Juniper woke up when I slipped into our record room. I had made sure not to disturb any of the piles in room, and there was no need for me to bring a light to see by, but she must have sensed my movement regardless.

She rolled over on her bedroll and met my gaze. A long, tense moment unraveled between us as I arrived back in our room in the middle of the night for the second night in a row. The possibilities for what I could have been doing were slim. Likely she thought I been given some secret spying mission when Rivon had insisted on splitting us up after the declaration ceremony or that I was keeping some other training secret from her. Neither of which was far from the truth.

Juniper sat up and broke the silence we had mostly been operating under since we joined the sect. “Anything I should know about?”

My inclination was to keep withholding what I knew about the fighting in the delta from Juniper, but I also couldn’t deny that she was my best source of information about the situation there. What she knew would be years out of date, but between what I had learned and her history I figured we could make an educated guess about the situation so I could be more prepared for my final report to Esie if I did fill her in.

The trouble was I wasn’t simply keeping the information to myself because I liked keeping my own counsel. Well, not entirely. But I also wasn’t sure if the information about the delta and her mother’s request would finally pull Juniper out the depressive fog she’d been under since she lost her willpower in the woodlands or if it would be the final pressure point to pull her all the way under. If I knew that she’d be chosen to go help, it’d be easier to break the news because then we’d have something to work toward, an action we could take, rather than being caught in limbo.

As it was, all I had was a few handfuls of real information and my own conjunctures to actually share, and any of it could wreck havoc on Juniper. I wasn’t built for this. Esie might want me to pull in Juniper rather than the more eye catching action of a whisper woman pulling her into a private conversation, but I really didn’t want to talk to Juniper about her home. I knew how painful old longings could be.

“Why are you just staring at me?” she pressed.

I broke eye contact by pretending to be busy preparing to go to sleep. “You’re talkative tonight.”

“You’re avoiding the question.” Apparently, Juniper had decided bluntness was her weapon of choice for the night. I couldn’t blame her when I had done the same to Esie not even a quarter of an hour before.

I shrugged a shoulder. “It’s late and there’s not much to say. Esie had me doing extra training.”

“There’s more to it than that. If that was all you’d have said so right away so I wouldn’t keep asking questions.”

I silently cursed my tiredness. That coupled with the way my mind kept trying to come with scenarios for how the fight in the delta could play out, possible motives for everyone involved in the meeting and what might have gone unsaid, the pros and cons of telling Juniper about it all…I didn’t have the brainpower or patience to handle myself as I normally would. Nor did it help that for every interaction lately I found myself having to moderate my response, not quite as willing as I used to be to use harsh words to cut a conversation short.

The bland result ended up falling short in nearly every respect. Slow response time with predictable and easy to read answers that didn’t have nearly enough heat to make the other person balk. That couldn’t be allowed to stand. Not if I ever wanted to get information out of others without them getting even more from me. Not if I wanted to be able to take and keep control of a conversation.

I was becoming too used to letting Esie set the flow of our conversations even when I was trying to drag information out of her by brute force and now Juniper was calling out my weak excuses. Granted, she had the spine to do so in the past, but I doubted she had suddenly regained all her confidence in the course of a few hours.

Rather my half of the conversation was so lackluster that even when she was doubting herself into oblivion she felt no threat at calling my bluff.

That was enough to tempt me toward insults or frigid silence. Something to put her back in her place without giving any information away.

Except tearing Juniper down even further didn’t sit right in my gut, nor would it be smart given that she was only seedling from our cohort to join the Hundred Eyes sect with me. I could only do so much alone, even if I liked to pretend otherwise.

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And she’d likely learn everything pertinent about the delta eventually.

I was tired of being uncertain. Tired of stepping carefully in this conversation and that—of second guessing myself because I wasn’t sure what Esie and the Lady of Calm Waters were up to. Because I didn’t want to bring even more attention my way.

But, storms, I got a lot more done when I wasn’t passive. Dawnli had already said they didn’t plan to treat me as a normal recruit so I needed to stop acting like I was going to rise in the ranks by acting like one. Esie likely wasn’t going to tell me any of her secrets plans unless I already discovered some of the secret myself, and if Ingrasia was the kind of whisper woman who’d be put off by my ability to…escalate things I doubted she would have taken me on as an apprentice in the first place.

