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There be those in whom the beast lieth so deep that no glass may wake it, and these are named empty by fools. But the beast that sleepeth longest is oft the greatest, and it waketh not for any calling, but only when it be safe.

Named empty by fools.

I stared at that sentence until the words began to lose their shape.

It did not prove anything. The book was ancient, written by someone who probably believed plenty of things I would have dismissed without hesitation under normal circumstances.

It certainly did not prove anything about me.

Still, someone had deliberately left it in my place.

Someone who had looked me in the eye the night before and told me that everything concerning Hollows was restricted.

I could not stop wondering why.

Ronan Ashgrave did not seem like someone who ignored rules casually. Either he believed this particular rule was wrong, or he knew something about me that I did not.

Neither possibility made me feel especially safe, and both made it impossible to stop reading.

Eventually I got up.

There was a small iron stove built into the wall of my tower room, and I had learned on my first night how to light it using the kindling stacked beside it. By then the fire was burning low behind the grate.

I took the release form from beneath my pillow and read it one more time.

Voluntary Release and Registration (Hollow).

A cuff hidden beneath a watch strap. Marion’s kitchen. A life that was safe and small enough that I already knew exactly what it would look like.

Mr. Aske had warned me that the form would not be reissued. If I burned it, I would not be delaying the decision.

I would be making it.

I remembered Mistress Fenwick saying that some were simply built without a door. I remembered the laughter from the gallery.

Then I thought something that I probably would not have allowed myself to admit in daylight.

If I went home now, I would go back to spending my life making myself useful and unobtrusive, always fitting around everyone else’s needs and asking for as little room as possible.

I had spent twenty-two years learning how to do that.

I had spent three of those years doing it for Daniel.

I opened the stove and pushed the corner of the form into the flames.

The paper caught quickly. The edge curled inward, blackened, and then turned orange. Lines of small print disappeared one after another until even the words under the Accord were gone.

I stayed there until nothing remained except ash.

Then I sat back on my heels on the bare wooden floor, light-headed and aware that I had probably just made the largest and possibly stupidest decision of my life.

That was when I felt the ache again.

It had been quiet beneath my breastbone since the courtyard, but now it pulsed once, hard enough to make me catch my breath.

A second pulse followed.

So much for it fading.