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His eyes flicked to my face, and before I could react, he reached out and pushed my glasses back up my nose with one fingertip where they had started to slip.

The touch lasted less than a second, but my body reacted anyway, a quick, low tightening that irritated me mostly because he had done almost nothing to earn it.

My face heated.

People nearby were watching us now, and with that awareness came the old familiar dread. I knew that feeling too well: the certainty that this would turn out to be a joke, that someone would laugh, that the handsome boy who could apparently charm half the fortress had been dared to flirt with the Stray and would eventually wander back to his friends to collect whatever he had won.

“Look,” I said, lowering my voice. “I know what this is. I’m the Hollow. The Stray. Everyone saw what happened. You don’t have to keep doing the bit. Go flirt with Portia. She’s been staring at you the entire time.”

For one brief second, something in his expression changed.

His smile did not disappear so much as lose its ease. The joking warmth left his face, and what remained looked tired in a way I had not expected from him. It was gone almost before I could be certain I had seen it.

“I don’t joke about things I want,” he said quietly.

Then the familiar grin returned.

He stood, stretched his arms over his head, winked at Tamsin, and started down the tier. People shifted aside for him as he passed, laughing and reaching out to touch his shoulder.

“See you around, reina,” he called back.

The place where his thigh had rested against mine was still warm. Without thinking, I put my hand over it, then immediately pulled it away and hoped no one had noticed.

Tamsin turned toward me very slowly.

“He calls everyone babe,” she said. “Or gorgeous. Or trouble. I’ve been here four days, and I’ve heard him call at least forty people one of those.” She stared at me. “I’ve never heard him call anyone that.”

That was worse.

I knew what to do with a joke. I had years of experience with jokes made at my expense. I had no idea what to do with the possibility that he had meant what he said.

Tamsin left for her swimming lesson still shaking her head at me, and I went looking for the library. If no one at Ironmoor was willing to tell me what I was, then I would find out on my own. Books had always been easier than people.

The Archive was buried in the oldest part of the fortress, at the end of a long corridor behind a pair of doors so tall and heavy that I had to put my weight against one to force it open.

Once I stepped inside, I stopped.

The room rose three stories around me, with shelves climbing almost to the ceiling and disappearing into the dim upper levels. Iron galleries ran along each floor, connected by narrow spiral staircases, and wheeled ladders leaned against the shelves at uneven angles. Tall windows admitted thin strips of daylight, while green-shaded lamps cast warmer pools of light across the long oak tables.

The air smelled of old paper, leather, wax, and dust.

More importantly, it was warm.

After four days of cold stone corridors and wind coming off the sea, it was the first room in Ironmoor that felt properly heated.

Beside the doors stood an old card catalog with hundreds of narrow drawers. I started there, looking under white hart, then stag, deer, and antlers. The cards sent me to three hunting manuals, two books on heraldry, and a devotional tract about a saint and an extremely unfortunate deer.

There was nothing about warm carvings, erased animals, or four-year-old girls who drew creatures they had never seen.

I wandered farther into the room and realized that most of the warmth came from the far end, where a single large desk stood beneath the tallest window. The air around it carried a faint distortion from the heat.

The man I had seen in the gallery on my first night was sitting behind the desk, restoring a book.

It lay open on a padded cradle in front of him, its spine split. He was applying a narrow strip of gold leaf to a damaged letter with a brush so fine that I could barely see the bristles.

Up close, he looked older than most of the students, probably somewhere in his late twenties. Even seated, he was obviously tall. He was lean and held himself very straight, dressed in a dark coat buttoned high enough to cover his throat completely. His hair was a deep red-brown, cut short and neatly kept. His hands were long and pale, and one finger was stained with ink.

“The reading room closes at nine, Miss Hale,” he said without looking up.