He found her alone, which was the version he had been waiting for.

Not because he needed privacy for what he was going to say — he had said most of it before, in various forms, and she had heard it. But because the version he wanted to say now required her full attention, without Alden in the periphery to recalibrate how she received things.

The staff tea room in the Ash Annex was empty at the mid-morning break. She was there alone with a cup of the bad tea, writing in her ledger. She looked up when he came in and her expression did not change in the way that would have indicated surprise or pleasure — it changed in the way that indicated she had been half-expecting him and was updating the timing.

He sat across from her and did not open with pleasantries, because they had known each other too long for pleasantries to function as anything other than delay.

“You met with Maris Vaelor,” he said.

“How do you know that?”

“I know most of what happens in the High Ring boundary zone. I have reasons to track movement in that area.” He paused. “What did she give you?”

“Something from the House Vaelor archive. I'm not going to tell you specifically what until I understand why you're asking.”

He accepted this. It was, he thought, the correct response to his question.

“Maris Vaelor,” he said, “has spent thirty years being carefully good in ways that did not require her to confront anything specific about her family. If she's suddenly willing to hand things over from the Vaelor archive, I'd want to understand what changed.”

“People can change,” Seren said.

“People can also be given reasons to act in ways that serve larger interests than the ones they think they're serving.” He looked at her. “I'm not saying she's lying to you. I'm saying that information that arrives conveniently is worth examining.”

She looked at him with the expression she used when she was processing something seriously. He knew that expression. He had catalogued it over twenty years.

“You're saying I should be more skeptical,” she said.

“I'm saying you trust Alden,” he said. “And you have reasons for that. But you found out what he is through records you dug up yourself. Everything you built, you built from evidence you gathered independently.” He kept his voice even. “The thing with Maris came to you. You didn't find it.”

“That's true,” she said.

“And the thing with Alden — the mark on his shoulder, the things it does to the seals in the city infrastructure —” He paused. “Have you thought about what happens if the person you're protecting isn't just the person you grew up with? If there are interests around him that you're not seeing?”

She was quiet.

Cassian looked at his tea. He had not drunk any of it. “Person you think is standing with you might have a door you don't know about. That's all. You built everything on your own judgment. Don't stop using it now.”

“Why are you saying this?” she asked.

“Because we grew up together.”

“You said that last time. Last time you said it to explain why you were warning me. This time —” She looked at him directly. “This time it sounds like you're trying to move something. What are you moving?”

The silence that followed had a specific quality. He was aware of it — the space where his answer should have been, the information it contained about what he was withholding.

He stood up.

“Be careful,” he said. The same thing he always said when he did not want to say what he actually meant.

At the door, he stopped. “How long have you and Alden been —” He stopped. Reformulated. “Are the two of you working together exclusively? No other contacts, no other sources?”

“Why?”

“Because if you're relying primarily on one person's knowledge to navigate this, and that person has information he hasn't shared with you —”

“Alden has shared everything relevant with me,” she said. The certainty in her voice was the kind that came from evidence rather than faith, which was both more reliable and more difficult to undermine.

Cassian left.

In the corridor, walking toward the building's exit, he took stock of what he had done and what he had not done. He had planted a question. He had not lied — nothing he had said was false. He had simply arranged true things in a sequence designed to create a specific impression.

He had done this because he had been in the tea room across from her, and he had watched her write in her ledger and drink bad tea in the unhurried way she did things she had decided to do, and he had been unable to sit across from her and not try to create some small distance between her and Alden. Not because it would change anything. He knew it would not change anything. But because the alternative — sitting there and doing nothing while the distance between them closed further — had been beyond his current capacity.

Outside, the cycle light was flat and grey. He walked toward Middle Ring.

In the tea room, Seren sat with the question he had left and her own better question, which she had already written down: *Why does Cassian need me to doubt Alden?*

She looked at it for a long time. Then she closed the ledger and went back to work.