Chapter 22
CLAIRE
He's at his desk when I come in. He looks at me and waits.
I close the door.
"You lied to me," I say. "In the workroom. Just now. No magic running and you lied to my face and I felt it."
He says nothing.
"I've been keeping a list," I say. "Twenty-nine entries.
Every time the warmth arrived before you spoke.
Every time my suspicion eased at a moment that didn't earn easing.
Every time I got close to something and you used proximity and the bond and the warmth to take my attention off it.
" My voice is doing something I'm not fully controlling.
I notice this and keep talking. "Three times in the workroom when I was pulling threads toward the eastern territories.
The October logs. The HV-7 designation. The relay point at grid 7-9.
Three times you redirected me and I catalogued all of it. "
"Claire—"
"I'm not finished." Not loud. Just flat.
"You ran the magic from before I crossed the boundary.
The warmth was present on day one and I filed it under the court's pervasive magic.
That was wrong. You ran it through the pre-heat and through the claiming and through every debrief and every night in your rooms, and you used it to smooth the things that should have stayed sharp.
My suspicion. My grief." My jaw is tight.
"My read on whether the things you told me were true. "
He is very still.
"HV-7," I say. "Lena's field designation.
The eastern cell she was running. Omega extraction—that's what they did.
They ran safe houses and transit routes for omegas who wanted to leave Fae courts.
They had been doing it for four years. They were building a route for me specifically when you found them.
" I keep my voice level. "She sent me a message saying get out if you need to.
You intercepted it. I know you intercepted it because I know the drop went blank and she would not have gone quiet voluntarily while I was still here.
She was building the extraction and you intercepted the message and then you waited until I handed you page eight. "
He doesn't move.
"The farmhouse," I say. "Grid reference 7-14 on page eight.
I put it there. I assembled the picture from your files, from the access you gave me in the right order at the right times, and I handed it to you across this desk and glowed at your approval and went to your rooms that night.
Three weeks later: fourteen names. Lena's name among them. "
Something happens in his face. Small and real and there before the arrangement catches it.
"She was coming for me," I say. "You used my work to kill the person who was coming to get me out. You used my hands to close the door."
The silence goes on for a long moment.
"Did you order it," I say.
He doesn't answer.
That's the answer.
Something happens in my chest. Not the grief—the grief is there, it's been there since I read the summary, it's going to be there for the rest of my life. This is something underneath the grief. Something colder.
"You used my work," I say. "You gave me the archive and you ran the debriefs and you used the magic to keep me from pulling the thread all the way, and when I'd built you the picture you used it to find her.
And then you told me she was alive." My voice is doing the thing now—the edge-of-field-work quality, the sound of someone who has been running professionally for a very long time and has reached the limit.
"You told me she was alive and you dropped the magic for the lie specifically—so I'd feel it without the warmth—so I'd believe it as though it were real.
And I did. I believed you because I had been sleeping in your bed and I trusted the feelings I had there. That's what made it work."
He reaches for me.
I take a step back.
"You built the trap," I say. "The cipher too easy, the cover documents waiting, six months of magic in every room.
You used my love for Rosalind to walk me through the door.
You knew what Lena's cell was doing and you waited until I handed you the farmhouse and then you signed the order.
" The tears arrive and I hate them and my voice doesn't shake.
"You killed my oldest friend. You used my hands to do it and then you lied to my face.
I am standing in your study with your marks on my throat and your child in my belly and I cannot find the line between what I feel and what you shaped. "
"The wanting—" he starts.
"The wanting was real and you made it larger and I can't find the original underneath it.
" I look at him. "I know the magic can't manufacture what isn't there.
I know the feeling is mine. That's not the point.
The point is that I've been living inside something shaped for months and I cannot read my own responses.
I don't know how much of what I trusted was mine and how much was what you decided I should feel. "
He stands up.
He is looking at me with that expression—the patient one, the total one, and underneath it the small real thing that moves in his face when he doesn't catch it in time.
The thing I've been collecting glimpses of for months.
I see it now. I don't know what to do with it.
That's been the problem since the gallery on day twenty-six—I've been collecting these glimpses and putting them somewhere, and they're the reason I'm still in this room having this conversation instead of already gone.
"Was any of it real," I say. "You. Not the magic. Not the plan. You—is there a version of you that actually—"
He doesn't answer fast enough.
I look at him.
"I'm going to go now," I say.
"Claire—"
"I need to be outside the court." I pick up my coat from the chair by the door. "I need to be somewhere the magic isn't in the air and the bond isn't pulling and I can think without the interference. That's all I know right now."
"Where—"
"I don't know yet."
I open the door.
I stop in the doorway without turning around.
"The three seconds," I say. "In the gallery. Day twenty-six. That thing on your face before you arranged it away." I breathe. "I've been keeping it for months. I need to find out if it was real." A pause. "I'm going to find out."
I walk out.
The corridor is cold. His magic in every particle of the air, the same magic I have been breathing for two months. I breathe it and I walk and I don't stop walking.
I said all of it. Every word, to his face, with nothing running underneath. I told him he used my work and lied to my face and shaped my feelings for months. I told him I can't find the line. I told him the wanting is real.
He didn't answer fast enough.
That is the thing I have been keeping somewhere.
Twenty-nine entries, the grief for Lena that is going to be there for the rest of my life, the specific knowledge of what he did—and underneath all of it: the fraction of a second.
The moment on the gallery platform when something moved in his face before he arranged it away.
The not-answering-fast-enough when I asked if any of it was real.
I have been collecting that fraction for two months. I don't know what it is yet. I need to find out from the inside.
That's all I know.
I don't know if what I feel is love. I don't know if it could survive what he did. I don't know if there is a version of what we built that exists outside the manipulation, or if the manipulation is so threaded through it that you can't pull one out without unravelling the other.
I know three things. I wanted him before any magic. He was a fraction of a second too slow. And the three seconds in the gallery—that thing on his face before he arranged it away—I have been keeping that for two months without knowing why, and I need to know why.
That's why I'm going to find out.
Not because I've forgiven him. Not because the grief for Lena isn't going to be there tomorrow and the year after. Not because twenty-nine entries in a notebook and a dead friend and a trap built around exactly what I am can be set aside because I want something.
Because I'm a spy. Because a case with contradictory evidence is not a closed case. Because I have been going on incomplete information and I cannot make the decision I need to make without the rest of the picture.
The front door. The grounds. The court's mist, moving slow and deliberate, his magic in every particle.
I walk through it.
I go through the gate.