Un peligroso y volátil rebelde, con manos manchadas de sangre. Un amujer cuya misma existencia ha sido borrada. Un historia de amor tan oscura, que tal vez pueda destrozar el mundo mismo. Un mortal precio que se debe pagar. El dia del juicio final está aquí.

Without Silence, said a leading philosopher of the day, we will cannibalize ourselves in a storm of blood and death and insanity, until the Psy race becomes nothing but a terrible memory.

He was Psy and he was Silent, his emotions conditioned out of him when he’d been a child. His path to that Silence had been erratic at times, but the end result was the development of a coolly rational mind that held no shadow of fear or hope, anguish or excitement.

She knew that with the same part of her brain that had birthed the labyrinth, the part driven by the relentless will to survive. It cared nothing for the quality of her life, only that she remain alive.

SHE HEARD HIS answer, this man as unreadable as a cobra about to strike, his voice raising every tiny hair on her body, but she knew he wasn’t telling her all of it.

Kaleb, in contrast, had thus far done nothing to cause her harm. He’d given her privacy, free access to clean clothing and a shower, as well as food that made her taste buds sing and her parched soul shudder.

Clean though it was, it was also knotted to the point of making her appear a madwoman— “That was the goal.” The labyrinth had been only part of her plan to hide herself from those who would turn her into a trained animal poised to perform on command. “It’s not necessary any longer,” she whispered and clawed back another piece of herself.

she focused once more on the cardinal currently ripping his opponent to shreds with cold-blooded precision, taking in the dark hair cut with brutal neatness, the clean lines of his face, his skin tanned enough that he couldn’t spend all his time indoors, those incredible eyes. But in spite of his beauty, he was harshly masculine, his every action marking him as quintessentially and fascinatingly male.

...information was power and power was control.

“They’re a tactile race, but permission to touch is never assumed. It is considered a gift and a privilege.” The concept resonated with Kaleb in a way no changeling would ever understand.

No longer was she a drugged sixteen-year-old with erratic control over her mind; she was a woman, a survivor.

Sahara Kyriakus held within her the potential to make a man into an emperor.

It was the first time in living memory that the lethal squad of assassins, their black uniforms marking them as some of the Net’s most dangerous men and women, had so publicly stepped in to offer humanitarian assistance.

“Childhood is an impossibility when you have the potential to kill anyone in your path.”

He should’ve known not to attempt to predict or judge her—Sahara Kyriakus had always had an unexpected and stubborn will. No other woman could’ve survived seven years in hell and come out of it with the strength to challenge Kaleb.

Sahara had been the first, would always be the deepest, fracture in his conditioning. It was a truth as pure and as inescapable as the wind.

“Tell me,” she whispered, heart twisting with the tumult of her emotions, because the idea of a world without Kaleb in it ignited a panic that obliterated her fear of what he was, to replace it with nerve-shredding horror.

Sahara’s eyes were haunted when they met his. “Am I so important to you?” “Yes,” he said. “You’re everything.” The entire reason for his existence.

Kaleb was an addiction so visceral, she could never hope to control it.

“I’m not the same as I was.” “You’re home. That’s what matters. And your father,” he murmured, a sheen in his own eyes, “is not the same as he was, either. Losing a child alters a man in ways that can never be undone.”

“Death isn’t always the most fitting punishment.” It was too quick, over too soon—and Tatiana had stolen more than seven years of not just one life, but two: Leon had never been the same after his daughter’s disappearance. And Sahara was a Kyriakus child, a NightStar. Nothing and no one was permitted to harm Anthony’s family and walk away unscathed.

“Nothing,” one F-Psy had gasped, shivering so hard her teeth clattered. “When I look into the future with Krychek as a focus, all I see is the death . . . of everything.”

Who is right? Who is wrong? I have no answers—all I know is that we stand at a crossroads. The decisions we make will either save us, or end us. Professor Eric Tuivala Anthropologist (New Zealand)

Kaleb was too protective . . . too much an addiction. Her breasts ached at the memory of how he’d touched her, his eyes an obsidian storm. Every time he came near her, she wanted to dance in the storm.

Sahara sucked in a breath and met Vaughn’s incisive gaze, suddenly conscious he’d intuited the intimate nature of her relationship with Kaleb. “There’s something bad in his scent?” she asked, a painful knot in her abdomen. “No, Sahara. There’s something very dangerous in it.”

He was a powerful businessman, a feared cardinal, and I couldn’t even speak of what he was doing, much less raise a finger against him.” The last violation, she thought. The worst violation. Even the lowliest animal had the right to fight back, regardless of the size of its opponent.

“Kaleb. Kaleb, Kaleb.” The gasped chant was a reminder to him of who he was—not Santano Enrique’s creation, but Kaleb, who touched her with a primal passion and who always kept his promises.

“Then let the PsyNet take care of itself for an hour or two, and take care of me instead.”

“Live your life, Sahara. Live it as big and with as much color as you can stand to bear. Don’t let anyone or anything—the family, Silence, the weight of your ability, even my need to keep you close—confine you again.”

So we literally made the earth move? A slight pause, before Kaleb said, I suggest we don’t engage in sex in populated areas. The cool comment made her burst into laughter.

There was something incredibly sexy about a man so lethal that civilized dress only served to highlight the danger, not lessen it.

“You,” he said, “are the single exception to that rule.” The oldest, deepest, most beautiful flaw in his Silence. “Without you, I would be a monster.”

“Will you come tomorrow?” “Yes.” He’d always said yes to her, to the girl who had given him a sense of belonging, a sense of home.

