Phoebe hugged her knees close to her chest, trying to resist the urge to rock back and forth. She knew there were guards posted outside the cell block, but she couldn’t see them from inside the bars. It felt like she had been left here to die.
Phoebe got up again, brushing oP her trousers and shaking out her legs. She had been alternating between sitting and walking, always in motion—or however much motion she could manage in the tiny box of a prison cell. She could pace from one wall to the other in two steps. It wasn’t satisfying in the slightest. If they were going to do something, she wished they would go on and do it faster. Was the purpose of leaving her in here some sort of psychological torture?
The moment Phoebe had called Silas “Magician,” he had spun on his heel and exited the cell block. No questions, no pleas, nary a single request for information. He’d just… left.
Phoebe didn’t know what to think. Didn’t he care?
As if summoned by her thoughts, there was a sudden clang in the cell block. Phoebe lunged for the bars, pressing up against the metal. So far none of the other Nationalists had come to speak to her. Her identity was still intact—her face still covered by a swath of fabric.
A 1gure approached. Silas. He was back.
Phoebe’s grip closed upon the bars tightly. She squeezed tightly enough to send sparks of pain shooting up and down her arms.
“Keep it shut,” he was saying to the guards at the door. “Don’t let anyone else in.”
The door thudded behind him. It was only them in the cell block; it was Phoebe and Silas, both of whom knew nothing about each other, apparently,
despite all the years together stacked behind them.
Silas had changed. Swapped out the uniform for civilian gear. Had he left the facility? Reported to her mother, given her Oliver’s blood?
When he stopped in front of the bars, Phoebe’s 1rst instinct was to reach her arm out, ask for comfort. She stayed pressed close, playing a game with herself to see how long she could delude herself. She could pretend that they were about to go on an outing. That she was not waiting in a prison cell but at the end of her driveway, letting Silas walk up to her with an endearing smile.
“You have multiple charges of killing state officials,” Silas started in lieu of a greeting. “That’s high treason, Feiyi.”
Phoebe stayed quiet for a moment. Then: “I know, Xielian. That’s kind of the point of doing it under a secret identity.”
His gaze sharpened. The moment their eyes locked, there was no chance of shaking loose.
“How can you act so Aippant about this? You committed treason.”
“Are you really speaking to me about treason right now?” Phoebe exclaimed. She had never felt anger surging to life like this before, nor had she spoken to Silas with such intense wrath. In a sudden motion, Phoebe lunged her arm through the bars, but instead of a tender request for comfort, she was practically frothing at the mouth, her 1ngers Aexing in hopes that she could grasp his neck and claw blood out of him. “You betrayed us! You’re working with my mother!”
Silas reared back. He didn’t deny it.
“We’re exchanging crimes now, are we?” His volume was rising too. “Warehouse 34 was you. Each of those notes was you. You let me believe in Priest when all along you knew better.”
“And didn’t I try to tell you?” Phoebe returned. “I warned you oP her from the very beginning.”
“You could have said why.”
“No, I couldn’t.” Phoebe snatched her arm back. The inside of her elbow was stinging, but she didn’t know where she had scratched it. “You would have turned me in. You would have gone running to your superiors immediately.”
His jaw twitched. He almost appeared oPended at her claim. “I wouldn’t have.”
“You goddamn”—Phoebe kicked the bars—“liar!”
Her echo rang through the whole cell block. Silas turned away then, facing the other wall and sending his arduous sigh in that direction.
“Fair enough that you don’t know me,” he said, trying to keep his temper in check. He wanted to preserve the dynamic they had shared their whole lives, but Phoebe had come in swinging, determined to tear it apart. “Apparently, I don’t know anything about you either. How much of it was an act, Feiyi? How much more have you lied about?”
