[She doesn't need the story, and she understands how risky it is to tell her anything, especially right now, when the very idea of keeping her cover intact has suddenly become a whole lot harder. A lot less important when faced with the alternative. Before she was at least relatively sure of her ability to keep her cover in place, to fit in and get information without drawing attention. But now? She just wanted to get Sonia and Byerly out safe and fuck everything else.

But he gives her the affirmation she needed to give him a little bit more, something deeper than just a kidnapped princess. She bites her lip for a moment then smiles, but it's thin and almost humorless.]

The program, where I was raised.. it was intensely competitive, and I was so focused on being the best. They'd pair us up for missions, looking for weaknesses, for failures, and if you weren't good enough, sometimes you'd disappear. But we lived together, and they let us be friends. There were twenty-eight of us. Then one day, they dropped all of us in the tundra in the middle of winter, two weeks walk from home. One bag with enough supplies for one of us to survive.

[There's a pause, a breath, and she's not looking at him as she talks. Her arms cross against her body, low against her abdomen. There might have been enough reassurance for her to tell him, but the discomfort is still clear, the way her thin shoulders shiver.] I made it back. Sonia's probably only a few years older than my best friend was.

[There are more layers to it, things more personal, but it's enough. The basics. The fact was that this would always have hit her hard. Because of kidnapped princesses and dead little girls. Because she's still drowning in the guilt.]