Chapter 242: Hiding It

POV: Rune

The mattress in her room was old enough that it had a permanent dip where her body settled every night, and it took Rune less than a minute to find the gap along the seam where the stuffing had thinned. She folded the note twice more, until it was small enough to fit in her closed fist, and pushed it into the gap until her fingers couldn't feel the edge of it anymore.

Then she stood there for a second, staring at the mattress like it might give her away on its own.

"That's ridiculous," she said out loud, mostly for Sable's benefit, since Sable was the only one who could hear her and Sable did not care. The cat was draped over the windowsill in a shape that suggested she'd melted there sometime around noon and simply never reformed.

Rune sat down on the edge of the bed, right over the spot where the note was hidden, and made herself think about why she'd done it.

It would have been easy to tell herself she was protecting Vael from worry, or waiting for a better moment, or any of the small, reasonable lies people told themselves about things they didn't want to look at directly. She didn't let herself do that. She'd read enough philosophy to know that the quickest way to lose an argument with yourself was to let yourself cheat.

So. Why.

Not malice. She turned that thought over first because it was the one that scared her most, and getting scared of a thing early meant you could rule it out early. She didn't want to hurt Vael. She didn't want to catch her in something and watch her face fall. That wasn't it.

It was simpler and worse than that. If she showed Vael the note right now, Vael would have an explanation ready before Rune finished the sentence. She always did. And Rune would nod, and accept it, the way she'd accepted every explanation for fourteen years, because she'd never once had anything to hold up against it.

Now she did. And she wasn't ready to trade it away for an explanation yet.

"I don't even know what I think," she told Sable. "I have an observation. That's all it is. An observation and about a hundred questions I've apparently been not-asking since I was six, which is a strange thing to realize about yourself in one afternoon."

Sable's tail flicked once, unbothered, and resumed being still.

The afternoon went the way afternoons went. Rune read two chapters of a book about tidal patterns she had already read twice, because her attention kept sliding sideways off the page and she needed something familiar enough to hold it. Sable slept through the shift from the windowsill to the third shelf and back to the windowsill again, right on her usual schedule, like the world hadn't tilted at all a few hours ago. Outside, the Wood did whatever the Wood did on a Tuesday — the clearing she could see from her window held its shape, stubborn and green, the way it always did until Thursday.

By the time the light started to go gold through the canopy, Rune had almost convinced herself she could act normal.

Almost.

She heard Vael's footsteps on the stairs before she saw her, the rhythm so familiar it barely registered most days, three steps and a pause and then the rest, always that pause on the fifth step, always had been. Rune had never asked why. Tonight the pause seemed to last a beat longer than usual, or maybe that was just her, listening for something that wasn't there.

Vael came in already smiling, already asking, the way she always did. "How was your day, sweetheart?"

"Good," Rune said, and it came out easily, which surprised her a little. "I reread the tidal book. I think I like it better the second time. You notice more when you already know how it ends."

"That's true of most things." Vael settled into her chair, the one she always sat in, angled slightly toward the window like she wanted to keep half an eye on the Wood even while she was talking. "What else?"

"Sable slept in four different places today. I think that's a record."

Vael laughed, soft and real, and reached over to scratch behind Sable's ears without looking, the kind of automatic affection that came from fourteen years of practice. "She has very particular standards."

Rune watched her do it. Watched the whole visit unfold exactly the way it always did, the questions about her reading, the observation about the light, the small warm nothing of an ordinary evening. And underneath all of it, she was watching Vael's face for something else entirely. She didn't know exactly what she expected to find. Tension around the eyes, maybe. A question that came too quickly, too specifically. Some tell that would mean a bird had gone to the wrong window and someone somewhere had noticed.

There was nothing.

Vael's expression stayed exactly what it always was. Warm. Present. Entirely unhurried, the way a person only was when nothing had gone wrong yet.

She doesn't know, Rune thought, and the thought landed strangely, heavier than she expected.

"You're quiet tonight," Vael said, tilting her head.

"Just tired. Long day of reading." Rune smiled, and it wasn't even that hard.

Vael studied her for a second, the kind of look that used to make Rune feel completely seen and now, for the first time, felt like being read for information rather than being known. Then she let it go, the way she always did, and stood to check the wards before she left, her hands moving over the walls in that same unhurried pattern she used every single visit. She never explained what she was checking for. Rune had never asked. Tonight the not-asking felt different. It felt like something she was choosing rather than something she'd simply never thought to do.

"You are the most important thing in my life," Vael said at the door, the way she said it every single time, like a small ritual neither of them ever skipped.

"I know," Rune said.

The door closed. The footsteps faded down the stairs, that same pause on the fifth step, and then silence.

Rune sat very still for a long moment, feeling the shape of what had just happened. She had information Vael didn't have. She hadn't had that in fourteen years. Not once. Every fact in this tower had always flowed one direction, from Vael to her, curated and careful, and now there was a note under her mattress that Vael didn't know existed, and the not-knowing sat between them like a held breath.

It didn't feel like triumph. She'd expected it might, a little, if it ever happened. Instead it felt like standing on a frozen lake she'd only ever read about — solid enough to hold her weight, she was fairly sure, but she found herself very aware of every place her feet touched down, the way you got when you weren't entirely certain the ice would hold.

She got up and moved to the window instead, needing the familiar shape of the Wood below her to settle her thoughts. Sable uncurled enough to follow, resettling against her side.

"I don't know what to do with it yet," Rune admitted, quiet, mostly to herself. "But I know I'm not giving it back until I do."