More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Its new mission was to condition young Psy to feel nothing.
The Psy are perfect in their Silence.
“The process is both safe and practical.” But she was never going to undergo it. There was no way she’d ever chance condemning a child to the flaw already pushing her to the brink of insanity. “We can weed out sperm and eggs that are damaged in any way. It’s why the Psy have a negligible rate of childhood diseases.” Yet mistakes were made—she was living proof.
her instincts said they’d do very well out of this. Too bad that mentioning the word “instincts” would get her chemically lobotomized.
She felt compelled to defend her people, though she knew they’d discard her without a thought the second they discovered her defect.
She wished he’d stop touching her. Not because she didn’t like it but because she liked it far too much. It made her hunger for things that could never be hers. And if someone went hungry for too long, they started to starve. Started to hurt.
Like most, she used mental exercises to keep herself strong. One exercise involved memorizing items—it had been one of her guilty pleasures to choose lists that spoke to her senses. Food was one. Her other favorite list had been compiled by the computer from an ancient book of sexual positions.
A curious lover was the ultimate lure to his panther soul.
His eyes met the night-sky glimmer of hers and he wondered if she felt what he did. It was as if a thin wire connected them, vibrating with their unacknowledged awareness of each other. “We don’t share well.” Lucas was the worst of the lot. What was his, was his.
Like any cat, he liked to be admired,
Her eyes were no longer night-sky. Sparks of color fountained where the white stars usually resided, spectacular fireworks on the most miniature of scales. Neither man nor panther had ever seen anything more beautiful.
Today, he could almost understand the Psy need to banish emotion. If he didn’t feel, he wouldn’t remember. If he didn’t feel, he wouldn’t mourn. And if he didn’t feel, he wouldn’t hurt with every beat of his very human heart.
Unused to sensation, she was close to becoming a slave to it, the fantasies she’d indulged in during sleep leeching into her waking life.
“He wants to steal her life,” she whispered. “After torturing her.” “No, that’s not what I mean.” She turned down the leafy lane that would eventually lead to Tamsyn’s home. “What, then?” “She appears so vibrant, so full of joy and life. He wants to take that from her, wants to keep it for himself.”
“Our laws might seem harsh but we’re not inhuman. We treasure every unique individual. We make room for difference.”
“I wish I’d been born in another time, another place. Then maybe I could’ve escaped fate . . . maybe I could’ve been your darling.”
More had been destroyed than simply Ai’s soul. Sascha wept deep inside for the two women she’d never had the chance to know. What must it have done to Mika to watch the child she’d named Ai—which meant “love” in her language—be taught to devalue that very emotion?