“You matter to me.” So simple. So honest. So powerful.

If Judd and Xavier had helped him remain sane enough to give Sahara what she needed, then he owed them a debt that could never be discharged.

Xavier spoke into the silence. “We sit in a house of God and speak of murder. What does that make us?” “Men who understand that there is evil in the world,” Judd answered.

“I don’t know how to love her.” He would die for her, kill for her, but he did not understand the emotion he had always sensed she needed from him, even when she’d been a bright-eyed sixteen.

“Kaleb?” Scooting over, she raised the blanket with a mumbled invitation. “C’mere. ’S cold out.” He hadn’t meant to stay, but he slept that night in the arms of the only person in the entire world to whom it mattered if he was cold . . . and he thought that perhaps he might understand not only love, but joy.

Did you help create this incident? The black ice shuddered, fractured. No. I’m sorry. Don’t be. It was a rational question given my history. But I hurt you, and no one has the right to do that. Fierce words. Not even me.

Take care, Kaleb. A kiss against his mind. It would break my heart if you were hurt.

“Tell me,” she said, accepting that this relationship was never going to be simple. “Tell me everything.”

“Then you know I’ve walked in the darkness,” she said, hand fisting on his heart and voice fierce. “I won’t ever judge you for doing the same.” No one had any right to do that. No one.

But Kaleb would allow no one to sow the seeds of destruction—not now, when Sahara had asked him to find another way to create a better world. And children . . . children should always be off the agenda.

All the while, he could feel Sahara tucked against his mind, staying with him as she’d done at the university, and in the aftermath of the inferno that had engulfed Hong Kong Island. Never again, he thought, would he be alone in the dark.

“It makes me hope,” she said softly, “that we have inside us the capacity to build a better future.”

“The populace isn’t so Silent,” he said, watching Sahara peel off her T-shirt, “as to not be horrified by the growing atrocities.” She dropped the T-shirt to the floor and kicked off her shoes. “It makes me hope,” she said softly, “that we have inside us the capacity to build a better future.”

It should’ve been surreal, lying in bed with a man who had just caused an earthquake, but this was Kaleb and he was hers.

“I must have this ability for a reason—and this conscience, too. I have to trust in myself and my intention to do no harm.” Blowing out a breath, she said, “It might end up being a fruitless exercise anyway.”

As Kaleb would probably snap the neck of any other woman who tried to touch him without invitation, she knew Vaughn would respond with claws and teeth. Skin privileges, she thought, were not to be assumed lightly with men of this caliber.

Kaleb thought to tell the other man theirs was a debt he might one day collect, but didn’t for the same reason he’d helped save Sophia’s life from a madman over half a year ago. He hadn’t been able to help the one woman who was everything to him, his mind a place of angry darkness, but in saving Sophia, he had gained, if not redemption, then an instant of grace in the darkness.

“We may have won this battle, but now comes a far harder one—to rebuild a society that is so fundamentally broken it has begun to cannibalize itself.”

Tightening her hold, she buried her face against him. He didn’t know what else to do, how to comfort her, so he simply held her, held the only person in the world who had ever cried for him.

Lapis lazuli, the text she’d accessed had said, was a stone meant to represent friendship.

“Together,” she whispered, telling him he wasn’t alone in the darkness, would never be alone. “Now and forever.”

Sahara dug her fingers into his arms. “You do not do this,” she said, and it was an order. “You do not let that monster destroy the life we are going to have together. You are mine, not his. You have always been mine.”

“Everything, Kaleb,” she gasped, her nails the sweetest pain on his shoulders, “give me everything.” “You have it.” All his secrets, anything she wanted. Even his scarred, maimed heart. “I love you.”

“Our minds connected.” It was an experience he’d never forget, Sahara’s love and spirit an intensity of light deep inside him, a candle flame that lit up the void. Damaged and twisted and scarred beyond all hope of repair, the part of him that was the void touched the candle flame in wonder, astonished that it was for him. For him. For Kaleb. This was purity, this painfully beautiful thing Sahara felt for him, and it was a truth Pure Psy would never comprehend.

“A good man,” she said, her lips against his, “wouldn’t have survived what you did, wouldn’t have been able to find me. To fight evil, you have to understand the dark. We both do.”

He thought of a lifetime of having Sahara’s stubborn will in his life and knew that she was his reward for surviving.

Then the midnight star pulsed inside her, and it was a silent reminder that life wasn’t easy. Sometimes, it demanded heart’s blood and gave back only unbearable pain. Sometimes, it broke you. “When you’re broken,” she whispered to the man who would save the world for her, “you can’t see hope. We must be their hope.”

“The Arrow Squad,” Aden said, “must always exist.” For those like Vasic and Judd—and Kaleb. The ones who were too dangerous to live in the ordinary world; the ones the rest of their people would fear if the outliers were not first trained to hide their lethal nature; the ones who would always be needed to protect their people. “It cannot fall.” Kaleb’s answer was blunt. “Then it must adapt.”

Yet if Kaleb Krychek had been able to bond with another living being . . . Perhaps Aden had sold his Arrows short. Perhaps salvation could come for even the most broken among them.

Kissing her smile until it was in his blood, he processed her telepathic instructions with the brain of a Tk for whom movement was like breathing and took the first steps. Sahara gasped in delight, and then she was fluid lightning in his arms, their bodies forming a single unit as they moved across the grass. On the horizon, the first rays of a dazzling dawn splashed the sky with color.

The transition will not be easy, ended the decree, and it will not be without cost. But we are not cowards to hide from the powers that define us. We are Psy and we are capable of greatness. It is time to step out of the dark.