16. An Ocean Between Two Hearts

She hurried past him without a word. When the door clicked shut behind her, she turned to face him with her arms crossed. Her expression cut momentarily through the whirlwind in his head. Something had gone very wrong.

"I got a recording of Minister Seah in the middle of your concert," she said. Her voice was stretched tight. "Tems thinks it's solid enough evidence for what we need. He's passing it along to the CIA now."

Winter's heart was still pounding from the call with his father, and Sydney's words seemed to come to him through an underwater filter. He ran a hand through his hair, swallowed hard, and forced himself to concentrate. "Okay," he managed to say. "Let me hear it."

Sydney played the recording from her phone. As it finished, she pocketed her phone. "Tems is searching for the identity of the caller on the other line."

"The guy keeps mentioning something called kǔ," Winter said.

She nodded. "I was going to ask if you happened to know what it meant. Niall says it's the name of a new neurotoxin making its way through the East's underground scene."

"Makes sense," Winter said, clearing his throat and forcing himself to think. "Kǔ was an ancient Chinese ritual of putting poisonous creatures in a jar and seeing which emerged alive and victorious. The poison from that victorious creature would then be used on a target. I researched it once for a song."

"‘Magic Poison'?" Sydney asked.

Winter looked at her in surprise. "So you have listened to the album."

She scowled even deeper and looked toward the window. "Niall thinks Seah may attempt to use the neurotoxin on President Rosen at the gala."

Everything was falling apart. "What's the plan, then?" Winter asked quietly.

"Tems gathered intel during the ceremony that Seah's car will be parked along the palace's side entrance during the gala, along with the other ministers' rides. Our assumption is that he's going to make an early exit after he does his job, so that by the time Rosen reacts to the poison, Seah's already gone."

"So we cut him off from his escape route," Winter said.

"We cut him off," Sydney agreed.

Winter studied her face. There was a paleness about her that seemed not quite right, as if there was more to her words than she was letting on. "What else?" he pressed.

"Is that not reason enough to be worried?" she said with a scowl. The edge in her voice returned, a thin film holding back a tide of… fear? Anger? He couldn't tell. "We have a potential assassination on our hands. Seah's going to be seated next to Rosen at the gala, and we have twenty-four hours to stop him."

He looked carefully at her. "Something happened to you," he said.

She folded her arms and tightened her lips. Her weight shifted from one foot to the other, as if she ached to move. But when she spoke again, she said, "What happened to me is that, as I figured out the severity of the mission we're on, you decided to sing that song onstage."

Her answer startled him. "What?" he said.

"The song," she repeated. There was an urgency in her voice and a speed to her words that nearly bordered on panic. "You pull it out now, of all times, in front of the entire world? When we chatted on the balcony that other night, you told me that you never meant for me to see those lyrics. You made it sound like it was a private track just for you, that maybe it should be something we keep a secret."

He shook his head. "Are you afraid because you think it could have compromised us?" he asked incredulously.

"Who knows? That's always the risk, isn't it?" Sydney turned away from him, walked a few paces, and came back. "Do you understand that we are undercover right now?" she murmured, narrowing her eyes at him. "Do you understand that any unnecessary attention puts us in danger?"

His heart tightened. The world had started to spin again. "No one knows it's about you. I've told no one—not even my producers. Not even Claire. There's nothing in those lyrics to identify you in any way, something I did very intentionally. It could be about anyone."

"That song's not on your official album. You never released it."

"I perform surprise songs all the time. No one will find that strange."

"But they will analyze it. They do all the time."

"The lyrics don't say, ‘Sydney Cossette is a secret agent.'"

Sydney threw her hands up. "You draw attention to those closest to you when you hint at your love life like that, especially with the way you turned in my direction at specific parts in the song."

He frowned at her. "You're that afraid of the song?"

"Of you blowing the damn lid off our cover, yes."

"I don't think that's why you're scared."

"Well, it is." She tore her eyes away. "Your ex-girlfriend is here with you as your date. We're about to risk our lives tomorrow. Why are you releasing this song now? Why add to all this?" She turned back to him and pressed a finger into his chest. "Were you planning to put that song in your original set list before we arrived?"

"No," he said.

"You added it after our conversation, didn't you?"

"I'm sorry, all right?" he snapped. "It's a spontaneous interlude. I have one in every concert. I didn't think it'd bother you. After our talk… I thought, well, never mind. If it concerns you that much, I won't perform it anymore. It'll never see the light of day again."

"Why does it matter so much to you, anyway?" Everything seemed to hurtle out of her. "It's just a song."

She seemed to regret her words the instant they came out, but it was too late. Winter winced and took a step away from her. Her statement stirred the whispers that haunted him all his life, echoing the conversation he'd just had with his father.

You're just smoke and mirrors. You're nothing.

"It's not just a song," he said quietly.

She paused, taking a deep breath, and lowered her voice. "Look, Winter," she said. "It's not even the song. But we're on a mission together—have you forgotten that?"

He closed his eyes. Everything in his chest felt ready to boil over.

"That's our purpose, nothing more," she went on. There were tears shining in her eyes now. "So why did you do it?"

"Because I've thought about you every single day since London!" he blurted out.

Sydney flinched as if she'd been struck. "What? No, you haven't."

But Winter couldn't stop anymore. Too much had happened—Gavi's betrayal, his father's cruel words, this. A dam had broken in him, and he had no desire to fix it. He was tired of bottling it all up. He was tired of holding himself together. "I tried my best, you know," he said in a low, urgent voice. "Every day, I wished you would show up unannounced on my doorstep or in my practice room or anywhere I happened to be, and whisk me back into your world. Every day, I missed you. And you know what? I was okay with that. I'm not a fool. I know we aren't meant to be, and I was ready to move on. Then you appeared out of nowhere and pulled me right back in, and now we're here and I have no idea what to do. I tried my best, but now I think I'm losing my mind. So I sang the damn song, okay?"

"Stop," she whispered.

He held up his hands. "I know what I'm saying. I know how it sounds. I get that this, whatever this is between us, is a dead end. I know I don't deserve you. I don't deserve any of this. But I'm telling you right now that I've had a hell of a time getting you out of my head. And when you came back, everything I'd done to wall myself away from you came crashing down. That song is all I have of you, some private illusion that I might ever get a chance with you." His voice faded to a murmur. "That's all it is. I need you to understand that."

He felt foolish the instant he stopped talking. Dameon had always told him he was good at keeping his secrets close—why couldn't he keep this one? But it was too late to take any of it back now.

Sydney just stared at him, her eyes the color of a storm, her lips pressed tight. He couldn't tell what she thought of him now, whether or not she could make out the hurt that he knew must be on his face. He swallowed hard. Suddenly, he couldn't bear looking at her. His eyes turned down. He took in the pattern on the rug of his suite, forcing himself to follow the fabric's lines, as if it might lead him out of this torturous place.

After another agonizing silence, Sydney took a deep breath. Winter looked back up to see her turn away. "I can't do this," she whispered.

He barely caught her words. As she headed to the door, everything in him wanted to tell her to stop, to wait, that he didn't mean any of that, that he didn't know what he was thinking.

But he stayed frozen where he was.

I can't do this.

As always, she seemed impenetrable, the walls around her heart a fortress. It had taken a vial of poison for her to drop them last time—perhaps that would be the only time he ever saw a glimpse of the softness in her.

So all he could do was watch as she slipped out into the hall, the lock clicking shut behind her. For a while, he just stood there, trying to will it to open again.

It didn't.