Sirens wailing. Explosions. People running, shouting, trying to stem the damage. Fear, and helplessness.
A face, male and light-haired. A smile that rent the heart. “Don’t blame yourself, Cyn. It wasn’t your doing.” Coughing, and bright blood. “Right now we have to save the ship.”
Sirens and voices fading. Hands touching, the light dying in his green eyes. But not before the whole world changed.
Ronan snapped the contact. Cynara lunged from the bench, striking blindly into the shrubbery. Just as blind, Ronan pursued her and caught her wrists in his hands.
Vision cleared. Cynara’s face was contorted like the mask of a primitive shaauri demon, but there was no evil in it. Only unbearable sorrow and loss.
Ronan pulled her close and folded his arms around her. She stiffened and then went boneless, neither fighting his hold nor responding to it. He did what felt right and natural, stroking her back with the flat of his palm until her trembling stilled. His own heartbeat slowed to match. The top of her head fit just under his chin, and her hair smelled of the white flowers.
He was filled with her—her scent, the blended strength and softness of her body, the complexity of mind and emotion that was Cynara D’Accorso. With a little effort, he could penetrate the outer layers of her thoughts and take what he needed without the cover of seduction.
“You grieve for your cousin,” he said. “But his last words to you absolved you of blame. Why do you not believe it?”
“I became captain of the Pegasus… only because of him. Because of what he gave me.”
All at once the tangle of images and memories made sense. Tyr D’Accorso, dying as the result of a shaauri attack, held in his cousin’s arms. Two telepaths, one confident and one untried and suppressed, touching minds at the moment of passing. Knowledge bursting into a virgin mind, overwhelming it with everything a man’s life could hold.
Memory ended. Cynara stepped away and held up her hand with its glittering golden rings.
‘These were Tyr’s betrothal gift,” she whispered. “I couldn’t take them off… after he died. I had to remember. Because of him, I inherited the captaincy. Oh, there were protests, and outrage. But there were none as qualified, not even among Jesper’s best students.” She laughed in self-mockery. “I had finally made progress for Dharman women everywhere.”
Any hope Ronan had of piercing Cynara’s mental shield was gone. She had thrown up all her defenses with a vengeance, and he could no longer interpret the subtle meaning behind her words. Everything associated with the Pegasus was buried and beyond his reach.
He didn’t care. He saw her pain, and that was enough. “You doubt your worthiness,” he said. “I do not.”
“You don’t know me, Ronan.”
“Our minds have touched. How can I not?”
“Maybe you see what you wish to see. You’ve been lonely a very long time.” She took another step away. “It’s getting late. You need sleep, and so do I. First thing in the morning, Jesper and I will prepare you to meet the Council.”
Ronan let her go. His opportunity had passed, lost to irresolution and sympathy. He had pitied her—she who rejected pity as he did, and held herself aloof from those who might see emotion as weakness.
Now he understood why she feared any display of vulnerability. It was not merely that she was First with a place to hold against rivals, as he would expect among shaauri, or that she was a woman among humans who regarded females as unfit for high rank.
For her it was personal. She could not forget that the status she possessed, the life she desired above all others, had been bestowed as a gift and not earned in the human way or even properly selected in Walkabout.
There was more to her fears than even those considerations, grave though they were in her mind. And she held those mysteries to herself as fiercely as she guarded the secrets of her unusual ship.
When he learned one, he would learn the other. The plan he had devised on the Pegasus must continue, no matter the penalty to his own peace of mind. That price he paid gladly so long as Cynara did not suffer.