what had led to Sienna’s collapse, “like she overloaded her psychic pathways.”
    Hawke frowned. “So she does have a safety switch.” He’d gotten the impression that conscious control was so necessary to Sienna because she had no built-in off switch.
    Judd didn’t reply long enough that Hawke’s blood went cold. “What aren’t you saying?”
    “I think we need to have this discussion after you return.”
    Hawke’s patience was nonexistent when it came to Sienna’s well-being, but he saw the lieutenant’s point. “We’ll be there soon.”
    Judd met them at the infirmary, where Lara ran a high-tech medical scanner over Sienna and pronounced her in perfect health. Only then did Hawke nod at Judd to follow him out into the corridor. “Tell me.”
    “She’s accelerating at an exponential rate,” Judd said, pulling up a chart on the tiny datapad he carried in his pocket. “After she confirmed she’d been purging her power more often of late, I spoke to Walker to see if we could pinpoint any specific times or dates. It took me until just before the South American operation to realize it was Toby we needed to speak to—she allows him closer than anyone else.”
    White lines bracketed the former Arrow’s mouth. “He knew before all of us. He’s been making a note in his diary each time he feels she’s about to go critical. Since she hasn’t had any incidents, the logical conclusion is that she instituted a purge in each case.” Judd turned the datapad so Hawke could see the screen.
    The pattern was impossible to miss. It had been almost a year between Sienna’s arrival and the first time she earthed herself. The next came after eight months. Then six. The last few had been mere weeks apart. Hawke’s wolf rose to the fore, helping the man think with clear-eyed purpose. “Can it be stopped?”
    “No.” An absolute statement. “That’s what makes her an X.”
    “Silence”—he forced himself to say that word, to consider that option—“kept her under some kind of containment.”
    “Only to an extent. She’s the sole cardinal X ever born, according to our records. Even Ming was playing a game of Russian roulette with her. No one had any idea what would happen as her power matured.”
    “Does she know?”
    “I think she doesn’t want to know.” Black erased the gold-flecked brown of Judd’s eyes, a rare indication of strong emotion. “The only way she can survive is to believe that she can change the inevitable.”
    “Then we leave it at that.” He could see Sienna growing deeper into her skin day by day. No way in hell was he going to cut her off at the knees. “You sound certain that it can’t be stopped, but is there any way to slow the progression?”
    Judd shoved a hand through his hair. “I’ve been searching for the manuscript I mentioned to you once.”
    “The dissertation on X-Psy?”
    The other man nodded. “I’ve found no evidence to confirm its existence, but I’m waiting to hear back from one final contact.”
    Hawke’s wolf caught the minute change in Judd’s expression. “The Ghost. You don’t trust him.”
    “Not in this. She’s a weapon of infinite potential.”
    And the Ghost, Hawke knew, had an agenda that had