“Leo Vargas,” Aries repeated. “He mixed the color.”

“He formulated the dye,” I corrected, pulling out a small wooden case from my bag. “I did the stitching, the fitting, and the pressing.”

“Show me,” he said, stepping closer. “Show me how you know it was the dye.”

I opened the wooden case, revealing several small glass vials of testing solvents, a ceramic dish, and a pair of brass tweezers.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the small scrap of charcoal-gray wool I had cut from the suit’s seam earlier.

My heart was beating in my throat, but my fingers grew steady the moment I touched the fabric.

This was my world, the one place where I knew exactly what I was doing.

“This is a fragment of the weft,” I said, laying the cloth in the ceramic dish. “The charcoal shade required a highly specific mordant to lock the pigment into the fibers.”

Killian leaned over the table, his shadow falling over my hands. “What is a mordant?”

“A chemical fixative,” I said. “Usually metal salts. Alum, iron, or tin.”