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His shoulders tightened almost imperceptibly. “Yes.”

“You knew whoever sent you specifically did not want me reaching royal authority.”

A beat of silence. He let out a slow breath. “I knew the mission prohibited royal contact.”

My hands curled at my sides. “That is not the same sentence.”

He didn’t look at me. “No.”

I stepped back from the terminal.

I needed room.

The problem was that the room was suddenly full of things I had not understood before.

Every time I had asked who was after me. Every time I had asked who we could trust. Every time we found something that made the conspiracy larger. He had known one thing the entire time.

Someone was afraid of me getting to the Crown.

“You never told me.”

He didn’t answer right away. He looked at the table between us instead of at me.

“No,” he said.

“Why?”

“At first, because I did not know whether the restriction was legitimate.”

I nodded slowly, letting that sit. “At first.”

“Yes.”

That was fair. I hated that it was fair.

When Veyr found me, he thought I might actually be what the file claimed.

A thief. A security threat. Someone carrying restricted reproductive information to an unknown buyer.

Fine.

But that explanation had an expiration date.

I looked back at the terminal. “When did you know the mission was wrong?”

His eyes narrowed slightly. “You know when.”

“Say it.”

“At Bren, I knew portions of the intelligence did not fit.”

“When did you know I probably wasn’t what they said?”

“Soon after.”

“When did you know the case had been manufactured?”

“Later.”