Shards of Hope

Chapter 53

FRUSTRATED BY THE inability of their tech people to trace the e-mails Olivia had received back to an identifiable source—even more so after Vasic confirmed he couldn’t lock on to any of the people BlackSea had tagged as missing—Zaira went to speak to the team she’d charged with pinning down Olivia’s life prior to the moment when she’d been captured.

“The trail goes dead in Milan,” Mica told her, after running through the data they had to date. “It’s as if she appeared out of nowhere a month ago.”

“Or out of a holding facility.” Pulling up the photograph of Persephone, she examined the child in detail, fighting her anger to think clearly. “She’s not thin enough to suggest she’s been mistreated a long time.”

Mica nodded. “Mother and daughter held together until the mother was dropped off in Milan?”

“Yes, I think so.” Zaira stared at the image of the little girl who clutched at her doll and could feel her fear, her confusion at what she’d have seen as abandonment. “Focus on Milan. Use facial recognition software. Unless she was teleported in, which in itself will tell us something, she will have used transportation at some point.”

Leaving Mica to organize the detail-oriented task, she realized that hovering would achieve nothing. She’d already sent search algorithms out into the PsyNet in case Persephone’s abduction had been mentioned there, and she’d touched base with Miane Levèque to see if the water-based changelings had any further data.

The answer was no, though Miane intended to return the next day to speak to Olivia again, once the medication had had a chance to further clear her system.

In the interim, Zaira needed to do something to burn off her anger and she owed the teenagers in the valley a martial arts lesson. She’d canceled it the day before, part of the fallout from the attempted attack on the compound, but it was important she fulfill her commitment today—because Persephone wasn’t the only child about whom Zaira was concerned.

Beatrice remained on her mind.

She made sure to make eye contact with the seventeen-year-old once the class assembled under the valley sunlight. The brown-haired girl had taken position on the periphery of the back row and couldn’t seem to hold the contact.

Not pushing the issue, Zaira took the class through the advanced training session. For the first time, she didn’t only correct mistakes, she made sure to offer praise for tasks well done. That didn’t come naturally to her, but she was learning along with her students. The teenagers didn’t react to her change in tactics as openly as the much younger Tavish had, but they lingered after the session to speak to her in a way they’d never before done—like flowers parched of sunlight, then given just a ray.

A single act of kindness, she thought again, could change a life.

“Beatrice,” she said when she saw the girl about to break away. “Stay. I want to speak to you.”

“Yes, sir.”

Finishing her conversations with the other trainees without rushing them, Zaira went over to the teenager. “Walk with me.”

Zaira led the compliant girl toward the trees beyond the training area. It was a significant distance but Zaira didn’t push the speed. The gentle pace was good for Beatrice, would further stretch out her muscles. Only once they were far enough from the compound that no one could overhear them, did she say, “Who beat you?”

The teenager froze, her eyes skating away as her skin paled. “No one.”

“Beatrice, I can tell by the way you move, the way you moved during training.” She well remembered how her own muscles had felt after a beating, how every movement had become agony. Beatrice was past that first excruciating stage and into the aching stiffness. “Who beat you?”

The girl stood mute, her eyes huge.

“You feel loyalty?”

A nod. “He has been . . . kind to me.”

“He may simply need an education in our new protocols.” Zaira stifled her instinctive and aggressive protective response because she knew not all the older teachers fully understood the changes in the squad. “Physical torture of any kind is now unacceptable—that means we won’t torture him, either.”

Zaira would also make sure she didn’t go near him, because if she did, she’d smash his bones to dust. “He’ll simply be retrained.”

Beatrice squeezed one of her hands with the other.

“You are now part of my family,” Zaira said. “As such, I have responsibility for your well-being.”

“Wh-what?”

Zaira realized Walker and Cristabel must not have had a chance to interview Beatrice yet. However, given Beatrice’s physical state, any further delay was no longer an option. “You are now part of my family unit,” she reiterated. “That means you are mine to care for. Mine and Aden’s.”

A tremor went through Beatrice’s body. “Why?” she whispered. “I’m not special. Not like you or Aden.”

Zaira touched her hand to Beatrice’s cheek in a conscious gesture of affection. “We’re all special to the people who are our own.”

The girl’s body began to shake. “I—I—”

Zaira hauled her into an embrace, acting on the instincts of the feral, broken survivor she’d once been. She was careful of the girl’s injuries, but her hold was in no way tentative. That wasn’t what Beatrice needed. “There’s no cause for fear. I’m capable of killing almost every other Arrow in the compound.” Sometimes a bigger nightmare was the only thing that kept other nightmares at bay. “Those I can’t kill, Aden and I can together. No one can hurt you.”

Gripping at her with desperate hands, Beatrice whispered, “I failed my mission.”

“What mission?” Beatrice wasn’t yet authorized for live missions, so if her trainer had taken her on one, he’d broken fundamental Arrow protocol.

“To get the scientist’s daughter to speak and tell us the codes.”

Zaira was aware of most of the major operations in progress, but had heard nothing of this. Connecting with Aden on their private and familiar telepathic pathway, she said, Is there a mission in progress to do with a scientist and the retrieval of codes of some kind?

No.

“Beatrice.” Zaira gently tugged up the girl’s head so she could look her in the eye. “This mission was not sanctioned.”

Beatrice’s face went bone white, her already unsteady breathing turning jagged and shallow.

“Don’t be afraid.” Zaira held the girl’s face in her hands as she reinforced her earlier reassurance. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“I hurt her.” It was a shaken whisper, her shoulders hunched in. “But I didn’t use the knife like he asked. I promise.”

“I believe you.” Zaira continued to look into Beatrice’s eyes. “The error was your trainer’s. You’re not authorized for wet work.” She used blunt words to reach Beatrice’s Arrow training. “You know that.”

“He said I was special.” It was a lost sound.

“You are. You’ve come through the fall of Silence with the capacity to handle emotion without losing control of your abilities.” No one had made a note in Beatrice’s file about the latter, and it was the lack that Zaira had noticed. Because almost every other student had a note about disintegrating conditioning leading to psychic mistakes.

“You can show your peers the way, teach them how to stay disciplined even with emotion in their lives.” Zaira herself might have been able to learn from the younger woman had it only been about power and emotion, but Zaira’s problems resulted from the way she’d been treated as a child, the scars affecting her every action.

Beatrice’s lower lip trembled. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.” Zaira kept her hands on the girl’s face, thinking of how much such a touch would’ve meant to her as a lonely and abused little girl. “What’s his name?”