Damon nodded, eyes searching her face. "Healers who could speak to the blood. Who could draw out poison with a whisper. Who knew the body better than any scholar ever wrote down. But if they want, they could ruin them too. Their one look was enough to kill soone. They could imagine the nerves they had seen and snap them with one flick. They did not need a weapon to kill soone, just a thought is enough."
She swallowed. "Stories ant to scare children into behaving. I am sure you do not believe them." she watched him, the way his lips curled, a hint of pain and fear flickering in them making goosebumps on her own skin.
"Or to hide the truth in plain sight," he countered, voice quiet but heavy. "Because if such a healer existed today... the court would not celebrate her. They would dissect her."
"The knight i have sent you three days ago to treat and experint your dicines on.. He told you did not ask about his wounds." And then, almost too softly, as if afraid that he would scare both of them, he continued,
"You knew what feverfew would do, even when he didn’t tell you the soldier’s condition. You adjusted the marigold before he could ntion the rash. You knew, Olivia. As if you’ve treated them before."
Her pulse quickened.
"I told you i have been reborn."
He didn’t move closer. He didn’t raise his voice. But he held her gaze with a stillness that frightened her more than anger ever could.
"Yes, but you never told you were a physician or a herbalist in your past life. You told you have lived a ek and uneventful life where you did nothing except being a shadow of your sister. I believe you rember things that were never taught to you in any life."
Olivia felt a chill bloom along her spine.
"You said your knowledge cos from your family," Damon continued, softer now. "But why did my mother know nothing? I am sure as your elder sister, she was taught first. no?"
She looked away. Even if she said Oriana had no interest in it, it had been so long. It was only normal for her to forget things. She was barely a child.
"Does it matter?" she said, too quickly, as if afraid of the truth. "If I can heal people, if I can help this empire—does it matter how I know?"
Damon studied her for a long mont.
"It does," he said, "to those who fear you might know more than them."
He reached out again, brushing a strand of hair from her cheek. "And it matters to , if it ans you’re not safe. I want to protect you, Olivia. Do not hide things from or i will be helpless." her breath quickened, her heart raced. Suddenk,y she was not sure about herself anymore.
Damon noticed her struggled and sighed.
"Do you like reading?" she was silent for a long mont. Not understanding the change in topic but when he did not stop staring at her, she nodded at him.
He held her hand and pulled her out of the room.
"Co with , i have a place for you."
The corridor behind the library’s west wall was narrow and slled faintly of old parchnt and cedar oil. Damon lit a lantern and handed it to her, then pushed open a tall wooden door she hadn’t even noticed was there.
"This section is off-record. My father kept it sealed. I found it by accident... years ago."
The room beyond was cold and silent. Rows of dark shelves held scrolls and worn tos, so with cracked leather bindings, others bound in cloth faded by ti. Dust motes floated in the lantern light.
Olivia turned to him, eyebrows raised. "Why have you brought here?"
Damon looked at her for a long mont.
"Because if you’re going to be hunted for what you know... then you should know everything."
Before she could speak, he turned and left, the door clicking shut behind him. She stood there stunned for a long mont! Hunted? What did it an?
She walked the narrow aisle, trailing her fingers across the bindings. There were no titles on most. The ones that did bear nas were in languages she couldn’t read—at least, not imdiately. But sohow, so of the symbols tugged at sothing distant in her mind. A mory that wasn’t hers. Or perhaps it was.
She picked books at random at first. One was on tinctures used in ancient battlefield care. Another on the humors of the body. One thick, velvet-covered volu recorded diseases lost to ti and the plants once used to treat them.
Then her hand stopped. The book was tucked into a corner, wrapped in faded crimson cloth and sealed with a wax symbol she recognized but didn’t know how.
The mont she touched it, sothing inside her chest pulsed—like a heartbeat that wasn’t her own.
She broke the seal and opened it. The script inside was neater than the others. Elegant and Precise. She did nto know who wrote it, yet she knew she knew the person closely. The title page read:
"The Doctrine of Sanguilore: A Study of the Blood Witches"
She went still. Each page was filled with accounts, so academic, so clearly paranoid or fearful. Diagrams of symbols etched into flesh. Lists of herbs that "respond to blood-touched hands." Descriptions of won who healed fatal wounds, who could draw poison through skin, who bled not when cut.
And then halfway through the book she saw sothing that made her chest seize.
A sigil.
One she had drawn once as a child, without knowing why. A shape she’d doodled in the dirt, in the corner of her notes, that Oriana once told her looked "pretty but strange."
"Witches born again will carry old marks in new bodies," the caption read.
"So will awaken slowly. Others all at once. But all rember... eventually."
Olivia slamd the book shut, her breathing unsteady.
This isn’t possible, she told herself.
It’s just a story. Just a na they gave to won who frightened them.
And yet...
Her hands were trembling.
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