Page 52

The scraped ink made me think of the ashes in Marion’s stove. Whether it was a ledger or a drawing hardly mattered. In both cases, someone had decided what I was allowed to know and then destroyed the evidence before I could ask questions.

The question formed before I could stop it.

Sir, why are there no Hollows in the Assessment records before the Hollowing?

I actually opened my mouth.

Two rows in front of me, Kaelen Vance turned his head.

He did not turn all the way around. He moved only enough for me to see the edge of his face and one gray eye looking back at me over his shoulder. Then he gave the smallest shake of his head.

It was barely a movement at all, but the meaning was unmistakable.

Don’t.

I did not trust Kaelen Vance. I did, however, trust the fact that the son of the man who ran the Council was warning me not to ask questions in front of a Council-appointed teacher.

I closed my mouth.

Kaelen turned back toward the lectern. His pen had stopped moving across the page, and it did not start again, even when Master Crewe moved on to Red sickness.

Red sickness, he explained, began when a shifter’s beast pressed too close to the surface and stopped settling fully beneath the human mind. The condition could last for months or even years.

Going Red was something different. That was the complete break, when the beast took control and forced the human consciousness beneath it. Council doctrine treated that break as permanent. Any shifter who crossed that line was classified as feral.

Crewe then moved on to the official procedure for culling one. There were forms, witnesses, signatures, and mandatory Council approval. In the same dry, measured voice, he told us that the Council never culled without cause.

At that, Kaelen’s shoulders tightened beneath his black jacket until I could see the seams pulling across his back.

The ache in my chest pulsed once in response.

I did not know what he knew, but I knew he did not believe Crewe.

I stayed silent for the rest of the lesson. When the bell finally rang, Kaelen was through the door before half the room had even stood up.

I went straight from Blood Law to the Archive.

Ronan had been the one to send me looking for the first Hollow, and if this was what he had expected me to find, I wanted to see his face when I showed him.

That afternoon, on the sixth day, I laid everything out on six sheets of paper. I had listed every scraped entry by year, noted the changes in ink and handwriting, and circled the missing year twice.

Ronan read every page.

He read the same way he repaired books: slowly, carefully, with no sign that he had missed a single detail. One long finger moved down the lines as he worked. I watched his hand, then his face, and something in the set of his mouth made my heartbeat quicken.

When he finished, he placed the papers on the desk and squared their edges. Then he sat there in silence for so long that I began to think he might not answer at all.

“Your notes,” he said eventually, “are better than mine.”

I stared at him. “You’ve made notes on this?”

His hand rose to his collar.

It happened only for a second, but I had seen the gesture before. His fingers pressed against the high, buttoned edge as though the fabric had suddenly become uncomfortable, and then he lowered his hand again.

“The reading room,” he said quietly, “closes at nine.”

He did not tell me what any of it meant. I had not really expected him to.