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I shivered.

"Burned?” he checked.

I wondered if it was because he stood so close, but his pale eyes seemed anything but cold now. They flashed with something I couldn’t look away from for long seconds.

I finally made myself blink, look down, and talk. “Yeah. Felt like it, in any case.” The odd phrasing immediately caught his attention. Rather than letting him ask a million questions, I set out to recount the nightmarish event. “It happened last full moon?—”

I quickly ran through the story, hoping it would be the last time I needed to revive the living nightmare.Highly stressed, I couldn’t help myself from braiding my hair as I talked, just for something to do with my hands.

Through it all, Lucian remained towering over me and said nothing. Even as I resolutely fixed my cup of tea, I could feel his probing gaze analyzing every inch of my skin. I might as well have been the open book on the table.

Silence fell after I’d explained how clearing runes, potions, and healing spells failed at removing the damn runes. I was about to grab a muffin, just for something to do, when Lucian lowered himself to one knee in front of me.

Oh, goodie. I was never going to dream about anything else ever again.

He reached out again, his fingers brushing my skin as he looked at each rune, frowning.

My heart was racing. This was no good. He was going to notice; how could he not? My eardrums were full of its erratic beats.

"She researched it herself," Gideon said. "Until this hit my desk last week. Kleos is pretty good at runes, so I had her take a look. It's the same type of runes as the ones on her skin.”

Lucian spun toward my cousin, finally leaving my arm alone. I breathed out, glad I was no longer in danger of a heart attack. At the same time, I hated he was no longer touching me.

Get a hold of yourself, woman!

Lucian all but snatched the file Gideon handed him. I noticed my cousin didn't bother to warnhimnot to look at all of it, and Lucian paged through it quickly.

He was close enough for me to catch a glimpse of some of the pictures. I grimaced and looked away, my stomach recoiling.

Gods. There were dead people, actualcorpses, with those runes. I could have been one of them. What would the attacker have done to me first? What would they havemade me do? I was going to be sick if I let myself think about it any longer.

"Not the same runes," Lucian said, seeming to talk to himself as he returned to his armchair.

I was about to assert that, yes, there had been a great many other runes on the victims, but they seemed to follow the same pattern as mine—an eclectic mix that made no sense—but before I could manage a word, he finished his thought.

"Those on Kleos’s skin are upside down.”

I gaped at him in disbelief.

No. Surely that couldn’t be right. I would have?—

I made myself recall the file. Fuck. He was right, wasn’t he?

How did I miss that? Maybe because when I looked down at myself, they were in the same direction? And I didn’t spend a lot of time with the file on Friday. And I hadn’t looked at the actual corpses, so the direction escaped me.

Any rune could absolutely be written up or down. The meaning could change a little, but it was still the same rune.Thatdidn’t have to be relevant…but since all mine had been inverted, it was likely purposeful.

The better question was, how did he notice so fast?

“What would that mean?” Gideon asked.

“I have several guesses. When were the people killed?” he asked Gideon.

"Not sure. The first body was found about three weeks ago, but it could have been there longer. The dates are on the top left corners of each file.”

Lucian browsed the file again.

“They seem to be preserved,” Gideon continues. “Like they'd just died, even days after sitting in the morgue. The inquisitor in charge of the autopsy was baffled."