Xara Zynthar's Arc

Chapter 16 of 16

The paper with her new title was still warm in her hand when Xara returned to her quarters. She should have felt safe. She did not. Someone on this estate had put the silk gown and the eel egg inside this room without a key, and that person had not spoken since. A title from the council would not stop a watcher from the homeworld. Until she knew who had been sending gifts, every plan she made walked out the door behind her. She set the paper on the mantel. The fireplace threw light on the shelf above it, where the glowing books leaned against each other. She had not chosen these books. They had been here when she moved in. She looked at the spines now with a different eye. Etiquette. Star-charts. A slim volume on winning a prince. Who leaves a foreign scholar a shelf like that on her first night? She pulled the thin volume down. A folded scrap fell from between the pages. Homeworld script, three lines, in a hand she did not know. "The dress fits. The eel woke. You are watched because you are worth watching." The eel in its bowl lifted its head. Behind her, the air changed. Xara turned. Verity stood by the hearth. Small, white-haired, robed in blue and gold. She had walked through no door. In the homeworld she was the story mothers told to stop children from lying — the judge who came for the false and left gifts for the true. She had already vouched for Xara once, before the prince's council. Xara had not expected to see her in a bedroom. "You," Xara said. "The gown. The egg. The books." "The gifts were mine." "Why the books on seducing a prince?" "To see which ones you opened." Xara looked at the shelf. She had not opened any of them. She had laughed at them and left them alone. "You passed," Verity said. "You've been watching me the whole time." "Yes." "For who?" "For me." Xara's shoulders dropped an inch she had not known she was holding. No handler from home. No spy waiting to report her to the council that had sent her. The watcher was the one being who had already chosen her side. She took the vial of moonlight water from the mantel and held it out. "Drink. Tell me there is no one else inside these walls sending word back." Verity took the vial. She drank. She did not blink. "No one else," she said. "You are alone in the way that matters. And not alone in the way that matters." She set the empty vial on the shelf between the books and was gone. Xara stood in the quiet. The eel turned once in its bowl. She picked up the paper with her title and walked out to find the prince. For the first time since she arrived, no one was watching her back.