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Taemon said. He was turning his head to see how far they’d gotten when pain burst like starfire in his left shoulder.
    He cried out, and the engine sputtered.
    “You okay?” Amma leaned forward. “Taemon, you’re hurt!”
    He looked down and saw an arrow lodged in his shoulder just next to the joint. Skies! What now?

The arrow had come from the front. Flame it all! There must have been more archers hiding in the trees. How many more were there?
    Faster. He had to go faster. They’d just have to outdistance the archers. He locked away the pain and poured all the psi he could manage into the engine. The back tires fishtailed before finding traction and rocketing the quadrider forward.
    “It doesn’t look like it’s bleeding too badly,” Amma said.
    Drigg’s voice came from the backseat. “Can you get us to the colony?”
    Taemon clenched his jaw. “I have to.”
    The engine faltered, and the car swerved. Taemon had to focus entirely on the quadrider to correct their course.
    “We can talk later,” Amma said to Drigg. “Right now he just needs to drive.”
    Taemon tried to ignore the pain in his shoulder and focus on his psionic connection with the engine.
    Holy Mother Mountain, he had psi!
    Why? How? Psi was gone. For everybody. The exact words he’d said were burned into his mind: “Let all psi in Deliverance be done away. Let each man and woman work by the power of his own hands.”
    Other words were spoken that day as well.
    Skies, he knew that voice in his head! The Heart of the Earth was speaking to him again.
    Let me help you remember.
    Without his bidding, his memory flashed to a moment before the Fall. Taemon and Amma had been caught trying to expose Yens and Elder Naseph as false prophets, and Elder Naseph had just ordered Yens to kill them. Taemon, who had lost his psi months earlier and been banished to the powerless colony, had asked the Heart of the Earth to restore his psi so he could save himself and Amma and stop Yens and Elder Naseph from wielding their terrible psi weapons.
    Once again, he heard the Heart of the Earth’s response:
    Consider carefully. You cannot request a gift only to discard it at will. If you ask me to restore your power, the restoration will be permanent.
    Was that it? Had her warning meant that his psi hadn’t gone away when he’d willed away the psi of others? Did he alone have psi?
    The thought was chilling.
    But how hadn’t he noticed this before? Certainly life had been difficult for everyone, him included, since the Fall. Why hadn’t his psi kicked in earlier, when he’d been so exhausted from rebuilding destroyed homes in the city or gathering and distributing food and supplies? Why hadn’t he just moved the endless parade of heavy objects around with his mind and spared himself the blisters and cuts and bruises?
    Then again, had he even tried to reach out for psi since the Fall? Had he even once tried to move something with telekinesis or see something with clairvoyance? No, he had assumed he was powerless, just like everyone else. Only tonight, when he’d felt threatened and desperate, had his mind longed for psi enough to reach for it.
    His shoulder was stiffening up. He clenched his jaw and drove on.
    He had psi. It should make him happy, he supposed. After all, it had gotten them out of that mess with that gang. And it meant getting Mam to the healers much sooner, for which he was grateful.
    But the truth was, psi did not make him happy. It never had. He’d actually liked using his hands and feeling his muscles ache after a hard day’s work. He also liked using touch to show affection, hugging his friends or holding hands with Amma. Da had always insisted that the family honor the Sabbath by not using psi on that day, which other families had scoffed at. But Da had said that doing so brought them closer to the Heart of the Earth, and when Taemon had become powerless, he’d finally understood what Da had meant by that.
    But now he was the odd duck