Every wall had a long wooden workbench pushed against it, strewn with sheets of metal and rows of glass vials, bottles, and jars. Half-dismantled pieces of machinery sat beside stacks of paper, all organized around books propped open to marked pages and annotated diagrams. The room had a strange haphazard continuity to it, as if each scattered item had grown organically from the one beside it.

My gaze caught on a sketchbook in the center of a cleared space, the bottom corner and spine worn as if frequently opened. I lifted the cover, but the page underneath was blank, and none of the pages looked to have been torn out. Beside it sat several glass vials of what looked like bird poop and a book pinned open to a page with colorful drawings. One vial was labeled Magpie and lay beside another vial titled Raven.

“What are you working on?” I asked.

Caylus looked up from readjusting his perpetually askew shirt. He’d removed his apron and even ran his scarred hands through his hair in an attempt to fix it, but it didn’t help. He gave up, looking as defeated as a puppy thwarted by a door handle. The kitten batted at a stray curl, and I resisted the urge to pat the lock into place.

“I’m looking at the properties of bird feces from species that look related to the crows.” He approached the desk with the vials.

I went rigid. “Why are you doing that?”

“I’m looking for signs of magic.” Caylus tapped the open book. “The crows weren’t the only source, with the Sellas and all. I want to find another. There are a number of ways I think it could work with technology.”

The way he spoke about the crows threw me off, so casual and normal. Like he didn’t fully recognize who he was talking to. Though I was starting to realize that Caylus wasn’t very good at noticing things. He was also talking about the Sellas as if they hadn’t been gone for hundreds of years.

I, on the other hand, was having a hard time not noticing the hard lines of his body beneath the tunic or the specks of white scarring along the golden skin of his arms. Or the way his size made me feel small in a strange, safe sort of way, like the crows always had.

“…considering the crows showed a lot of elemental applications of magic, you know?” Caylus finished.

I blinked. Saints. He’d been talking that whole time. He didn’t miss my bewildered look, a blush rising in his cheeks. “I was rambling, wasn’t I?”

“Not really,” I lied. I peered at the title of the book. “Saints and Sellas? You’re reading a book of myths for information? You must be desperate.”