“What is it?” My hands tighten around the cup. I do not know if I can handle one more morsel of bad news. My cup is already overfull.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” Ana begins. Again, so unlike her to hedge her words. Normally, she wears her feelings on her sleeve, for anyone to see. She is not careful or circumspect. It is not in her nature.

“Whatever it is, just spit it out, Ana.”

“Alejandro didn’t kill himself.”

The mention of his name, breathed aloud into the air, feels like another blow, this one right below the sternum. I have not spoken his name out loud myself. I could not bear to do so. Not when I knew it would go unanswered forever more.

I stumble over the name to the meat of what Ana has just said. The words are out of my mouth before my conscious mind truly has time to process both her statement and my response. “I know.”

Her brow furrows. “I—Wait. How?”

How? It’s a ridiculous question. Absurd. Truly. I know it the same way I know that water is wet and the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. I just know.

“He wouldn’t.”

Ana nods, slowly, as if to herself. “I saw him.”

If the mere mentioning of his name was like a blow, this particular collection of words is like being run through with a blade, like being gutted, left to hold my own, still warm innards in my trembling hands.

I see him then too. I blink and I am there. In the viceroy’s garden with the smell of flowers in the air and the muffled sounds of lovers rustling together, hidden behind a wall of hedges. Boots swinging in the wind. Hands, limp, pale, bloodied.

“Kiki.”

Something warm lands on my shoulder. I blink. It is Ana’s hand. Again, her brow is pinched, but more severely this time.

“Stay with me.”

I breathe in through my nose. A mistake. I can smell it still. Flowers and blood.

“There was something on his hand.”

Limp, pale, bloodied.

“Someone carved a sign. Or a crest. Something. I don’t know.”

My racing thoughts come to an abrupt stop. His hands. They’d been bloodied. But why?

I stand there, silent and dumb, as Ana takes a piece of parchment out of her pocket. It’s folded, and the ink is smudged, but the image is clear enough. A circular sigil, inscribed around the edges with letters and symbols. What they mean, I do not know.

My hand extends toward Ana, toward the paper. She places it on my palm. I stare at it, and the memories of that night slough off like half-dried mud.

“What is this?”

“I don’t know.” She gives a helpless shake of her head. “I checked every book I could think of in your library—”

“You did research?”