Page 132 of Harbinger

“Not since the war,” he continues, mostly to himself.

A shiver races down my back, and I straighten, flinging mud from my gloves onto the ground. More than five hundred years old. I still can’t wrap my head around it.

But it is like having a walking history book to reference, and I can’t stop myself. “Were they hunted back then?”

Have people always been this superstitious?

He’s quiet long enough that I regret asking.

“Not until Ravenell fell,” he finally says.

I swallow. It’s not surprising, but somehow still sad. “I’ve never understood that,” I admit. “We still use nochtimetry.”

Hadrian shrugs. “People always choose the parts of a story that serve them and try to rewrite the rest.”

“So they blamed birds?” I stare at the oscen’s sharp, intelligent eyes. It’s only a creature. But I know all too well how easily fear turns a simple truth into a threat. “That’s silly.”

Hadrian doesn’t correct me. He takes another step closer to the stump, and I cringe, waiting for the bird to startle and fly away.

It doesn’t.

“Ravenell was never good or bad. People have forgotten that part,” he says quietly. “Power hates what it can’t control. The other patrons saw Ravenell as a threat to their own magic, so they let everyone believe the worst. It’s why, even now, some of them want you dead.”

Like the oscens.

An unsettling prickle creeps across my skin. “Where were you during the war?” I ask.

Do I want to know?

His gaze stays on the oscen. “Trying to stop it.”

Not what I expected, but it never is with him. With any of the people Bishop has collected in this house. Only Lenora is what she seems to be.

Which means that any minute I’ll probably find out she’s really an assassin.

“I suppose you succeeded in doing that.” Five hundred years of peace with not even a hint of threat until I dropped my blood in a stupid well and ruined it all.

But he shakes his head. “I failed.”

I open my mouth to ask what in seven hells that means, but before I can he crouches until he’s staring directly at the oscen.

My breath catches as the bird stares back. It doesn’t move. Doesn’t flutter its wings. Just tilts its head and holds its ground.

“I was there when Ravenell fell,” he murmurs.

I sit back on my heels, not daring to interrupt him.

“I tried to reach them.” The words are so distant they almost echo, as if he’s back there again. “But I couldn’t.”

The oscen hops forward and makes a soft clicking sound, and I realize I’m holding my breath. He reaches out a hand, and the bird nips him and takes flight, soaring into the low cloud bank overhead.

Hadrian snaps out of his daze and turns to me, but something raw lingers in his brown eyes. “Sometimes, I think I came back to life as a punishment.”

“Do you really believe that?” But it’s not like I can judge him. Kieren would be here if it weren’t for me.

His mouth twists into something that’s not quite a smile. “You believe a lot of things after something like that.” He looks up at the sky like he might see the oscen soaring among the clouds. “Especially when you jump off a cliff and the Stars put you right back in your body.”

The confession knocks every thought from my head. I scramble for something to say, but my mouth won’t even open.