Once Upon a Broken Heart

Chapter 7: What Petra Knows

Petra was hiding something.

Isla had known it since the day of her release from prison—had noticed it and filed it as not now, prioritized by the larger emergency. But the larger emergency had resolved (provisionally), and in the two weeks since, the thing Petra was hiding had continued to not-quite-surface, to be carried carefully around corners and into rooms and out of conversations.

Isla was a mapmaker's daughter. She noted absences.

She brought it up on a Thursday morning when Petra was making bread—a thing Petra did when she was processing something, the physical activity serving the mental work—and the kitchen smelled of yeast and warm flour and the particular November quality of warmth in a cold house.

"Who's Soren?" she asked.

Petra's hands stilled on the dough.

Isla had found the name in a letter, folded into the back of Petra's work apron, in handwriting that wasn't Petra's. She had not read past the name. She had left the letter where she'd found it. She was asking now not from invasion but from the specific pattern of the last two weeks: Petra's careful management of a thing she hadn't shared, the way she sometimes went very still in the evenings as though listening for something, the slight tension that appeared when the name of the crown prince came up.

"How did you find that?" Petra said. Not there is no Soren. Not I don't know what you mean. Which was its own answer.

"The letter. In your apron." Isla leaned on the doorframe. "I didn't read it. I found the name and left it."

Petra turned. She had her mother's face—their mother, dead before Isla could properly remember her, known through their father's stories. Petra had inherited the eyes, serious and clear and direct. She looked at Isla now with those eyes.

"He's the reason I was in that corridor," Petra said.

Isla waited.

"He's—was—the crown prince's private librarian. They grew up together. He—" Petra looked at the bread dough. "We've known each other for eight months. We've been meeting at the palace library on Tuesday evenings. I told you I was tutoring."

"You told me you were tutoring," Isla confirmed.

"I'm sorry." Petra's voice was direct, not defensive. "I wasn't ready to tell it yet. And then the arrest happened and—" She stopped. "He was there, Isla. He was in the library when it happened. The night the prince was killed. He saw who did it."

The kitchen was very quiet.

"He didn't come forward," Isla said.

"He's afraid." Petra resumed working the dough, because her hands needed occupation. "He's—it's not simple fear. The person he saw—it's connected to someone powerful. He came to me two days before my arrest, terrified, and I told him I would protect him. And then I was arrested and I couldn't—" She breathed. "He's been hiding. I know where he is. I haven't told anyone because if whoever did this knows there's a witness—"

"Where is he?"

"The old cartographers' quarter. Father's colleague's vacant studio." Petra looked up. "He has a name, Isla. The murderer. He has information that would close this case properly. Not on a technicality—actually close it, actually find who did it."

Isla thought about this. She thought about Cassian's agreement: the evidence against Petra had become uncertain. A witness had recanted. The case had collapsed. But it hadn't been resolved. The murderer was still free. The real story was still untold.

She thought about what Love had said about the loop.

She thought about Hunger: the grief of things that were never begun, never risked.

She thought about a murder arranged to generate grief.

"I need to tell Cassian," she said.

Petra looked at her.

"Not because he controls this," Isla said quickly. "Because he has access to the Between and to information I don't. And because—" She paused. "Because I think this might be connected to the loop."

Petra was quiet. Then: "He's not—you haven't—"

"I'm not in love with him," Isla said.

"I know." Petra looked at the dough. "That's not what I was going to say." She kneaded once, twice. "I was going to say: he's not the only resource you have. You have me. You have the atlas. You have everything Father taught you." She looked up. "Tell him. But remember you're not consulting an oracle. You're consulting someone with relevant information. There's a difference."

"I know."

"Okay." Petra turned back to the bread. "Also."

"Yes?"

"Soren is going to want to meet you. He's—been asking."

"About me?"

"About the shop." Petra smiled, slightly, at the dough. "He knows your father's work. He said the northern surveys changed how he understood the topography of something he was researching." A pause. "He's a librarian. He's very earnest. You'll like him."

Isla went to find Cassian.