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Everything else looked the same. The lamps were lit, casting their familiar circles of gold across the floor, and the Archive held its usual warmth. If anything, it was warmer than normal, the air heavy and still despite the cold outside.

Ronan wasn't sitting behind his desk.

He stood beside it in his dark, high-collared coat, one hand pressed flat against the leather surface while the other rested at his collar, his fingers pushing against the fabric as though it had suddenly become too tight. His posture was rigid, but there was something wrong with his face.

He was pale even on ordinary days, but this was different. He looked drained and exhausted, with shadows beneath his eyes that made the amber of them seem darker than usual. When he looked up at me, there was none of his usual composure in his expression.

Then I saw what was beneath his hand.

A thin black folder lay open on the desk, the kind the Council used, with its gray ribbon hanging loose beside it. I recognized the silver handwriting on the cover before I was close enough to read the words. It was the same elegant, looping script I had seen months earlier on the black envelope left on Marion's doormat.

This time, it spelled out my name.

Wren Hale.

Ronan watched me read it. Whatever showed on my face made something shift in his expression, brief but unmistakable, before he pulled himself back under control.

"Close the door, Miss Hale," he said quietly. Then, after a moment, he added, "Please."

I turned and closed it behind me.

16

Chapter 16

Wren

“Ididn’t make tea,” Ronan said.

The remark was so unexpected in the silence that it took me a moment to understand why he had said it.

“I noticed.”

“I apologize.” He spoke with his usual formality, but something in his voice was wrong. It was rougher than usual, strained in a way that made me wonder whether he had spent the night shouting or had hardly spoken at all. “I have been… occupied.”

He lifted his hand from the file. For a moment, it remained suspended above the black cover, his fingers slightly curled, as though touching it again required a decision. Then he turned the folder around so that it faced me and pushed it an inch across the desk with the tip of one finger.

The brand around his throat flared. A dull red glow spread beneath it. It deepened rapidly to orange and threw light along the underside of his jaw. Ronan sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth and pressed one hand against his throat.

I couldn’t understand what was going on.

“Ronan—”

“Read it,” he said. “Quickly, please.”

He looked so in pain that I did as he said.

There was not much inside. Only a few pages clipped together, beginning with my full name, my date of birth, and the town where Marion lived.

Mother: deceased. Father: unknown.

I had been given those same words all my life. Once, I would have passed over them without a second thought. I knew better now than to believe something simply because somebody had typed it onto official paper.

The next page was a photocopied laboratory report dated in July. Most of it meant nothing to me, but one string of numbers had been circled in red, and after a moment I understood what I was looking at. It was my blood, taken from the van outside the supermarket.

Clipped behind the report was a single typed instruction.

Standard intake withheld. No liaison. Subject to arrive unbriefed.