His jaw shifted. “Why?”
“I didn’t—” She stopped herself, swallowing back the words.I didn’t have a choice.But she had, and she had chosen not to trust Allaster. She had chosen to handle everything herself, to do what she thought was best for herself and no one else. Because if she didn’t, ifshedidn’t choose herself, no one would.
“Because,” she began again, “I don’t know how to do anything else but lie. I’m—I’m broken, Allaster. The things that are wrong with me … I don’t know how to fix them.”
Never in her life had she felt so exposed as she did in that moment beneath his silver gaze. Not even at the orphanage, when her truth had made her different enough that she had been treated like a beast herself. What was it about feeling vulnerable that scared her so? She could play a thousand roles, don a hundred different faces, and never once feel out of place.
Perhaps that was the problem. She was so used to being someone else that she no longer recognized herself. She had cloaked herself in lies and falsehoods, built them into an impenetrable armor so strong, nothing could get through. The trouble was, armor didn’t only keep things out—it kept them in. She had buried her truth so deep she had forgotten it, and now the idea of exposing it, of laying it bare before another’s eyes, terrified her.
“You’ve been one thing for so long you don’t know how to be another,” he said quietly. “It was easier to just keep making the same choices.”
“You sound familiar with the concept.”
He didn’t smile, only ran an agitated hand through his hair. “And the Conclave? Why go through with it if you only intended to undermine it?”
“Because Vera threatened the Library,” she replied. “If she couldn’t take it through the Conclave, she would have taken it by force and ensured that you and May didn’t survive. I needed her to succeed. It was the only way to trick her into betraying herself before the King.”
Kasira had never relied on external players in a con before. Thane had taught her that. But then he had tricked her with Vera on the rooftop, and she had started to wonder if there weren’t a better way to play this. After she had healed enough, she had gone straight to the portal room to send the letters to Lady Nyelle and King Carthur with her plan.
Allaster’s sigh was a thousand feet deep. “I suppose you couldn’t have told me about your plan and had it work. I’m a terrible actor. Vera would have seen straight through me.” She winced, and his face grew resigned. “You thought of that, didn’t you? Of course you did.”
“Vera could have turned the Conclave against both of us,” Kasira said. “The only reason she didn’t is because she intended to use me as Librarian to facilitate her takeover of the Library.”
“Naturally.”
Silence pooled between them. For once, she had nothing to say, no story to tell. The truth didn’t need adornment and crafting. It was bare and it was stark, though it was never simple. She only prayed that it was enough.
“I can go, if you want,” she said when she couldn’t take the quiet any longer. “I’ll give you back my magic and leave.”
Still, he said nothing. Only sat with his hands clasped atop his knees and stared at the rings on his fingers as if they might offer some answer he could not reach. He spun one, and she watched it turn with her breath a fist in her throat.
“What made you change your mind?” He broke the silence. “Why did you choose the Library?”
She quivered, the question touching on the rawest parts of her. “You asked me once what my dream was. I lied when I told you I didn’t have one.”
His lips quirked. “I know. I’ve known every time you’ve lied to me, though I didn’t realize it until that moment in the cell.”
She recoiled. “But … why?”
“Why did I let you stay when I didn’t trust you?” he asked. “Because when you told me you cared for the beasts, when you told me you wanted to look after Gievra and that you loved reading and were fascinated by the Library, you weren’t lying then.”
His words sank in slowly, settling in all the empty places inside her. In a way, Allaster had known the real her all along.
Tell me one true thing about yourself.
“I don’t remember my family.” The words took something from her to say, but she said them anyway. “They were killed in a fire when I was very young. There was a picture on our wall. It’s one of the few things I do remember. A cottage by a lake. It gave me a sense of … peace. On the streets, when things were at their worst, I would think about that painting. It got me through Belvar. I think I spent my whole life trying to find that peace, and I finally did. Here, at the Library.”
With you.
And it had scared her, like it always scared her when she got tooclose. Becoming a mage had been a faraway dream, a reverie so far out of reach that, when the world beat it down inside her, she let it stay there, coiled in the dark. She was a con artist, not a mage. A thief and a liar, capable of nothing more than what her nature made her.
She did not deserve this, but she would not turn away from it. If Allaster would let her, she would make herself worthy of it every day.
“I stayed because I care about this place.” Kasira’s voice softened. “I care about you.”
Truth, beat her heart.
He looked at her then, a grief she couldn’t explain laid bare in his gaze. The crackle of his voice startled her with how raw it was. “You are not the only one who’s lied.”
