The Bloodline Of Betrayal

The wrong Question

She didn't sleep again that night.

By the time the sky started to grey at the edges, Serah had turned Renn's words over so many times they'd stopped sounding like words at all, just a low, constant hum underneath everything else she did. *He never tells her the parts that matter.* She scrubbed pots in the kitchen with her hands on autopilot and her mind three steps ahead, trying to build a version of Kael's plan that made sense of what she'd heard.

She couldn't. Every version she built collapsed under the weight of one question: if revenge wasn't the whole plan, what was she actually for?

"You're quiet today," the older kitchen woman said, setting a tray beside her. "Quieter than usual, and that's saying something."

"Didn't sleep well."

"Mm." The woman's eyes flicked toward the door, and something in her expression shifted, careful, deliberate. "Speaking of which. He's asking for you. Said to send you up when you finished the morning trays."

Serah's hands stilled. "He who?"

The woman didn't answer, just tilted her head toward the study wing, and the look on her face said she already knew exactly whose attention Serah had caught, and wasn't sure if she should be worried for her or impressed.

Ezra was at his desk this time, not the window, papers spread in front of him that he wasn't reading. He looked up when she entered, and there was none of the careful amusement from the night before. Just focus, sharp and unblinking.

"Close the door."

She did, slowly, every instinct in her sharpening at once.

"I had a man patrol the eastern corridor last night," he said. "He heard voices near the servant's stairwell. Two men. One of them left before he could get close enough to see faces." He watched her with the stillness she was starting to recognize as dangerous. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about that."

"I was asleep."

"Try again."

"I don't know what you're—"

"Mira." Her false name in his mouth had an edge to it now, worn thin from use. "I'm not asking because I think you're lying badly. I'm asking because for one night, I actually thought you might tell me the truth without me having to drag it out of you." He leaned back, and something almost like disappointment moved across his face before he shut it down. "I was wrong."

The words landed harder than they should have. She didn't have the right to feel stung by that, not from a man she was supposed to be using, not from a man whose family her mentor had sworn had slaughtered hers. And yet.

"There were men in the corridor," she said finally, low, choosing the words like they might cut her on the way out. "One of them works for Kael. I don't know why he was here. I don't know what they were talking about." That last part wasn't entirely true, but it was true enough to hold.

Something in Ezra's expression eased, fractionally, like he'd been braced for a flatter lie and gotten something closer to honesty instead.

"Kael's people, inside my territory, without my knowledge." His jaw tightened. "That's not a small thing, Mira."

"I know."

"Then you also know I can't just let that go." He stood, came around the desk, closer than strictly necessary, close enough that she had to tilt her head to hold his gaze. "So here's what's going to happen. You're going to help me find out what Kael's people are doing on my land. And in exchange, I'm going to help you find out why your own mentor doesn't trust you with the truth."

Serah's breath caught.

"How do you know he doesn't?"

"Because," Ezra said quietly, "a man who trusted his weapon wouldn't need to send someone to watch her use it."