“Leo is a master colorist, but he works with liquid baths,” I said, picking up the brass tweezers to turn the charred scrap over. “Look at the core of the yarn.”

I pulled the wool fibers apart, exposing the dry, inner threads that had survived the acid.

“If the poison was in Leo’s dye bath, it would only coat the outer layer of the spun yarn,” I said.

I looked up, meeting Aries’s cold, pale eyes.

“But this is deep inside the core,” I said. “The chemical is embedded in the raw wool itself.”

“What does that mean, Sienna?” Aries asked, his voice dangerously soft.

“It means the poison wasn’t added in my shop, and it wasn’t added in Leo’s lab,” I said.

The rain rattled the metal roof above us like a volley of gunfire.

“The yarn was treated before it was ever spun into thread,” I said.

Aries stepped closer to the table, his hand resting on the cold steel edge. “Where did the raw wool come from?”

“The sheep were shorn in Biella,” I said, my throat dry. “The mill in Italy. They did the weaving.”