Phoebe’s breath quickened, almost gasping in her small space. These questions felt out of place, as if he was owed an explanation. Her entire eighteen years were built from fragmented pieces. Was that what he wanted to hear? She knew her likes and dislikes, enjoyed piecing together puzzles, and excelled at being an illusion for others. She didn’t want a life bound by convention or respectable society. She loved strawberries and loathed orange. She had enough of a personality to feel real, yet when asked who she was and what she believed in, Hong Feiyi was just a single piece of a constructed image, shattered and reshaped for different people until she lost track of where each fragment belonged.
There was no complete picture, because no one would care to know her that deeply. “All of it was an act,” she shot back, bitterness lacing her words. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“False,” Silas replied instantly, pivoting sharply to face her again. “I know Priest.”
Phoebe clenched her jaw. “She’s a creation.”
“And she is you. You never let me express what I thought of her. If you’d listened, you’d believe me. Maybe I don’t know Phoebe, but I know Priest.”
Silas moved closer, approaching the bars of her cell, his intensity rippling through the air, a stark contrast to the boy she had always known—the one she helped with his glasses. Did he mean to intimidate her? He had always treated Phoebe with care, never scolding her, and she had always kept up her facade to avoid confrontation. Now both their illusions lay in ruins. Bombs were falling from the sky, shattering the world around them.
march was trying to raze the city, and yet somehow it was this—it was Phoebe with her insides laid in full view before Silas—that threatened to undo her.
She hated this feeling. She might as well be a child again. Some sniveling, peevish toddler who didn’t know when to stop crying, who couldn’t control how other people perceived her.
“To tell the truth,” Silas said, “at some point I stopped thinking about bringing Priest in as a matter of the mission. A fanatic, twisted part of me just wanted to meet her. The girl who kept slipping from my grasp. The girl who laughed at a joke she told while passing classi1ed information.” He paused. Swallowed. “You were right. There was no reality where 1nding Priest would have helped us get Orion back. I was trying to fool myself. Justify my own longing.”
She felt no satisfaction hearing him admit this. Phoebe had told him, after all, and it hadn’t been enough.
“Right,” she said. “Priest was a dead end. So you turned to working for my mother instead.”
Silas didn’t Ainch. If anything, he only bristled, his arms folding behind him. “You can work for the other side, but I can’t?”
“What are you talking about?” Phoebe demanded. “I was protecting Orion!” “And I was getting Orion back.”
“By betraying our country—”
A door slammed loudly at the other end of the cell block. Though Phoebe barely registered the sound, Silas looked up quickly, a Aash of fear crossing his brow.
“Keep that on,” he hissed, gesturing to the fabric over her face. “Don’t say anything. Understand?”
Phoebe remained silent. Another man came within view, and she inched farther from the bars, creating distance as if she were the one outside the cage and there were barely contained predators prowling the other side.
The man wore a uniform. Some general, Phoebe decided, gauging by his medals and ribbons. He looked an awful lot like her father, though they all did. Beyond their stature, they tended to share the same demeanor, too. The same glaze in his eye when looking at a mere girl on the other side of the bars.
“Any 1ndings yet?” he asked Silas.
Silas took a moment to gather himself. To any other observer, he was only slow in his reply. Phoebe, meanwhile, caught the clench of his 1sts. The double inhale before he breathed out.
“No. You can leave this to me.”
Her torture, he meant. Information extraction in the way the Nationalists were best known for.
“All right,” the general said easily. He eyed Phoebe again. She resisted the urge to move, to do anything that might indicate some sort of discomfort. “Shouldn’t be too hard. You’ll want her out for the count 1rst, of course.”
Before Phoebe could step away, the man withdrew a metallic instrument from his belt, shaking it once to bring out its electric end. The weapon hummed. Her heart dropped into her stomach. Though she had thought herself prepared, the moment he shoved it through the bars and made contact with her arm, her world turned white-blue, entirely unfathomable.
Phoebe held in her scream. She took the pain, as silent as the shroud of death, as soundless as the mists Aoating into the city.
Then she dropped to the cold cell Aoor.
