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“Kipa, you'll keep my dinner with Grace tonight or I'll poison your food.”

Kipa grinned for a second before she laughed, like Martine had passed a test, and the laugh was as genuine as Kipa's laugh had ever been. Grace laughed too, and leaned in to look at the calendar Kipa was holding out. Across Kipa's turned back, Martine looked over at Suyana with a face
Suyana was coming to know, and sparked the fake cigarette in her pocket before it was even all the way to her lips.

× × × × × × ×

“Stevens sent me a very polite, horrible message wondering how long you intend to wear the ring,” Magnus said.

They were at home, and nightfall made her feel almost at ease with Magnus, so she was able to give that notice the expression it deserved.

“That's what I said,” Magnus assured her. “In the nicest possible way. You're a widow until you decide to stop.”

She heard the question in it. “I'll give it up in New York next year, when everything's settled. Right now it's useful for Grace, and for Leili.”

Leili had arrived in the middle of the chaos that first morning in chambers, and Suyana realized Magnus had been right about her when Stevens caught her up on what had happened in a few breathless sentences, clearly guiding America away from the mess as soon as some method could be established, and instead Leili had walked onstage in front of live worldwide cameras to meet Suyana.

It had been a hug rather than a handshake—Suyana didn't blame her, with the blood—and Leili had said, “On behalf of the United States, I'm so sorry for your loss. He was always so kind to me,” with her voice trembling at the end, and looked down at Suyana's hands like it was
Ethan's blood. (Suyana would have ruined it, if she'd been able to speak.)

The cameras had loved it all. If Margot had stood a chance at defending Ethan's disappearance at the tribunal before that, it vanished after the new American Face consoled the grieving widow.

Suyana was planning a trip to Tivoli with Leili after the Paris session broke for holidays. There was no question of Suyana going home; they were sending a new Face to replace her (Brazilian, apparently, and charming), and her services were no longer domestically required. It stung less than she'd feared. As director of intelligence, it was better not to have a place that mattered more than another. Better not to have anything to hold on to.

She couldn't actually enjoy herself at Tivoli either, of course—she was a widow for a while, and there was a period of mourning to observe. But so far the only times she and Leili had been photographed together were on the IA stage and at Ethan's funeral, back in some United States desert. That image was useful, but it had to change, slowly, before the public decided she was too busy mourning to be doing her job. At Tivoli, she could smile as Leili enjoyed herself, and stand in flattering light looking like the battle-­hardened guardian of the next generation, and it would work just as well for what they needed it to do. Letting go
of grief and becoming unknowable, one photo op at a time.

(Daniel had been cremated, after the
HERO BYSTANDER MURDERED BY BLOODTHIRSTY DICTATOR
headlines had calmed down and no one would care what happened to him. Suyana had thought of putting his ashes in the courtyard of her building, but it seemed presumptive. She'd given all but a lipstick-case's worth to Bo. He told her he and Kate and Li Zhao had scattered most of them in the Seine; she didn't ask about the rest. Her lipstick-case's worth had been buried under a loose cobblestone of an alley next to a little hotel no one thought of very much.)

“I suspect Leili will be asking for a change of handlers soon,” Magnus said, satisfied with his deductions. He'd resigned from the UARC diplomatic office to assist her in her new position. He hadn't told her until it was over; she'd accepted his offer without asking him why.

“How?”

“She'll stage some girlish whim that will cast this whole lot out and give her a chance to hire some people who are slightly better at keeping their Face alive.”

Suyana's throat had gone dry. It happened a lot, these days, when she thought about Ethan or Daniel, or Kipa, or Chordata, or all the altars people made for themselves to sacrifice on.

“Magnus.” He looked up. “I never thanked you for your help, with—that day we built the vote.”

His expression was tinged with something softer these days than just circumspection—not quite fondness, but close. “I know you aren't likely to believe it, but it was my pleasure.”

Their new flat (they had moved up in the world again) opened onto a view of the quiet green courtyard below, trees and birds and all, and Suyana looked out at it until her vision blurred and she'd built up the courage to hear the worst.

“Who appointed you?”

He set down his tablet and sat back in his chair, and she watched him and prepared to spot the lie when he said he'd been approached by the Staffing Committee by chance, or whatever other lie Margot had told him to say.

He said, “Hakan.”

There had been a time she'd have hit him for that. Even now she felt slightly like a traitor just for sitting still. But when she stared at him, he only shrugged.

“That's a cruel thing to say.” She felt so old, and it was a hard name to hear.

“But it's true.” He watched her, steady and earnest and with that knack he had for seeming somehow beleaguered in the midst of peace and plenty. “He called me a month or so before . . . he disappeared. He'd known me when I washed out of IA training and knew I was looking for a way in on the handling side. He was afraid something was going to happen
to him, he said, and afraid Margot would put someone of her choice in his office. He wanted someone who seemed amenable to suggestion and made Margot comfortable, so she wouldn't feel the need to replace whoever followed him with someone else she chose.”

As if from underwater, she said, “But he had no pull over the Staffing Committee.”

“I'm a little insulted you think I don't know how to rig interviews in my favor.”

She cleared her throat. “Did he—did he ever say—”

“He never told me anything, if he knew. I have some guesses—don't look at me that way, Suyana, I'm not asking any questions—but he kept his own counsel.”

She was nodding; she couldn't stop nodding. “You never said.”

“If I had told you, before all of this, ‘Don't worry, you can trust me, Hakan knew you could,' what would you have done?”

