It was said without heat. Without malice. Like so many other pronouncements about Aasha. It was spoken like a fact, which made the aim of the Spy Mistress’s words all the more cutting for their clarity.
Aasha felt as if someone had taken a flame to her patience.
“That’s…” she struggled.
She gathered her thoughts. Her self. Gauri had handled those who challenged her rule with calmness. Politeness. Vikram handled his dissenters with humor. Disbelief. But Aasha… Aasha had never wielded calm nor charm. Until Bharata, she simply confronted. She simply asked. She was just so…simple.The poisonous sneer of an adviser snuck into her thoughts:“The Lady Aasha? A disgrace. At best, she’s nothing more than a common wildflower among roses. Why the queen keeps company with her will not reflect well upon Bharata.”
Everyone had seen how well she did not fit except Gauri and Vikram.
The Spy Mistress was just like all those courtiers.
But unlike those courtiers, the Spy Mistress seemed to be angry that she was just like them… and yet she wasn’t. The Spy Mistress did not know that. She did not knowAasha.The Spy Mistress did not know that cowering came as easily as breathing to Aasha these days. She did not know that her innocence of etiquette had received a brutal training.
She did not know her.
She expected nothing.
And so she could be anyone. She could even be… herself.
“That’s… entirely wrong,” said Aasha.
The Spy Mistress froze. “What did you say?”
“You’re wrong,” said Aasha. “Wrong, wrong, wrong.”
She sang. She grinned. This was her former self—maybe her only self—breaking free.
The Spy Mistress just stared. And with every second that stretched without comment, Aasha felt as if she’d shaken off a heavy weight.
“Gauri and Vikram sent me here because they know I’m the bestequipped for the job,” said Aasha. “I want to learn. And you will train me, Spy Mistress.”
The Spy Mistress raised her eyebrow for one fleeting second, before facing the assortment of vials in front of her. She seemed to have reached a conclusion.
“Spy Mistress?” she scoffed. “What a hideous title. It’s not as though I leap from the rooftops of Bharata like a masked vigilante. I am Zahril.”
Aasha bit back a laugh.Zahril?A name that meant poison. How strange.
“As for your tenacity,” she said, nearly spitting the word. “Don’t think you’re particularly special just for being as persistent as a roach. Simply because that little show of ‘feistiness’ charmed their majesties does not mean that you’re now my star pupil.”
“But I am your pupil?” ventured Aasha.
Zahril snorted.
Aasha took this to be a yes.
“Everything in this place is more precious than your life. I can’t have you fainting. You might fall on something precious. Eat.”
Aasha hadn’t noticed the measly plate of food sitting at the end of the dining table. One would think that a place as secretly sumptuous as Zahril’s home meant that the food must be equal in glory.
One would be wrong.
There was one shallow bowl full of wilted, unseasoned vegetables, a stack of thinparatha—withoutghee, Aasha noticed with a pang—and a jug of water.
Those sumptuous food smells had been nothing more than perfume wafting from the vials that Zahril kept measuring and consulting.
As she ate, Aasha watched the Spy Mistress.
The desires of others came so easily to her that she never thought to seek them out. But with Zahril, Aasha found herself wondering. What did one eye see that the other did not? What made her stand so straight and pull her face into lines of fury? What made her… her?
