Allegiance of Honor (Psy-Changeling #15) - Nalini Singh Page 0,144

the Psy race’s entire future hung in the balance.

And most humans hated most of the Psy.

Letters to Nina

From the private diaries of Father Xavier Perez

June 11, 2077

Nina,

I’ve acquired a second Psy friend. It turns out my two friends have known each other longer than I’ve known either one of them—but to induct me into their inner circle was a matter of trust that couldn’t be rushed.

Having glimpsed the war they’re fighting, the lies hidden beneath more lies that they seek to expose, I understand their caution. This second man, he’s far more suspicious than my first friend and impossibly more dangerous.

Somehow, I have become the voice of reason. Don’t laugh too hard. I find that the more I minister to my parishioners, the more I learn myself.

But nothing will ever change my heart. It bears only your name.

Love,

Xavier

Chapter 42

KALEB WAS AT home with Sahara when she got the comm call from Ivy Jane, with Sascha Duncan also looped into the discussion. He and Sahara had been on the deck of their home on the outskirts of Moscow, Kaleb running through a martial arts routine, while Sahara did the yoga that made her so graceful.

Darkness had fallen on their side of the world, and the stars had been bright overhead as they moved quietly on the deck lit only by the delicate metal lamps Sahara had set out. She’d bought those lamps in a market in Istanbul when he took her there for dinner one night, both of them in disguise.

“So we can act as young as we are,” Sahara had said to him with a grin, wrapping her arms around his neck. “No one watching, no one expecting us to behave.”

They’d eaten at a tiny café hidden deep inside the markets, surrounded by locals who’d looked at them sideways until Sahara pulled her favorite trick and spoke to them in their own language—right down to the subdialect used in the market area. By the time they left, she was fast friends with half the clientele and was well on the way to charming the other half. He’d just watched her laugh, watched her sparkle, and been happy.

She’d fallen in love with the metal lamps sold at what felt like half the shops in the markets, had scooped up four for their deck. Then she’d bought him a glass “genie” bottle for his study, the color of the finely blown glass a mix between red and cerise. He’d come home one day to find the bottle filled with blank “wishes” that he was permitted to write on and redeem at will, with Sahara acting as his genie.

And that bottle, it never ran out, no matter how many wishes he redeemed.

Dance for me, he’d written on more than one.

Watching Sahara create music with her body was a gift of which he never became tired. He’d been planning to ask if she’d dance a little tonight after she finished her yoga, but then had come the call from Ivy Jane.

He would’ve stayed outside while Sahara took it in privacy, but she popped her head back outside to say that Ivy and Sascha wanted him to listen in. Teleporting himself a towel, he rubbed the sweat off his face, then left the towel around his neck as he joined Sahara in front of the living room comm screen, on which she usually programmed images from her favorite dances.

“You might as well know.” Lines of tiredness marked Ivy’s face. “I’ve already told Vasic and Aden. At some point, we’re going to have to go public.”

When she began to speak, what she told them made too much sense. In particular, the near-total lack of human connections was the one thing that made the post-Silence PsyNet different from the Forgotten’s ShadowNet.

Unfortunately, she was also right in her understanding of the current state of Psy-human relations. “The majority of humans will happily watch the Psy race collapse into oblivion,” Kaleb said to Sahara once the other two women had signed off. “And the majority of Psy think humans are beneath them.” The latter was pure stupidity, but Silence had fostered an arrogance that was going to take decades to ameliorate.

“I don’t know,” Sahara murmured, a look on her face that meant she was strategizing. “Maybe it’s simply a case of giving humans and Psy reasons to interact. The heart will do the rest.”

Kaleb raised his eyebrows. “All such situations will do is give them endless opportunities to ignore each other. That is, if they don’t try to kill