Kasira actually flinched. Even without the magic, she could feel Allaster’s disdain. He refused to look at her, but she could see it in theset of his shoulders, in the trembling of his tight fists. Her reasons would mean nothing to him. They meant nothing to her, just as this entire charade shouldn’t. What did she care if Allaster was angry with her?
Vera’s undoing all your work, she told herself.He might trust you aren’t hers, but he will hate you for this.
Lie, echoed back her thoughts.
“Let me make myself very clear.” Allaster’s voice sounded off. There was an undercurrent to it, a rumbling like a gathering storm, and when he spoke, she swore she saw the flash of fangs. “Kasira belongs to me.”
He unclenched his hand to reveal a key, and she realized he must have grabbed it when he shoved Dessen. He tossed it to her, and she undid the cuff. The magic came back to her in a gentle rush, subduing the rising pain in her ribs as bone knit back together.
The look of rigid civility that hardened Vera’s face was flawless. Kasira had thought her an enthusiast of the art of deception, but she realized now the Ambassador was every bit a practitioner as her. “I will consider this a great transgression, Librarian,” Vera warned as though this were not the very thing she wanted. “We will not accept it quietly.”
Allaster ripped open the portal room door to Kalthos. “Kindlyget the fuck outof my Library.”
With a wave of his hand, the floor tilted sharply upward, sending the whole delegation stumbling through the open door. He slammed it shut behind them.
The silence that followed their departure was suffocating. It tightened about her throat like a noose until she could bear it no longer.
“Allaster—” She reached out a hand.
He rounded on her at last, and suddenly, she wished he hadn’t. The pain in his eyes cut at something inside her, something that shouldn’t have any room left to feel such things. “I trusted you. Against every ounce of logic and fiber of my being,I trusted you. And this is what I get? Abeast slayer?”
“Let me explain.” She reached for him again, but he tore away.
“I’ve had enough of your lies.”
“Then I’ll give you the truth,” she said, and some deep, twistedpart of her wished it were not another trick. Wished she could just be honest for once in her life. “Please. I need you to understand.”
Allaster’s entire body shook. She could feel the rage inside him through the magic, could feel it burn—then still. He snapped his fingers and the world turned, refocusing into his study. He went straight for the decanters of whiskey lining the mantel.
He summoned a glass. “You have five minutes.”
It wasn’t enough time, but then again, she didn’t think there would ever be enough. She had asked for this chance, but what could she possibly say? She deserved every ounce of Allaster’s ire. She had lied to him, betrayed him, endangered everything he cared for, and now she was going to do it all again.
Vera wouldn’t have let Allaster claim her if she thought Kasira would reveal her plans, which meant exposing Kasira’s identity was part of her strategy. If Kasira was right, then Vera expected her to be able to claw her way back from this, to mend this broken trust. But Vera underestimated Allaster. This would not be fixed easily, and some part of Kasira wanted to let it break, to sunder it again and again until every piece of it lay shattered at his feet.
But if she told Allaster the real truth, that she had been a pawn of Vera’s all along, he would never trust her. He would turn her right back over to Vera and take his chances with another, and her freedom, her promise, her life—they would be swallowed by the darkness.
She didn’t have a choice.
She didn’t know what she would do if she did.
“I killed Gievra’s mother,” Kasira said at last, relinquishing a different burden. “My Malik unit attacked a pride, and I didn’t realize why the mother hadn’t run until it was too late.”
Allaster snorted derisively and downed the entire drink he’d poured. “You shouldn’t have been there to begin with. None of you should have. But you don’t care about the beasts, just like you don’t care about the Library.”
“You don’t know what it’s like!” Her voice pitched without her permission, and she strangled it back into submission. “I never wantedto be a beast hunter. I’m a con artist, a thief, not a soldier. But I didn’t have a choice.”
The look he gave her told her she was lying to herself if she believed that. Maybe she was. Maybe there was always a choice, and sometimes people just chose themselves; and maybe some choices weren’t really choices at all, but illusions people fed themselves to justify their actions. She no longer knew how to tell the difference.
“I had been in Belvar for three years,” she said. “In solitary. No light. No sound. Nothing, forthree years. I couldn’t do it anymore. I made a deal in exchange for entering the work-release program. They sent me to the Malikinar.”
The truth was a con artist’s last resort. Eirlana was gone. The things she was telling him, they were all Kasira, and saying them aloud scared her. These were things she hadn’t shared with another living soul. But if she couldn’t fix this now, her con would be at an end.
“That doesn’t make what you did right.” Allaster poured himself another whiskey.
She gave a mirthless laugh. “Survival doesn’t care about what’s right.”
The world wasn’t built for people like her to live—only to die—and it took everything she had just to refuse it that. The things she had done, the life she’d lived—it had been as much of a choice as the world had given her.
