She could almost see flames lick their way across the extraordinary color of his eyes. Then he whispered, "Lie to me, Shaya."
Her thighs pressed together without conscious thought and she found herself fighting the desire to give him exactly what he wanted. That much sensation might finally shatter her PsyNet shields, exposing her to the hunters. Which left her with only one choice. "On my seventeenth birthday, Amara put something in my water glass."
Dorian didn't release her hair, but he relaxed his hold enough that she could straighten up. Then he listened with the quiet, lethal focus of the leopard within.
"After I lost consciousness, she dragged me into a hole she'd dug under the house - it was an old building, raised up off the flood-prone ground. We'd been moved to it after we completed our run through the Protocol at sixteen." Ashaya felt her skin begin to crawl with the sensory memory of insects scurrying across the exposed skin of her face. "The hole was shallow, but it was... enough." For sheer, unrelenting terror.
Dorian didn't say a word, but he released her... only to pull her down against his chest as he sprawled lengthwise on the sofa. Her head, he held pressed to his chest, his free hand stroking up and down her arm. She should've fought him, but she had a feeling this was a battle she'd lost the day she'd first spoken to the sniper in the trees.
"Go on," he said when she went silent. "I've got you."
She took a deep breath, drawing the scent of him into her lungs. "Amara had made a lid for the hole. Nothing complicated - just slats of wood nailed to each other - but she'd weighed it down so it couldn't be pushed up. When I woke, I could see the light shining down from the torch she'd left hanging over an exposed beam. I tried to sit up, hit my head, panicked." Her hands had been bloody by the time she realized she couldn't get out, her vocal cords able to utter nothing but paralyzed whimpers. And her Silence had broken so suddenly and irrevocably that only memories of the pain controls remained - because what her trainers had never considered was that there could be worse terror, worse pain, than the backlash of Silence.
Her brain had come through the break unscathed, perhaps because of the adrenaline, perhaps because Amara had never let her be truly conditioned in the first place. But her mind... "She was there the whole time, listening to me. She knew no one would come - she'd drugged our guardian's drink, too."
Oddly, Dorian's bitten-off curse made her feel safer. Amara couldn't get to her here, she dared to think for the first time. "After the blind panic passed and I was able to comprehend where I was, she started to talk to me."
How does it feel?
Has your conditioning fragmented, or are you holding on to some of it?
Come on, Ashaya, don't be a spoilsport.
"I begged her to let me out. But she said the experiment wasn't over yet. I don't know how long we stayed like that - perhaps an hour, more likely two. Then..." Her throat dried up. She found she was digging her fingernails into Dorian's chest, gritting her teeth so hard her jaw hurt. "I'm sorry." She tried to release her fingers, couldn't make herself let go.
"I'm tough." His voice was sandpaper over rock. "You hold on however hard you damn well want."
She took him at his word. "Amara began to bury me. Some of the dirt fell through the cracks where the light had been coming through, and crumbled over my face, my body. Then one of the planks broke over my leg... and I shattered."
The past and the present had melded, until she was sure the earth was closing around her, smothering her in a wave of violent tremors. "I screamed, begged, promised to do anything she wanted if she'd only let me out." Her entire body shook with the memories and she felt the constant cord of her connection to Amara begin to gain in strength. But still, her sister continued to be blocked out.
By chaos touched with feral protectiveness.
She was a psychic being - she knew that that strange shield was connected to Dorian, to what he made her feel. She tried to follow the thought, but terror sucked her under. "I shredded my hands, ripped off my nails trying to get out. My own blood dripped onto my face until the iron of it was all I could smell."
Dorian's hand tightened on her nape. "Listen to my heartbeat, Shaya. Focus."
Trapped as she was in the madness of that grave, his words made no sense, but because he'd said them in such a commanding tone, she obeyed. The beat was hard, steady, certain. A lifeline. "She left me in there for... a long time." Her voice broke. "I was conscious the entire time."
"Jesus, baby, why didn't you ask for help - you're Psy. You could've telepathed someone."
"I was so phobic, Dorian. It was literally my worst nightmare come true. At first, I simply wasn't rational enough to telepath." She'd become a primal being, terror her lifeblood. "And later... she's smart, Amara. She locked me inside her own shields while I was unconscious. I could've smashed my way out, but by the time I realized what she'd done, I was also thinking logically enough to know that I couldn't ask anyone."
Dorian muttered a few choice words. "Because if you'd asked for help, they'd have punished you, too. For breaking Silence."
"Yes." She pressed herself deeper into the living warmth of him, so strong, so safe. "At that age, we were valued but not invaluable. They would've rehabilitated us in a second, wiping our minds until we were little more than walking vegetables. I knew to survive, I had to wait Amara out. And... I knew some of it was my fault."
A growl that sounded very, very real.
"Listen." She fisted her hand against him. "She was always a little different, but most geniuses are - even in the Net. Things really only began to deteriorate after my claustrophobia developed. My emotional control or lack of it feeds her instability. That's part of why I became so good at hiding my emotions. Even inside my own mind, I had to believe the lie - anytime I slipped, Amara degenerated."
Both Dorian's arms came around her, unbreakable steel bands. "If she's that smart, she has to know the triggers, too. But she's let you be the one to carry the weight. Enough, Shaya." The leopard was still in his voice, rough and protective. "You're not to blame."
Shuddering, she buried her face against him. "I have to stop." The memories were sucking her under, taking her back to that grave. "I'm not strong enough to do this."
"You stood up to a sniper - most people start running when they see me." Hard words, but his fingertips were tracing the shell of her ear with utter gentleness.
She'd never expected tenderness from her sniper. It kept startling her. "Probably because tales of your meanness precede you."