She stepped away from the microphone and toward the soft darkness that surrounded the cameras, and - even if she couldn't admit it anywhere but inside the walls of her mind - toward the dangerous safety of the man who stood there. Her bones felt oddly hollow, breakable. She wasn't certain she wouldn't fracture like so much glass.
Suddenly, there was an arm around her shoulders, leading her toward a door, almost carrying her up a flight of steps and out onto a tiny balcony hardly big enough for two people. The piercing brightness of daylight stabbed into her irises with the ferocity of a thousand sharp knives.
"That was one hell of a surprise." He pressed her face to his chest, rubbing her back with a firm hand.
She should have pulled away, but she didn't. She knew herself, knew her weaknesses, knew that at this moment, she was incapable of standing without assistance. She also knew that she liked Dorian's heat around her. "It had to be done." For her people, for her son... and, despite everything, for Amara.
Dorian pulled out his cell phone with his free hand. "Nothing. They must've done something to the cell transmitters."
"I apologize - I knew the backlash would be severe, but I didn't think they'd be able to move so fast." Breaking away from him, she leaned back, her hands closing around the cold iron of the railing. Over his shoulder, she could see only a thick wall of green foliage. To her left was a closed door that led down into a basement she didn't yet have the strength to reenter - it had taken all her willpower the first time around. "They shut down power?"
He nodded.
"Hospitals," she began.
"Generators," he told her. "I'm guessing most of the power and comm lines are going to be back up in the next few minutes anyway - Psy businesses would lose too much revenue otherwise, and without their support, the Council falls."
She nodded. "Do you think my broadcast got through to any appreciable extent?"
His nod was immediate. "We had backup satellites ready to go."
"Oh?"
"We like to be prepared." Raising his hand, he traced the curve of her cheekbone.
She stood absolutely motionless. Though she had trained herself to appear exactly like her brethren, she wasn't averse to touch. And out here, no one would punish her for taking strength from this most simple of human contact. What held her frozen was that she didn't know the rules of touch in changeling society. In her time with them so far, she'd seen them touch easily... but only each other.
Except Dorian's touch was hot against her, as if every stroke left a permanent imprint.
"Sascha and Faith say Psy like to mix it up genetically," he commented, his fingers sliding down and off.
She didn't say anything, waiting, expectant.
"I can see why." He leaned against the railing opposite her, his arms folded. "So what's next for the infamous Ashaya Aleine?"
She wanted to move but there was nowhere to go. A single step and they would touch again. She could still feel the heat of his skin against hers, an impossibility that was somehow real. "The first part of my plan is complete." What a joke. She had no plan beyond getting both herself and Keenan out from under twenty-four-hour Council surveillance.
All it would've taken was one slipup, and she'd never have seen her son again. The ironic thing was that by holding him hostage, the Council had unknowingly protected him from another danger. However, that protection had come at a cost. They'd kept her baby like a rat in a cage, until she could see his very soul beginning to shrivel.
Now, he was free... and vulnerable to the pitiless menace that had stalked him his entire life.
"Hopefully," she said, trying not to crumble under the wrenching force of the need to hold her son, "I'm now too famous to die a quiet death." More importantly, too famous for Keenan to be made a target without severe political repercussions.
"Phase two?"
She started to make something up, but knew it would be a waste. He'd see right through it. "I don't know." Logic, sense, reason, it all told her to run, to draw the danger away from Keenan, but rational thought collided with raw maternal need and came away the loser. She couldn't leave him behind.
"What about Keenan?" Dorian asked, almost as if he'd read her mind. "You planning on seeing him anytime soon?"
Her palms tingled with the memory of her son's soft skin, his fragile bones. He was so small, and so easily hurt. But this cat, there was such strength in him, such purpose - he'd stand by Keenan if she fell. She met those eyes of icy blue. "He's safe as long as the Council thinks I have no interest in him." Not a lie, but not the whole truth either. She knew this was the right choice, the only choice while she tried to find an answer that wouldn't leave her with her twin's blood on her hands. But her heart still twisted - Keenan would think she'd lied, that she'd abandoned him.
Too much emotion, she thought. Her Silent shields, crucial protections against Amara, were beginning to erode. But she couldn't rebuild her buffers. Not with Dorian so close, the wild fury of his emotions evident in every breath.
"That's your justification for ignoring him?" His eyes had gone flat, no hint remaining of the man who'd held her with gentle protectiveness. "But then again, I suppose a child is simply a collection of genes to you, not a flesh-and-blood creature of spirit and soul. Do you even know anything about him? Do you care that he's probably waiting for his mom to come hold him and tell him everything's gonna be okay?"
She let the whip of his words draw blood, but stood firm. "If I go to him, I'll put him in harm's way." For Keenan, Amara was the true nightmare. But she couldn't tell Dorian that. Because then he'd want to know why. And to share that deadly secret, she'd have to trust him more than she'd trusted anyone her entire life.