Varroque's question was a physical thing, a baited hook hanging in the dry, dust-choked air of the office. It snagged on Isadora's soul, pulling her from the numb, silent depths where she'd been drowning. Trojan horse, or valuable asset?
Her life, she knew with a sickening, cold-slithering certainty, hinged on the words that would next leave her mouth.
The shock had been a blanket, muffling the world. The raw, bleeding wound of Orrenai's betrayal had left her hollow. But now, under the weight of this ancient creature's gaze—a gaze as sharp and patient as a scalpel—the numbness receded. In its place rose the familiar, arctic clarity of survival. Her mind, her greatest and perhaps only true weapon, began to whir back to life. It sifted through lies and half-truths, through fragments of fear and desperation, constructing a new performance. A new mask.
She was Isadora Wren, a master of her craft. The stage had just changed.