The silence answered him, and the edges of his mouth thinned even as he raised his eyebrows and dropped them again, putting himself silently in his place. “It was bad enough to demonstrate loyalty before the assassination attempt; you wouldn't hear it. After that it was hopeless. I was very nearly grateful to Margot when she came after you again, honestly. I never thought you'd trust me enough to ask for help.”

The room had closed in on her, and it was too small and filled with his voice and his calm reasoning and all the things they would never say. She opened her mouth to breathe, made a noise like she'd been punched in the stomach, turned as much as she could to shield her face. This wasn't for Magnus; this wasn't his fault or his payment; she just couldn't breathe, that was all, it got so hard to breathe sometimes.

The front door closed so quietly she barely heard it beside the drum of her pulse, but when she was alone, she sobbed her throat raw. Eventually there was nothing left but the sound of it and her trembling shoulders, and a little behind her were the phantom footsteps she'd know from anywhere as Hakan's, whenever he was passing her open office door while she was at work, looking in on her to make sure she was all right.

× × × × × × ×

Bo was waiting for her outside. “Blackout,” he said, as soon as she was in hearing. Suyana didn't trust it—just because Li Zhao had told Bo he was off-line didn't mean she wasn't gathering evidence as fast as she could—but that was a problem that could be negotiated later (exclusives could always be reassigned to another agency), and in the meantime you could convince a snap to be loyal to you, same as anyone.

She nodded. “Good to see you.” She said it every time,
felt slightly like a fool every time. But he was an asset, and she'd say it until it wasn't true.

He fell in beside her, moving half a step ahead to help her cut through the crowd, and steering her away from any streets that didn't have escape routes. They didn't talk much; she suspected he wasn't naturally chatty any more than she was, even if Daniel's ghost wasn't hanging in the empty space between them. Bo had talked about him once or twice, and Suyana had tried to smile, to encourage him, but then Bo stopped mentioning him and there had been nothing since.

Fair enough. If it hurt, she wouldn't make him; if it was her turn to talk about Daniel, she couldn't. She could operate in silences as well as any snap.

Bo left her at the edge of the perfume department, so stoically pained by the olfactory overload that Suyana spared him a smile. “I don't know how long I'll be.”

“I'll find you.” From him it never sounded like the threat it would be from anyone else.

The old steadies that ringed the wall of the perfume section were comforting, even if it made her feel silly to notice them—it had been a year, not ten. The new scents were scattered among overwrought displays that featured pristinely white models and Elysian scenery and die-cut tendrils to demonstrate just how much of spring could be yours if you
wore Lily Soleil.

Suyana had never much been interested in spring. She sniffed two that smelled like citrus, which was better, and one that smelled like a fired gun that she set down too quickly.

She was trying to decide on one that smelled like a forest floor and reminded her of graves when a voice at her elbow said, “Morbid, but I understand.”

Zenaida was somehow shorter than Suyana remembered, but her eye was keener, and she looked Suyana up and down with an assessment so frank Suyana had to resist the urge to reach up and see if the makeup had dropped off her under-eye circles. (Zenaida noticed the ring—her eye lingered on it two seconds too long—but she said nothing.) Suyana steeled herself and waited for the judgment, or the joking smile.

But none came. Zenaida shook her head slowly, and then at last she said, “My girl, when Onca said you'd asked for me, I didn't—it's so very good to see you.”

It was a technique: designed to make Suyana miss her, to build trust again, to force Suyana into the first overtures of affection so she would remember why she'd belonged to them once and maybe even come back to the fold; so she wouldn't betray Chordata to the Committee and do to them what she was capable of doing. But Suyana didn't care, and when they embraced, Zenaida hugged Suyana back hard enough that her knife wound stung.

She let it go on as long as she dared. Then she collected
herself and smoothed her coat. (She was on camera eight hours a day now, minimum—wrinkles were something she couldn't afford.)

“I hope you have some information for me. I'd like for us to be on good terms, but I have a new position, and you owe me.”

“Yes, Lachesis.” Zenaida's smile was polite, with something else beneath it. “I've been told.”

It's Aurelia now, Suyana almost said; I swallowed the cruelty, and now I'm invisible and hide a hundred stings. But there was so much comfort in the old name from a voice she thought she'd never hear again.

She only said, “And they're unhappy?”

“I've been told.”

Suyana thought about being the sort of person who got sought out, who let people think you were loyal because it suited them. She half smiled, like it was an accident. “I see.”

Zenaida's smile only got bigger, and she picked up the glass bottle and let the scent of the forest floor mist around them. “You should get this,” she said. “Heaven knows you have the money, and it must be useful to smell like you've been burying enemies.”

Suyana picked up the box and followed Zenaida to the next display like a trail of smoke. The smile was still on her
face. It barely hurt.

“So,” said Zenaida, peering at a perfume that looked like a wedding in a bottle, “I have a list of things I'm allowed to tell you, but I think we can agree that it's easier to just be honest, between ourselves. What would you like to know?”

Everything, Suyana thought, and began.

This book is, as books tend to be, the product of more people's love than just the author's. Thanks to Navah, whose enthusiasm for
Persona
and its characters made this book possible. Thanks to Joe and Saga Press for championing it. Thanks to my agent, Barry, for his advocacy and advice. And deepest thanks to Stephanie, Elizabeth, Kelly, Libby, Sonia, and Nora, who were selfless in contributing their time and thoughts to
Persona
and
Icon
; it means more than I can say.