Vela Heartwhisper's Arc

Chapter 23 of 25

The captured spy sat in the cell, mouth shut tight. Vela stood outside the bars. The woman had a face now, but no name for the one who sent her. More agents were coming. Vela could not warn the household against a shadow. She had one night, maybe less, to make this woman talk. Lysander leaned in the doorway, arms crossed. "She won't break for threats," he said. "I've sat where she sits. You wait, you stay quiet, you win." He tilted his head at the prisoner. "She's counting on us running out of time." Scarlett came in on silent wings, red dress trailing. She studied the spy the way she studied prey. "I can smell fear on her," she said softly. "Not of pain. Of something else." She crouched close to the bars. "You're not scared of us. You're scared of him." The woman flinched. Small, but real. Vela caught it. Threats had failed. But the spy feared her own master more than any cell. Vela knelt to the woman's level. "He'll blame you," she said. "You were caught. In his eyes, you already talked. He'll send the next one to clean up loose ends. That means you." She let it sit. "We can hide you. But only if we know who to hide you from." The woman's jaw worked. She said nothing. Then Heartwhisper stepped through the door. Horns curved from his head. His heart-shaped eyes fixed on the prisoner. He carried his cipher in one hand, a small glass of pink fire in the other. Vela had sought his gift before. He read love no one else could see. "I don't need her mouth," he said. "Her heart already spoke." He crouched. He looked at the woman like he saw through her ribs. "You wear his badge," he said quietly. "But your love points away from him. You served for a promise he broke." He turned his cipher. "A man in a white coat. Silver hair. A sword that glows. He told you he was gone. He isn't." The spy's eyes went wide. "Severin," she whispered. Then louder, breaking. "Dr. Severin. He runs it from the cells you put him in. His people carry his orders out. Three more are already inside your walls." Vela stood, cold spreading through her. Severin was arrested. She had believed him finished. He had built his web from a prison cell. "Names," Vela said. "Marks. Anything." "They cross the grove like I did," the woman said. "Check the hands. But they know you check now. They'll come clean." Lysander pushed off the wall. "Then the pollen trick is dead," he said. "They'll wash it off." Vela had her answer at last. The spy had a master, and a name. But the name was one she thought she'd caged. Severin still pulled strings, and three of his agents already walked free inside the castle, hands scrubbed clean.