"Day five." Her voice remained light. The delivery bright and informative—the careful brightness of someone holding themselves together with both hands, afraid that stopping would mean coming apart.
Octavia recognized it because she wore the same mask. She sat down at the other end of the bench from the girl. Close enough to share the space. Far enough not to crowd. She looked at the garden, not at Niara, because she understood that sometimes being looked at was its own kind of trap.
"The light here is extraordinary," Octavia said. "For painting."
Niara's head turned. The gold flecks in her eyes brightened — curiosity, bright and sudden, surfacing through the guarded stillness.
"You paint? What do you paint?"
"People. The truth about people."
"That sounds terrifying."
Octavia almost laughed. The sound caught in her throat, unfamiliar. "Most of them think so."
Niara opened her mouth—more questions forming—then closed it. The brightness dimmed. She pulled her sleeves down over her forearms and tucked her hands into the fabric, hiding the lines that didn't glow.
"I should let you explore," she said. "Nadir gets worried if I miss my noon medication."
She slipped off the bench and moved toward the garden door, passing close enough that Octavia caught her scent—soil, something green and growing, and beneath it the faint powdery coolness of skin that wasn't human.
At the doorway, Niara paused but didn't turn around.
"It's nice. That you're here." Barely audible. The musical lilt went flat and honest. "I know that's a terrible thing to say, but I’m still glad to not be alone."
She left before Octavia could answer.
Octavia sat alone on the bench beneath the silver tree, and her chest contracted around something tight and aching. She'd just met a girl half her age in a monster's garden and felt the first genuine connection she'd experienced in months, and that connection was built on shared captivity.
She went back to the studio.
Dinner arrived at the eighth hour. Skarreth did not.
Nadir laid the table in a small dining room adjacent to the kitchen—not the formal hall she'd glimpsed during her wandering of the estate, with its vaulted ceiling and table long enough to seat thirty. This was intimate. A round table. Two chairs, though only one place setting. Candles that burned without smoke, casting warm, steady light.
The food told a story. She’d been noticing it for the past two days. The way each meal arrived exactly calibrated to something she hadn’t said aloud. The broth she’d reached for first two days ago appeared again, this time paired with the flaky protein she’d finished completely and none of the vegetables she’d eaten around. Someone had been watching what she left on the plate. She lifted the glass of amber liquid — honey and spice, warm through the ceramic. She’d finished it both previous nights without comment.
It appeared again tonight.
She set it down without drinking and looked at the food for a long moment. It had been designed with attention. Built around knowledge acquired without her permission. It was thoughtful in the way a trap could be thoughtful.
She ate everything anyway. Her body had no interest in making a point.
Zenith rolled into the room and stationed herself near the sideboard, her single optical lens swiveling to track Octavia's hands as they moved from plate to glass and back. A soft, quick two-note beep. Rising. Almost melodic.
"She says she's pleased you're eating," Nadir said from the doorway. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, the lamplight deepening the copper of his skin and throwing an oddly shaped scar on his neck into relief. "She was concerned you wouldn't."
"The food is delicious. Thank you, Zenith.” She lifted her gaze back to the butler. “Who planned this meal?"
Nadir's expression revealed nothing. He had spent decades mastering the art of the non-answer.
"The kitchen staff are attentive to guests' needs, Mistress."
"That's not what I asked."
The inner eyelids flickered. Brief. Translucent. Gone.
"No," he agreed. "It isn't."
