“Ekaterina.” Ashaya’s voice, gentle, coaxing.

The woman on the bed blinked, shook her head. “No.”

“That’s your name,” Dev said, refusing to let her look away.

Those changeable hazel eyes flickered and went out, a flame dying. “Ekaterina’s dead,” she said with absolute calm. “Everything is dead. There’s nothing lef—” Her teeth snapped together as her body convulsed with vicious strength.

“Glen!” Catching her before she twisted off the bed, Dev tried to keep her from hurting herself, her bones startlingly fragile under his hands.

“Say it.”

She kept her lips closed.

“Say it.”

No. No. No.

“Say it.”

He didn’t tire, didn’t stop, didn’t shove into her mind. The horror of waiting for the pain, the terror, was somehow worse than the violation itself.

“Say it.”

She held on to her sanity through the first days, the first weeks.

But still he wouldn’t relent.

Her tongue felt so thick, so dry. Her stomach hurt. But she held on.

“Say it.”

It took three months, but she did. She said it.

“Ekaterina is dead.”

“She’s unconscious.” Glen shined a light into Ekaterina’s eyes as she lay slumped on the pillows. “Could be the residue of the drugs in her system, but I think the trigger was her name—some kind of a psychic grenade.”

“More likely a combination,” Ashaya said, then reeled off the chemical compounds of the sleeping pills Glen had noted on the chart. “Some of these agents cause memory loss in Psy.”

The doctor’s eyes brightened at having found a colleague. “Yes. There’s a possibility some of the drugs were used sparingly in conjunction with other methods to psychologically break her.”