The heavy curtains were drawn, plunging the Duke's private study into a suffocating, dark environment. It smelled of old leather and beeswax.
"It's madness, Theo! You're speaking treason. We... we agreed it was just... her affliction. From the trauma." Kaelen's voice was too loud for the space.
He was on his feet, his hand resting on the hilt of his trainee sword a nervous habit. He was the emotional one.
"Was it?" Theo's voice was quiet, which was always so much worse. He stood by my father's massive oak desk, his back to me. He wouldn't look at me.
"Was it really, Kaelen? Or was that just the story we told ourselves?" He was staring at a piece of scorched parchment as if it were a confession.
"We all knew," he whispered.
"We've known since she was twelve. The girl who woke up from that fall... she wasn't the same."
I held my breath, a practiced technique. My heart rate remained a steady sixty beats per minute. I was seated in the high backed leather chair, the only one of us comfortable enough to sit. This was an inconvenience. I had done this dance for eight years.
Ever since the fall. I had been twelve years old, the pampered, loud, emotional daughter of a Duke, and when I "woke," the girl "Seraphina" was gone.
In her place was... me. A thirty five year old professional hitman, a ghost who'd died long ago in a hail of gunfire, now trapped in the body of an adolescent. It had been the most difficult infiltration of my career. I'd had to learn how to be a teenager. I'd had to perform "Seraphina." My "antics" and "odd humors" were the perfect cover, a diagnosis they'd all clung to because the alternative was unthinkable.
They'd rationalized my detachment as trauma. My unnatural stillness as a side effect of the illness. My... successes... as strange, eccentric luck. Until now, apparently.
"Elara?" Kaelen pleaded, turning to the girl huddled by the window. She clutched a book to her chest.
"Tell him. It's just... it's just Sera. She's... different I know. But she's Sera." Elara flinched.
She was looking at me, her eyes wide with a new, uncertain look.
"Remember... remember three years ago? At the summer vermone? When that hunting dog was savaged by the stag?" I remembered. The exposed musculature. The efficient way my stag used its tines. A perfect, clean kill. I had taken notes.
"We... we all ran," Elara whispered, tears welling.
"You told us later you were... frozen in fear. We believed you. But you weren't frozen, were you? You... you didn't cry. You didn't even look away. You just... watched. Like you were... studying."
Of course I was studying. An attack vector is an attack vector. Information is ammunition.
"That's not-" Kaelen tried, but Theo cut him off, slamming his palm on the desk.
"It is! Don't you see? It's all of it!" Theo finally spun around, his face furious, now looking directly at me.
"All the 'incidents' we explained away! The way you knew my father's spymaster was lying about the grain shipments. I thought it was a lucky guess! But it was calculation, wasn't it? The way Lord Morlag's 'finest' assassin was found dead in the kennels, and how you mysteriously disappear?!" His voice was rising, cracking.
"We thought you were suffering. We thought you were a victim of abuse by your dad. But you've been... you've been managing us. like a wolf in sheep's clothing. All of it. All eight years." He held up the scorched parchment.
"My source... the one who gave me this... he said the fever claimed her, and the thing that woke up... the thing that has been living with us... is just wearing her face. He called you... 'Viper.'"
My eyes widen as. That word. That name. A name that hadn't been spoken in this world. A name that shouldn't exist here. Gods, I'm tired. Eight years of this.
Eight years of holding my breath, of managing assets, of performing. And the worst part? The lines were blurring. The original "Sera's" memories her childish laughter, her genuine fondness for these fools they'd started seeping back in, mixing in with me. I wasn't just a ghost in a shell anymore. I was...
a muddled, monstrous hybrid. Even I didn't know who I was supposed to be in this moment. But this... this name... this was a direct threat to both of us. This wasn't a leak. This was... something else. For the first time in eight years, my mask wasn't just on it was me. I gave them nothing. I didn't flinch. I didn't gasp. I didn't deny. I just... met his gaze.
They saw how still I was. My silence. And it shattered their last remaining hope. This wasn't the eccentric, "afflicted" girl they'd tried to protect. This was a stranger.
Kaelen's hand, the one on his sword, shaking. Elara was openly crying. Theo's face crumpled, his certainty bringing him no victory, only grief. as he looked at the fiery sharp tongued, passionate girl he thought he grew up with. He looked at me, the cold, silent thing sitting in the chair.
"Sera..." he whispered, his voice breaking. "Seraphina... are you really... you?"