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“Let me see.”

He let me.

The mark encircled his entire throat. It was a band two fingers wide, dark and raised, its surface smooth in some places and ridged in others. At first glance it resembled an old burn scar, but there was nothing old about what it was doing to him now. Heat poured from his skin, and several places along the edge had blistered open. The wounds were fresh and damp, evidence that the brand had been burning him repeatedly, perhaps for hours.

I pressed the cold cloth against the worst of it as gently as I could.

A shudder moved through his whole body before he forced himself still beneath my hand.

“How long has this been happening?” I asked quietly.

He did not answer. I was no longer sure he could.

I kept the cloth against his throat while I worked through what I had seen.

“It happens when you go against them,” I said. “Not every time you speak. Only when you give me something they don’t want me to have. Information they’ve forbidden you to share. The truth about something. This file.”

Ronan closed his eyes.

It was not a yes, but coming from a man who could not lie, the absence of a denial told me enough.

“Then stop telling me things that make it hurt you,” I said. “I mean it. I’ll find the answers another way. I’m good at that, and you know I am.”

Something almost like amusement passed briefly across his exhausted face.

“Yes,” he said hoarsely. “I know.”

He straightened slowly and took the cloth from me, holding it against his own throat. Then he turned away without explanation and walked down the long aisle of the Archive.

I watched him pass the Heraldry shelves and continue toward the bay beside the far window, the same section where, weeks earlier, I had told him the bestiaries belonged. He reached for a thick volume bound in cracked brown leather. A unicorn and a spear had been tooled into its spine.

Liber de Cordibus Feris.

The Book of Wild Hearts.

Thirteenth century. Mostly nonsense.

Ronan brought it back to the desk, set it in front of me, and opened it near the end. He found the page immediately.

“This is a public book,” he said with painstaking precision. “It is kept on an open shelf and has been available there for three hundred years. Anyone may read it.” He stepped away from the desk. “I cannot tell you anything. You may, however, read whatever you like.”

The brand remained dark.

I lowered my eyes to the page.

The illumination had faded badly with age. Much of the gold leaf had flaked away, and the original blues had dulled almost to gray. In the center of a painted forest stood a woman with dark hair falling to her waist. A single streak of pure white ran through it from her left temple.

Beasts surrounded her.

There were wolves, bears, enormous spotted cats, and creatures with scales or wings. They lay in the grass around her with their heads resting on the ground and their eyes closed. None of them appeared injured or subdued. They simply seemed peaceful.

The Latin beneath the image was cramped and faded. Mine consisted of two years of evening classes, pharmaceutical terminology, and whatever I had managed to teach myself during the three months I had spent reading this book on and off.

I translated it slowly.

Of the Wild Heart, which is most often a Woman. Where she walketh, the madness of the beasts lieth down. She taketh not their strength, but holdeth it, as the shore holdeth the sea.

Memories began arranging themselves in a new order.