Rules for Spies

13

Rhysand is skeptical when Gwyn outlines her breakthrough, until she unlocks the shield to his mind. It's still disconcerting to see the blank look on his face, but it helps when Azriel suggests a command -- tell him to say Azriel will win the snowball fight this year -- and winks at her as Rhysand repeats the words. Gwyn can feel the High Lord's resistance to speak as she wills, but her power is enough to compel the statement from him easily.

"And it's only the shadows that you can compel to sing?" Rhysand asks, once her power is silenced and his mind is his own.

"We haven't tried anything else," Gwyn says, and for a moment it's Merrill in front of her, about to enumerate her many grievous mistakes. Then she feels Azriel's hand on her shoulder.

"Gwyn only had this idea yesterday. You can see it works. It will be enough for us to question Merrill and get the information we need."

"And for Koschei?"

Gwyn feels the weight of the High Lord's gaze on her shoulder, Azriel's Siphon glinting cobalt light onto her hair. She tells herself that she was just inside the High Lord's mind and forces herself to meet his eyes, to make her voice confident.

"We'll know once we question Merrill," she says.

"We need to know what she knows as soon as possible."

There's a change in Rhysand's manner as he says these words, something charged.

"What happened?" Azriel asks. His fingers press a little harder against her armor.

"Eris sent a message while you were away. Beron is making ready to visit the continent."

"You should have told us as soon as you heard."

Gwyn has never heard anyone speak to the High Lord the way that Azriel does now, with a growl in his voice.

"I should have," Rhysand says, a barbed admission. "But I needed to keep Velaris from getting caught in the shitstorm your father threatened to raise while you determined whether Gwyn could handle the remainder of the mission."

"I can handle this mission," she says, before Azriel can speak, fighting against everything in her that wants to feel small. Trying to remind herself that this isn't about her, that Koschei is holding women captive, both by the lake and likely all over their world. That the High Lord isn't trying to hurt her feelings. Still, it's an effort to keep from giving in to her disappointment.

"I'll be in the field with you," Azriel says, his voice low in her ear, as if they're still alone. Even though she knows that Rhysand is the one they need to convince, she likes that he speaks to her like she's the one who matters, who ranks, even though she knows that's not true.

"You've found an elegant solution, Gwyn," Rhysand adds, and he speaks again in the voice she knows from her training. But it changes as he looks over her shoulder, and asks to speak with Azriel, who nods and follows the High Lord out of the room.

Gwyn is left alone for maybe ten minutes, but the time feels endless, the way it used to feel when she went on walks outside the library. She can hear every rustle, every footstep, in the estate around her, but she cannot hear Rhysand's voice, or Azriel's, and that grates at her, that they would leave her alone in the silent room with its soft furniture and the portraits on the wall that seem to watch her, ready to report if she steps one foot out of line.

She should be grateful, she reminds herself. The High Lord helped to save her from Hybern. He had the idea to include her on this mission, and he's spent all these hours training her when he almost certainly has better things to do.