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He put his hands up, stifling further laughter. “Okay, okay. I was just joking, I promise.” He closed the door partially but peeked his head in for a moment. “Thank you.”

It shut softly behind him.

“You’re welcome,” I said to his memory.

Chapter 23: Brindisi

The virgin paper felt rough against my fingertips, but I pushed further into the weft to find an abnormality in the pattern. As I’d suspected, using my sketchbook as a journal in the heat of the moment had backfired, and my heavy-handed writing had transferred between pages. I sighed. What a waste of good watercolor paper. I traced my finger along to find the extent of the damage and landed upon distinguishable letters.

E.N.Z.O.

I traced over them again in a different order.

Z.E.N.O.

Don’t tell Zeno,Noor’s voice echoed in my mind.He may find all of this a bit too . . . familiar.

“What are you doing?”

As if on cue, Zeno’s voice rang out beside me.

I hadn’t noticed him take his normal place beside me in the aviary, and for once he was on time rather than five minutes late. On instinct, I jumped and slammed my sketchbook shut, nearly dropping it. Zeno raised a brow at me, curious but not concerned, as was his usual reaction to my jumpiness.

“I was just checking the paper in my sketchbook. The page has some indentations from writing on top of it, so I can’t use it for watercolor.” I neglected to say what exactly that writing was—that the indentations were notes from his family tree and scrawling his name.

From the way he leaned closer to me and glowered, I knew Zeno saw the string of thought I was biting behind my teeth, and that he wanted to reach into my mouth and yank it out.

“You’ve been acting peculiar for over a week,” he finally stated. “More than usual, that is.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled with a shrug.

Zeno scoffed and rolled his eyes. “I’d prefer an explanation over an apology.”

I sighed and hung my head. “I can’t get anything past you, can I?”

He smirked crookedly, revealing a single fang. “I’d take that as a compliment if you weren’t so easy to read.”

I wrung my hands, and this time, Zeno was patient enough. I must have been scrunching my face together the way I often did when I was trying to compose a sentence. I soon gave up on trying to find a subtle way to say it. Probably because there was none.

“I want to know about your past,” I finally said. “What you said about how you would be in a cassock in another life.”

Suddenly, Zeno stood and walked to the door.

“W-wait!” I cried out. “I didn’t mean to upset you! Please come back!”

He tossed his head over his shoulder at me and gently shooed away a finch I hadn’t noticed before. It fluttered away with an annoyed chirp. “I’m not upset. I’ll be right back.”

He left me alone for several painful moments with only the finches. It seemed like they were glaring at me for scaring off their beloved keeper. Just as I was about to accept Zeno wasn’t coming back, the door opened halfway, and Zeno stuck his head through.

“Come on. Hurry.”

At his appearance, several Gouldian finches jumped from perch to perch, aligning themselves on a visible trajectory to his shoulders.

“Where are we—”

“Hurry. They’re fond of you now, so they may try to follow you out.”

I gathered my belongings hastily and rushed out, looking behind me all the while. An arm stretched over my head, and I felt like a rabbit who had seen an eagle flying overhead. I instinctively spun on my heels and stepped back against the door, which was now shut.