The coffees in the command tent where he asked after Amara, so naturally, so warmly, a man taking an interest in his commander’s daughter — reconnaissance, every one of them, questions with a purpose, mapping her routines and her heart while I answered freely because why on earth would I not.

The reassurances, later, when I felt some flicker of unease about how fast it was all moving: she’s happy, Colonel, they adore her, you worry too much — a handler managing his asset’s mother, keeping me calm, keeping me from looking too closely at the very thing he had engineered.

I had experienced all of it as friendship.

That was the genius and the obscenity of it.

He had not lied to me with false words so much as with true-seeming warmth, and warmth is the one thing a person under that much strain does not think to audit.

I trusted him precisely because he was good at seeming trustworthy, which is the only skill a traitor actually needs.