What would it be like to know that your very touch revolted people? To come from a culture where touch was a basic form of communication, and to find yourself surrounded by people who found touching you repellant? Like being struck blind— Or, no. Like being surrounded by people who preferred to be blind rather than to look at you?

How lonely that would be.

Not that Ángel could honestly claim to be repelled. Once he had seen a picture of the president of the United States shaking Oberon’s hand—hadn’t he? He wasn’t sure. It seemed unlikely that Oberon’s touch affected anyone else quite the way it affected him. Unless the president, after shaking Oberon’s hand, had been compelled to beat off too.

Ángel snorted with laughter, pouring coffee into hot sweetened milk.

At that moment the sound of his own name caught his attention.

“—messages for Ángel?” Oberon was asking. Ángel eavesdropped while he sipped his coffee.

“Oh, yes, I forgot,” said Chandler. “The DOR forwarded a package a few days ago from his friend. I’ll have someone bring it up today.”

“Chandler,” said Oberon, and the change in his voice was electric—all the grave courtesy had gone out of it, and it was glacier-cold.

Ángel’s head whipped around. He saw Chandler's response: her back straightened, her chin went up. Military attention, shoulders back. Perhaps an ingrained reaction to authority.

Oberon, in that quiet but brutal, arctic tone, asked, “Is there a reason you disobeyed my orders?”

“I—”

Ángel put down his coffee and went into the dining room.

“I told you not to interfere with communications between Ángel and Marissa Sommers.” Oberon’s face was as blank as always, but he had weaponized his voice—activated some musical tone that went straight to the fear center of the brain and flipped a switch there. It was aimed like a pistol at Chandler. “You chose to do so, delaying his package several days, and in doing you caused Ángel pain. Tell me why.”

Chandler was pale, her wide eyes fixed on the wall, knees locked to keep from swaying. She looked like she were being screamed at by a drill sergeant. Ángel felt ill with shock, and he was only getting backsplash from the voice. “I’m sorry, sir,” Chandler managed to say. “I didn’t realize it was important.”

“That is a lie,” said Oberon, voice bloodcurdling. “I told you it was important. I believe that you prefer annoying Ángel to following my instructions.”

“No, sir.”

“John Va will take over the security team from now on. You will return to the DOR—”

“No,” said Ángel. “No. Please don’t do that.”

Oberon turned his leopard eyes on Ángel, and Ángel shrank back. But the envoy’s voice was slightly gentler when he said, “The position of chief of security is one of trust.”