They had moved her into a new bedroom. This one was on the third floor, at the corner of the palace, with rows of windows on two sides and enough space to hold a small get-together. The walls were a pale grayish-blue. Besides the large bed, it had bookshelves, a reading desk, a dresser, and two couches.

  Eluvie looked around the room but gave no comment about it. Neither Mirab nor Amu pressed her for more words. They seemed eager to get her into bed. So, she feigned tiredness, let Mirab caress and kiss her forehead, and settled down to sleep. As soon as they and the attendants were through the door, she switched her awareness to the tendril in Lady Mirab’s bedroom.

  It was a long wait. While she waited, she occasionally checked her body. After several iterations, she found that she could retain some awareness of her body while focusing on the tendril. It wasn’t much, but she could feel the bedsheets and detect loud sounds. The longer she practiced, the better she got, until she was confident that she would detect her bedroom door opening - as long as she paid attention.

  The reverse was also true. While focused on her body, she could detect loud sounds at the tendril’s location. It was enough to alert her when the door opened, and if someone spoke too loudly. It took more effort than listening for changes in her body’s location, but it was useful enough.

  During one of her rounds in her body, she heard Lady Mirab’s bedroom door slam open and quickly switched her awareness to the tendril.

  Lady Mirab was marching into the room with Amu following behind.

  As soon as the door was closed, she launched into a profanity-laden tirade.

  “You have one job, Amu! One job!” She threw up her arms. “How did you even manage to become a doctor? I swear you have not succeeded at one thing I have asked of you. Not one! Is this deliberate? Are you actually trying to sabotage us?”

  Amu rolled his eyes, then spoke in the calmest voice, as if her rant had been directed at someone else. “I told you that seeds encode different information.”

  “Yes,” Mirab practically hissed. “You said it as if it was no concern. ‘She’ll know different things than she did before’. You failed to cover the breadth of what she would know.”

  Amu sighed. “I think that was a failure of your imagination.”

  Lady Mirab grabbed the nearest thing - a golden decorative bowl - and threw it at him. He ducked just in time, and she missed.

  “Fine,” Amu said. “I agree that I downplayed it. I just didn’t want you to have a tantrum before it became necessary. “

  “Heavens! I want to kill you!”

  Amu sighed again and stepped further away from her. “Look,” he said, “this is fine.”

  “Fine?”

  “Yes, fine. What’s done is done. We can’t go back to the past and prevent you from needing to use the seed, so we can only make the best of what we have now. She did not remember anything truly dangerous. We both know it would have been obvious if she did. You only need her managed till tomorrow. After that, it won’t matter, right?”

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  “If everything works.” Mirab sounded doubtful."You were more confident less than an hour ago," Amu sighed. "Don't let me shake your confidence. Today, we just need to keep her occupied. If you're worried, I'll give her a sedative. Tomorrow at noon, you have the signing. Leave immediately after that. With your acting skills, I'm sure you can turn all of this into something."

  Mirab began pacing the room. "I don't like this," she said.

  "Everything is a bit irregular," Amu said. "But it's not as bad as it seems. We have more seeds. If she proves troublesome, we can use them. Just don't do anything that will upset her."

  Mirab's anger did not seem to subside, but she didn't throw any more objects.

  She stopped pacing. "Did she seem suspicious to you?" The ruler asked.

  "Of course. She thought we were lying to her."

  Lady Mirab shook her head. "No. More than that. She stiffened every time I touched her. It's worrying."

  "You're projecting," Amu said. "She didn't like me either. But if she knew even half of what we've done, she would have attacked you right there, with her teeth if necessary. Don't worry. Tomorrow, this will all be over."

  Amu departed, and soon after, so did Lady Mirab, leaving Eluvie to watch an empty room. So, she returned to her body. There, the room felt similarly empty. Compared to the tiny one she had spent years in, every empty spot felt like a dark chasm hiding unknown terrors.

  She turned onto her back, flattening her wings beneath her, and stared at the top of her bed's canopy. What could she do?

  The damned barrier kept her from escape - the only thing she wanted. She could pretend subservience and let Lady Mirab have whatever plot the rulers were working on. She could focus only on keeping herself safe for now. But what if the rulers' victory meant something unpleasant for her? What if they wanted to kill her afterward? Or find her a prison even worse than the one they had? Or worse, what if they discovered that they had failed to erase her memory?

  She lay still for a long time. Fears chased each other around her mind. She longed to escape and saw no path to do it. She longed to sleep and let all her fears dissolve. But the fears would not even allow that.

  So, if she could not escape or sleep, she could try to make do with what she had.

  She climbed out of bed, taking care not to let it creak, then sneaked to the mirror she had seen on one wall. She stood in front of it, seeing herself for the first time ever. The milestone brought no joy or pride, only discomfort. She had imagined what she looked like so many times. She had even asked her attendants. When they had been bored enough to reply, they had told her that there was nothing remarkable about her, that she looked like a normal person.

  And they were right. Only her wings were noteworthy. They looked just like before: like yellowish-gold silk decorated with veins. Her eyes were a dark brown, like everyone else she had seen. She leaned closer to the mirror and examined it more thoroughly. She admired their shape, the way the light reflected off them, the way her lashes curled just a little at the ends. She had not known that eyes did that. The rest of her face was almost as brown as her eyes, but with a redder tint to it. It was also completely free of blemishes. She recalled hearing her attendants complain of spots and pimples marring her complexion. She had never felt any such thing on her body and she saw none now. All there was was a smooth canvas, the envy of any woman. She knew why that was now. The body was not real. It was something she made out of her real body. She could change it however she wanted.

  She did so now. She played with the length and color of her hair, the size of her nose, and the shape of her lips. At one point, she went so far that she looked like a monstrosity, but it only took a moment to return her looks to their previous form.

  Could she look like someone else? She wondered.

  She glanced around the room, suddenly afraid of being watched, but there was no one else there. She could still hear her guards conversing outside the door. If someone else came, they would stop and greet the visitor, and she would know.

  Choosing a target to imitate was easy. In a fraction of a second, she was an exact copy of Lady Mirab, down to the Lady's cascading curls and too much jewelry. The likeness was so good that her heart skipped a beat, and she had to change back into her own form before the fear would dissipate.

  This was a victory, but even it was still a bitter one. What good did it do to imitate others? She needed to escape.