Prevna wasn’t with me but that didn’t mean I couldn’t take risks just because she wasn’t with me to remind me when I was going too far. At best, she was a whisper away if I really needed to check in and at worst, I’d likely be the one most hurt by whatever plan I acted on.

I could gather information, sure, and think things through, there was no harm in that, but it did me no good to continually go around in circles worrying over the same things, especially when there wasn’t any more information to be had. Rawley would have been chastising me for not acting when preparations had been complete. There were a few things I’d still like to confirm, but they weren’t so vital that I had to sit on my hands until I got what I wanted.

I wasn’t helping Juniper by shielding her from the information. At best I was delaying the inevitable—which meant it was best to tell her now, on my terms, rather than allowing someone else to do it.

Juniper stared up at me in surprise as I stood up suddenly. I crossed my arms. “Can you shadow walk to the lakeside meeting point?”

She looked insulted. “Yes.”

“Then let’s go.” I ignored her discomfort and strode back out of the room.

Juniper was quick to follow me despite her confusion.

Back when we had been hunting the crawler on the shore, Juniper had me “cleanse” myself before she pledged her formal support to help me complete the mission. I placed little stock in the notion of misfortune and fortune being things that could cling to a person, but Juniper seemed to believe in it and I figured a cleanse could put her in a better frame of mind. Besides, if she did have some cloud of misfortune from her string of difficulties, I figured it would best to get rid of it before she got involved.

We stepped out onto the shore of First Shore Lake near where Prevna and I had met up. I pushed thoughts of that particular meeting out of my mind and led Juniper a short distance in the opposite direction Prevna and I had gone.

Then I gestured to the lake. “Will your misfortune into the water like you had me do when we were hunting the crawler and then I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

Juniper’s lips pressed together as she scanned the area around us. “This better not be a prank.”

I rolled my eyes. “I leave that sort of thing to Prevna.”

She shook her head, a bit annoyed, but then still stripped and walked into the water as if it was one of the bathing pools in the Seedling Palace. I kept my focus on the water in case something dangerous did happen to rise out of the depths, but everything stayed quiet.

Juniper stayed in the water just long enough to dunk her head beneath the surface before she strode back out to put her dry clothes back on. I settled against the wall protecting the lake’s edge and Juniper joined me when she was ready.

She gave me a sidelong look. “I’m cleansed. What’s your big secret?”

I stayed silent for a long moment as I watched the moonlight shine down onto the lake. It stretched to the horizon and could hide an untold number of enemies if they really did break through the delta.

Rather than answering her question right away I asked my own question that had been bothering me. “You can summon fresh water right? Is that why the fish monsters bloat and die when you catch them in a water sphere?”

Juniper was miffed that I avoided her question again but she still answered me, “Yes. We think the pearl might also help speed up or strengthen that as well. Most fish can’t handle the different types of water.”

I frowned. “But then why do your people defend the delta so strongly? Wouldn’t the fresh water in the lake and river kill off the Lady Blue’s monsters?”

“No.” Juniper crossed her arms. “It would kill a decent chunk, but without the pearl’s power some would still make it to this shore—and the Lady Blue’s monsters have been hiding clutches in the delta. It has a mix of fresh and saltwater. With each generation we don’t exterminate they get more resistant to the fresh water effects as they acclimate to it.”

I held in a sigh. That was another important piece of information to factor into the rest of the situation.

“So?” Juniper looked at me expectantly.

I gave one last moment’s thought to considering keeping it all a secret before I remembered how much I would hate to be kept ignorant.

So I told her about the fighting in the delta, her mother’s plea, and Esie’s involvement of the High Priestess. I didn’t tell her all of my speculations yet, but I did throw in the tidbit of Kaylan offering to mentor me. Perhaps the offer would extend to Juniper if I decided to take the lazy sentry up on it.

Juniper was silent as she processed everything I said. She just stared out at the lake as if it held all the answers. Perhaps things would have been simpler if it did.

Finally, she turned gleaming eyes on me. “She asked for me?”

I knew she meant her mother and something knifed its way up under my ribs, but I ignored the pain. “She did.”

Juniper let her head fall back against the wall, brushed a hand over the pearl on her forehead. “I…storms. I need to think.”

I wanted to go to sleep but I stood there as she thought about the implications of it all. Better to have her honest reaction now than a more filtered one later. But I didn’t get the answers I wanted. Not right away. The night got deeper and deeper as Juniper kept her own council.