Kinsmen, not untrained nontelepaths. Cynara snatched at the scrap of hope he offered. Any plan, however desperate, would keep his mind from thoughts of death.
“What can I do, Ronan?”
“You must give me your mind. We will join, not as before in thoughts and feelings, but to the last particle of consciousness. You must surrender your very self to me.”
Ronan’s words swept past her rational brain and slashed at the raw wounds Tyr had left behind. Your body will walk this deck, but nothing of you will be left to enjoy it.
Tyr raped her mind again, taking pleasure in her helplessness, hating her because she had witnessed his downfall, his ignominious ruin. Pushing, thrusting, filling her up with himself until she struck out with the only weapon left to her: hatred. Hatred, animal instinct, the rage to kill.
Ronan had seen what Tyr had done. He’d made her see it, exposed her deepest fears. He could not be demanding this obscene perversion of what they’d once shared.
But there was no mistaking what he implied: her very being transformed to a witless extension of his, a puppet, a shadow with no self beyond what he chose to let her keep. Worse than the half-life of a Dharman woman, worse than the madness Artur Constano VelRauthi offered. Worse than death.
Surrender. Lose yourself. Nothing left…
She knew what she saw in Ronan’s eyes. Tyr wasn’t gone. He was still here, masquerading as the man she loved.
‘Trust me,” Tyr said, laughing at her weakness, her despicable frailty.
Never. Never again.
She lashed out, striking at Ronan with fists and the scourge of her bitterness. He took the blows without flinching. He bore the holocaust of hatred as he had borne the punishment of shaauri who rejected his very right to exist.
It could not continue. One of them must break, but Ronan simply absorbed the punishment as if it was no less than what he deserved.
He was not Tyr. He could never be. In this man was goodness, generosity, compassion checked only by his self-contempt and the certainty of his own unworthiness to exist. She gave anger and received love in return, love beyond the scope of any language.
“Scylla take you, Ronan,” she whispered. “Will you never fight back?”
He smiled and lifted a damp strand of her hair. “Not you, Aho’Va.”
She groaned and slumped against him. “I know.” Her mouth filled with the sour taste of shame. “I’m sorry, Ronan. I wasn’t my—” Tyr is gone. When have you ever been more yourself? “I’m no better than any of them.”
His hand came to rest on her hair in a kind of benediction. His gaze was quiet, wise and frighteningly detached, as if Sihvaaro had taken up residence in his body.
“Can you do what must be done?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Your mind will attempt to defend itself.”
“You aren’t Tyr. I won’t resist you.” She touched his cheek gingerly, dreading the marks her beating might have left on his flesh. “VelRauthi offered us a choice. I choose.”
He stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. “Whatever may come, know that I honor you, Cynara D’Accorso.”
Into her mind flowed the understanding of what she must do. She closed her eyes, attuning her thoughts to Ronan’s, surrendering control and fear and anything that might stand between them.
His lips brushed hers. The memory of Tyr’s violation faded. Gentle currents washed over her, rocking her on soothing swells that never reached a shore. Ronan made love to her without touching anything but her face, giving even as he took so that she felt as if nothing had been taken at all.
Ronan’s hands grew cold. She covered them with her own to warm them, but they slipped free.
“It is done,” he said.
* * *
Chapter 28
« ^ »
Cynara opened her eyes. Ronan knelt before her, his head resting on the deck. She pressed her temples, searching for the difference within herself, the sense of having lost something precious and unique. But her heart beat strong and sure, and her mind…
Her mind was full to bursting, synapses sparking with a hundred new ideas, new concepts, tools for the use of her telepathy that she had barely imagined. She sat in stunned silence while her brain struggled to make sense of the raw data, organize it, make it ready for her use.