Caressed by Ice

CHAPTER 46

Shoshanna Scott met her husband, Henry, in their living quarters after their operations had been completed. Ashaya Aleine’s closest aide, the one who had implanted them in the first place, had done the retraction. It had taken an hour each, the procedures complicated by the way the implants had integrated into their neural cells.

“How do you feel?”

“A slight headache and some weakness in my limbs but that’s supposed to pass.” Henry answered her question in the spirit in which it had been asked. Concentrating on the physical. They were husband and wife for propaganda purposes only—the humans and changelings seemed to like the idea of a couple in the Council.

“I’m much the same.” She took a seat beside him. “It’s to our advantage that we were implanted after the others.” It had given them plenty of warning of the experimental implants’ catastrophic failure. “It’s a pity the implants were so degraded they won’t be able to reverse engineer them.”

“Perhaps we should rethink the idea of storing backup files on the Net.”

“No.” Shoshanna agreed with the other Councilors on this, shortsighted though many of their decisions were. “We upload it, we chance a leak. Aleine will be able to put it all back together.”

“It will take months if not years for her to get back to where she was before the sabotage.” Henry shifted. “It’s disconcerting to have to return to this ineffectual method of communication.”

During the past two months, they had been functioning as a flawless psychic unit, sharing every thought. However, they hadn’t quite become one mind—Shoshanna was aware that she’d wielded more power in the unit. It proved the theory that there must always be a controlling mind. For example, the eight below them had been unable to merge into Henry’s and Shoshanna’s minds but the reverse hadn’t held true. “We’ll return to it one day. What’s the status of the remaining four participants?”

“Alive but agitated.”

Shoshanna stood. “Take care of it.”

“I already have.” Henry mirrored her stance. Their minds were still attuned on a level beyond the norm, but without the implant, that link would eventually fade. “I gave a final order prior to the removal of my implant. They’ll end their own lives one after the other during the next eight hours.”

“Excellent.” What it was to truly wield the power of life and death—the others knew nothing of this. If they had, they would’ve pushed Protocol I faster instead of insisting on the current snail’s pace. “That ties things up nicely.” Now they had to ensure the Council didn’t backpedal from the idea. It had to go ahead. Shoshanna intended to become a queen in truth, to hold lives in the palm of her hand.