All the discipline in the universe could not have kept him from exulting in that moment. Only the expression on her face, pinched and grim, held him still.
She was afraid, as he was. He feared that this female he desired would discover his shame and inadequacy. That she would realize that her rejection of him had been not only correct, but necessary.
“I accept,” he repeated, burying his fear and elation. “What must I do?”
Cynara had fought her own inner battle, and her eyes were clear once more. “Open your mind. Think of it as… as space itself, boundless, expanding to infinity. I’ll touch your hands. I don’t know what you’ll feel, but if it becomes painful—”
“Continue until it is finished, Aho’Va.”
“I asked you to call me Cynara.”
His soul danced. “Cynara. Does it have a meaning?”
“It is a name from an ancient human language—taken from a flower called a thistle.”
“And is this flower very beautiful?”
“How would I know what you consider beautiful?”
“Perhaps you will learn.”
She looked aside. “We have little time before planetfall. If you’re ready—”
He nodded human-wise, and she reached across the table to lay her hands upon his. Heat raced up the nerves of his arms. Cynara’s fingers trembled. She almost withdrew them, but all at once her grip became firm and sure.
“Open your mind,” she said. “I won’t harm you.”
Behind his closed eyelids lay the black of space reaching to eternity, and he was only a flicker of light unseen by any but the one who touched him. He felt her enter, illuminating the darkness.
Searing beams plunged like knives, and with them came memory of the other time, when men had held him down and torn at his thoughts until they were stripped bones scattered by scavengers. He embraced the pain and let himself fall.
* * *
Chapter 6
« ^ »
Pain. Such terrible, unendurable pain. It came upon Cynara like a killing storm, beating wave upon wave. At first all she caught were blurred images like stones under ice. She was afraid, and fear made her too much at one with her subject.
Too close. His mind was as scarred as his body, bearing the brands of manipulation by telepaths of great skill and no scruples. She withdrew halfway, slipping free gently so as not to further damage his mind in her passing. Only then was she able to see what Ronan remembered.
The images passed swiftly, disordered and jarring as in a nightmare. Visions of felinoid shaauri standing over him, twice giants to the boy he had been, with their pointed teeth and jutting, tattooed claws. Hands reaching. Growls and squeaks and words he could not understand. Terror.
Then a moment of gentleness, unexpected. A soft humming trill, and a face less fearsome very close to his. But the tenderness did not last. For then he was older, his sense of self that of an adolescent. Shaauri were there again, not as tall, their fur unstriped red. Youngsters. They crowded on Ronan like a pod of orcas. Their voices were high with mockery.
Ne’lin, they cried. Hu-man.
They came one at a time, but they did not leave him until he lay on the ground, his blood spotting the tree needles that carpeted the ground in the wood. His muscles ached with countless bruises. He rose to his feet, weeping, and found his way home.
It happened again when he ventured too far from the Kalevi settlement. This time he fought. They beat him down. He grew older. Nothing changed.
Another shaauri face. But this one was unlike all the others. The fur, pale sienna with age, was deeply barred with faded stripes. Peace lay in the slanted eyes. The shaaurin held out his hand, and the boy took it.
The pain didn’t stop, but something altered. Those who came to beat him hesitated. Some retreated, and others showed the marks of wounds. The boy’s terror had slipped behind a barrier they could not penetrate even when they hurt him.
It was victory, of a sort. Cynara searched for emotions of joy, pleasure, even contentment. The last she found in rare memories, those that usually included the old shaaurin. But never true happiness. Never the comfort of belonging, even when other humans came and he lay with females of his own kind.