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“Are there records about me?” My gaze drifted to the book he was still gripping.

“Yes.”

“Yours, or theirs?”

“Both.”

“Can I see yours?”

His whole body went still again, that total shutting of doors. There was the line, and it wasn’t the wolf or the family but the records.

“No,” he said.

“Because you don’t trust me.” I hated the sting of disappointment that bloomed within me.

“Because they aren’t only about you.”

It was a better answer than I wanted it to be, still a no, but it was a no with a reason I couldn’t ignore. I sat back down slowly, and Linden watched me do it as if every inch of the motion carried information.

“I won’t tell anyone about the wolf,” I told him again.

“I know.”

“No. Not because you’ve got evidence that I won’t, but because I’m choosing not to. There’s a difference, and I want you to know that I’m choosing you.”

He looked at me the way a person looked at a coin from a currency they had never held, turning it over and over in their hand, fascinated by the newness.

“I don’t know what to do with that,” he said.

“Most people say thank you.”

“Thank you.” It came out plain, and he meant it plain, and somehow that was the thing that finally made my throat go tight. Then he looked down at his hand on the table and moved it an inch toward mine, slowly.

Stopped. Not because I moved, I hadn’t, but because everything his family had taught him told him to stop. Be unseen. Be patient. Want nothing that can be taken.

I knew that kind of instruction, not those exact words but the weight behind them, because mine had a different shape and the same bones. Carry it yourself. Don’t ask. Don’t reach. Don’t expect something for nothing.

My hand moved too, barely, and then stopped. The inch between our two hands sat there on the table, ridiculous and enormous, and neither of us crossed it. Finally Linden drew his hand back, and so did I.

“There’s something else.” The words came out and he looked a little like he wanted to vomit at saying them, so I kept my mouth shut and I waited. “The academy thinks the Fenwick archive burned,” he said. “Eighty years ago.”

“Did it?”

He didn’t look away. “No.”

I froze. “Where is it?” I asked.

“I shouldn’t have told you that much.”

“Linden—”

He closed the book that was in front of him and for one second I was certain he was going to get up and walk out. Instead he said, “Not here. Later.”

It wasn’t an answer but it wasn’t a refusal either, which counted as progress by the standards of this place. I stood because if I stayed in that chair one more minute I was going to ask him for something a great deal more dangerous than records.

As I left I glanced back and paused. The ivy was leaning down the stone toward him as if it too wanted to hear what exactly it meant that the archive hadn’t burned.

“Thank you for the tea,” I said.