Page 52 of Of Songs and Silence

Then there is something else, something that stings as it dances along the edge of my rapidly fraying nerves.

Ari helped me tonight. I should be grateful for that—and I am, but he was inside my mind, despite my shields, something he didn’t tell me he was capable of. He heard my thoughts when I was blocking him, not because of my own inadequacies, but because of yet another secret he has kept.

I think of all the times I thought my walls were up, only to have him comment on my thoughts anyway. Or my emotions, as he does now.

“You’re angry, Kala.” His voice sounds in my head, but it’s on the surface this time, instead of resounding deeply the way it did at the arena.

I think about his words. I don’t get angry. Ever.

After a lifetime of watching my mother disappear into her own rage, seeing the destruction she wrought with it, it’s not an emotion I usually allow myself.

But I can’t deny something rising within me.

“I’m…” I trail off, the emotion dissipating as quickly as it came. In its place is a bone-deep weariness. I wrestle the tiara out from my curls and set it lightly on my nightstand. Napo eyes it with interest from where he was waiting on my bed.

Turning back to Ari, I finally finish my sentence. “I’m tired.”

Nothing has ever felt truer.

I am tired of being surrounded by death and bloodshed and tyrants. Tired of Ari asking me to trust him, then keeping something new from me every time I turn around.

“I couldn’t tell you,” he gently responds to my thoughts.

I shake my head. “Stay out of my head unless you’re prepared to invite me into yours.”

He sighs, watching Napo wind his tentacle through my tiara. “Would that I could, Kala, but it isn’t that simple.”

Would that he could invite me into his head? Or stay out of mine?

“The things I know are dangerous,” he answers my unasked questions.

“Of course they are.” Bitterness soaks my tone, potent and unfamiliar.

Remorse emanates from him in waves, but it’s not as strong as his determination. He must have lowered his shields enough to let me sense that, I realize, but not enough for me to hear his inner thoughts the way he has clearly been able to hear mine.

“Is this the same reason why I can sense your emotions?” I ask.

He hesitates, and another wave of bitterness hits me, powerful enough to make him wince.

“Someone will hear—”

“Did you know all along that we could communicate this way?” I interrupt him. “You’ve just been listening and feeling everything I feel?”

“I made no secret that I could hear you. I believe I’ve told you multiple times to work on your seas-damned shields.” Another of his hedging answers.

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

His sea-green gaze meets mine, his chest rising and falling, the muscle in his jaw twitching as he contemplates his answer.

“Yes, I knew.”

“And even though you knew it was a violation, even though you must have known that I already felt violated—” I cut off, shoving away thoughts of Damian’s too-warm hands on my skin.

Not that it matters. Ari has apparently heard them all by now.

His gaze darkens. “I am nothing like—”

“No,” I say quickly. “You aren’t. But this…” I gesture between us, not able to articulate the way this hurts unexpectedly.

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