“You read my thoughts,” she said.
He was already halfway to the cabin door, one hand pressing his temple. “Yes.”
“You heard me on Bifrost.”
“It was like a voice calling from a great distance.”
‘Then it’s as I suspected… you’ve begun to recover your telepathy.” She turned the implications over in her mind. “On Bifrost I was projecting my thoughts, and you were passively receiving. But this time you picked up my surface thoughts even though I didn’t intend to send them.”
“I am… sorry.” He met her eyes anxiously. “I do not believe I can control it.”
“It’s nothing to fear, Ronan. Believe me. I thought something like this might happen—under the right circumstances.” The right circumstances, indeed. “You aren’t in pain?”
“No.” His brows flattened over his eyes. “I am not certain what I feel.”
Of course he wasn’t. He was untrained, like a baby taking its first step. Yet even a baby could inadvertently toddle into something forbidden. Cynara made a thorough check on the shields Persephonean Kinsmen had embedded when she’d taken the captaincy. They held strong.
“Try again, Ronan. Focus on me, and try to read my thoughts.”
He backed up against the door and closed his eyes. “You are thinking… of water. Great waves. The ocean on Dharma.”
“That’s exactly right. What else?”
“Your mother. She is not wearing a veil. She is singing to you… I don’t know the words.”
Cynara relaxed. The childhood melody her mother sang was in the language of Dharma’s second largest city-state.
Ronan couldn’t interpret it unless he was able to pierce her shield and enter her mind on a much deeper level.
“You ran to your mother because a boy had knocked you down and called you—” Ronan hesitated. “A female who sells her body?”
She had not intended him to see that much, but she wouldn’t let him realize it. “The word is ‘unveiled’—much like your ‘unselected.’ A woman who has not taken the veil at fifteen is regarded… poorly.”
“You defied the rules of your society. You learned from your uncle those things females are not permitted to understand.”
“I was what my father called a hellion.” She waved distracting memory aside. “I want you to try something new. Say something to me, Ronan, but only with your mind.”
He frowned. She felt the fury of his concentration, but nothing came through… no more than the emotions she already sensed.
“It’s all right, Ronan,” she said. “You’ve done enough today. I think you’d better return to your cabin and rest.”
He seemed not to hear her. “Your brother is named Anson. Your cousin… Tyr—” He gasped. “Don’t blame yourself, Cyn. It wasn’t your doing.”
Tyr’s voice, down to the last inflection. Cynara flew at Ronan and grabbed his shoulders.
“Stop it! Do you hear me, Ronan?” She shook him hard, shouting without words. Get out of my mind!
He opened his eyes, and for a moment all she saw were black pupils and emptiness. Then he focused, knowledge seeping into his conscious mind and filling his gaze with pity.
“What happened to your cousin, Cynara?” he asked, touching her cheek with his fingertips. “What gift did he give you that brought so much pain?”
Luck. It must be luck, and carelessness on her part, that he’d been able to pry that memory from behind the shield. She backed away and sat down on the bed, shaking. “I’m sorry. I could have hurt you by using such force.”
“I was not hurt.” He knelt before her. “Your memory of your cousin brings great sorrow. Let me help.”
Such compassion from a man raised by aliens, whose childhood had been a thousand times more difficult than hers. Thank God he didn’t fully understand what had happened when Tyr died. “You can’t,” she said. “It’s only a memory.” She mastered her trembling and met Ronan’s worried gaze. “You must remember one thing, Ronan. Never enter another person’s mind uninvited.”
“That is the Kinsman’s law.”
“And ours—those of us born to the gift on Dharma. You’ll have every chance to learn.”
He recognized the dismissal. He moved toward the door and paused, eyes fixed on the far bulkhead.
“I understand your grief,” he said. “I care nothing for your world or its customs. Only for you, Cynara D’Accorso.”