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I also left out the hart on the wall of the Lantern Tower. I had seen that hart before, sketched in books that were not supposed to exist. I knew what it meant that the image had been concealed beneath the plaster of the room they had assigned to Hale, and I knew what the Council would do if it understood the connection.

So I did not include it.

The heat climbed higher along my throat.

There were other things I did not write because they were not anomalies, no matter how persistently I noticed them.

I did not write that she hummed while she read, low and tuneless beneath her breath whenever she became so absorbed that she forgot anyone else was in the room. I did not write that hearing it quieted something old and restless inside me, something that had not known peace since I was a boy. I did not write about the way she laughed, either, because there was no defensible reason for the Council to know that I had begun listening for it.

And I certainly did not write that I had touched her hand.

It had happened for less than a second on the fifth day, entirely by accident. I had been careful for five days, and then I had reached across the table at the wrong moment and let my fingertips brush the back of her hand. Her skin had been cool and soft beneath mine. She had gone completely still, and I had heard the small catch in her breath.

My cock had gone hard so quickly that the sheer stupidity of my body's response left me staring down at the ledger for several seconds, reconsidering every choice that had brought me to that table.

More troubling was what happened beneath that response.

The dragon in me had been almost silent for nine years. The collar had not removed it, but something in the constant restraint had driven its instincts so deep that I had nearly forgotten what they felt like.

At her touch, they returned.

It wanted her.

There was no gentler or more scholarly word for what moved through me. The same instinct that made me keep the glass hare, the riveted bowl, and thirty-seven damaged books had fixed itself on her with an intensity I did not trust. It recognized something rare, something insufficiently guarded, and immediately began insisting that I should be the one to protect it.

Mine, it said with the quiet certainty of an instinct older than any oath. Keep her. Guard her. Hoard her.

It wanted to take her somewhere warm and safe where no one else could reach her. It wanted to catalog every detail of her until there was nothing left for me not to know: every freckle, every scar, every shift in her expression when she thought no one was watching. It wanted to know the taste of her throat and the weight of her breasts in my hands. It wanted to know whether that startled breath I had heard at the table would turn into a moan if I put my mouth somewhere less innocent.

I had even noticed the white line at her temple where the dye was beginning to grow out, though she clearly believed no one had.

Of course I had noticed.

I noticed everything about her.

That was my job.

I was not foolish enough to mistake wanting for permission. I knew what the Council kept, where it kept those things, and what happened to anything I loved when I failed to protect it. I had learned that lesson before I was old enough to understand why anyone would need to teach it to a child.

So I finished the report using the smallest and most ordinary words I could find.

Subject's conduct in study is diligent and unremarkable.

The brand pulsed sharply at unremarkable. The word came close enough to a lie that I closed my eyes and clenched my jaw until the pain subsided.

Then I signed the report, folded the paper into thirds, and melted the sealing wax. It was gray as iron. I pressed the Council's seal into it, leaving the familiar impression of the wolf and the dragon locked together.

When I lifted my hand, I saw that my fingers were shaking.

I noticed that, too.

I did not like it.

The standing order remained at the top of the page beneath my hand.

Report all observed anomalies in the subject W. Hale.

For nine years, I had learned to decide what counted.