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Instead, he spoke in a space jagged and broken and private that belonged to them alone. “You betrayed me once. You’ve promised never to do it again.” It didn’t come out a threat—it was deeper and harder than that, a challenge from his falcon heart.

“Yes,” she said, undaunted and unemotional as he brought the vehicle to a stop. “I don’t make promises I don’t intend to keep.”

Adam felt as if he kept on smashing his head against a stone wall when it came to her, but he couldn’t stop doing it even knowing this could have no happy ending. “How many promises have you made?”

He expected silence, but she said, “Not many.” A pause before she added, “As a young J, I promised a mother that I would ensure justice for the death of her child. I failed. I executed the man who’d hurt the child, but he died with no blemish on his record.”

She took a breath, her hand on the door release. “But the first promise I made as a J was to myself—to always serve justice. I failed.”

Beyond his betrayed rage, Adam had always understood that the young J she’d been, the young J who’d changed his life and world in a heartbeat, had had no control over the events in that courtroom.

Others had pulled the strings, ensured that a cold-blooded murderer roamed free.

Yet she’d made no justifications or excuses no matter how harsh his denunciation, taken the whole burden on herself…

and he found himself disagreeing with her choice.

“You weren’t the one in control,” he gritted out. “Even I get that.”

“I chose life—for me, for Reagan—over integrity.” She pushed open the door. “I sold my honor.”

I chose life…

Adam got out of the vehicle himself, his heart thundering as her words settled deep inside the hurt of the boy he’d once been.

That boy had been so angry that he’d never once considered what he was asking of her when he looked to her in that courtroom, never once realized what she risked if she spoke.

It fractured the entire foundation of his rage.

···

I SOLD my honor.

Eleri deliberately moved that cold truth to the corner of her mind where it always lived. To do otherwise would be to become useless, unable to attempt what Adam had asked of her.

This place, so new and unknown, it helped. “I always thought you’d live in an open area.”

“Anyone who lives inside the Canyon has a room that opens out into the sky. Only places like our infirmary and offices are internal.”

Something tugged at her…a dulled sense of wonder? How extraordinary, that that tiny speck of her had survived, but she was glad of it. “What about your human clanmates?” she said. “Aren’t they scared to live in places so high and open to the sky?”

“We make adjustments as needed. Some non-winged clanmates—human and changeling—prefer the plateau. Others like the view from the Canyon, just want a safety barrier that ameliorates the risk. No different from living in a high-rise.”

“Yes,” Eleri said aloud, but to her mind it was very different. This place with its walls of roughly polished stone had a resonant wildness. She wanted to talk to Adam about that, wanted to know just a little more about his world, steal just a fragment more time.

He stopped in front of an open door. “Here’s the infirmary.”

All such places, Eleri thought as she stepped inside, had the same tense quiet to them—though this one was missing the scent of antiseptics…or perhaps she just couldn’t smell them.

Many changelings, after all, had a far stronger sense of smell than Psy or humans. It made sense to her that they’d come up with a formulation that didn’t assault their senses. Far different, too, to have an infirmary inside your clan’s home than to suffer it for a short time in a hospital.

“You should be sleeping,” Adam murmured to the tall and curvy woman who met them at the main door. His voice was rough, the hand he touched to the woman’s hollowed-out cheek gentle.

The woman turned her face into his touch, a curl of ebony escaping the clip on the back of her head. “I can’t bear to leave him.”

A long-numbed part of Eleri stirred, ached, and she understood enough of herself to understand that it was yearning.

Once, to survive, she’d have slammed the door shut on the emotion, then told herself she’d never felt anything in the first place…

but that time was done, the hourglass of her remaining lifetime bare flecks of sand.

Even should Adam forgive her for the unforgivable, her brain had been stripped of all but the merest film of protection.

Reconditioning couldn’t be reversed; the lost layers couldn’t be replaced.

There was no walking backward on that dark road littered with the violent and depraved memories of serial killers.

So she let herself feel this one thing that wasn’t about pain or guilt, but about a promise of something that might’ve once been between a young woman who hadn’t yet been scarred by evil and a young man who hadn’t understood how deep betrayal could cut.

But then the yearning twisted, turned, and became a stabbing that threatened to disable her, and that she couldn’t allow, not on this one day when she had made a promise to Adam.

Who turned right then to look at her. “You still okay to attempt to read Jacques?”

She gave a short nod.

But the beautiful woman with black hair and creamy skin hesitated. “I know a little about the gloves,” she said to Eleri. “Information is being shared post-Silence among M-Psy, healers, doctors. Since we might come up against gloved Psy who need help.”

“Eleri told me she could handle it since Jacques is in a coma.” Adam’s fingers gripping Eleri’s jaw, the contact already so familiar that the yearning threatened to overwhelm her with thoughts of a future where such touch was commonplace. “You lie?”

“No,” Eleri said even as the healer told Adam to break contact in a sharp tone, her body moving as if she’d force the break. As if she had the right to do so.

Changeling hierarchy, Eleri thought, was far more complex than she’d realized.

“It’s all right,” Eleri said to her. “Changelings have natural shields.”

The healer halted, looked between the two of them with a frown.

“To my knowledge,” Eleri said to Adam, “the risk is exactly as I told you. The only thing I didn’t articulate is that I don’t believe he’s in there any longer.” She softened her voice as much as she could and knew it wasn’t enough. “The Es are the specialists. If they couldn’t find him…”

Adam didn’t release her and she didn’t pull away. “I know it’s worse than a long shot.”

It was as if he, too, was attempting to live a lifetime in a moment. The yearning inside her grew so intense that it was a visceral physical pain. “I should do it now,” she said, because this was all she had left to give her beautiful boy. “While your clan house is quiet.”

“The Canyon,” Adam said roughly, the heat of his body a caress against the coldness of her. “We call the entirety of our home the Canyon.”

“The Canyon.” She hugged the knowledge close as Adam released her at last.

It was time for her to break his heart one more time.