"I was a boy, yet," he admits. "Eight or nine, I suppose. I can't remember."

But he remembers the look on Fergel's face when he discovered him and Noel under a bridge, and he remembers keeping his distance from the older boy forever after. The wrongness of it all ached in him, and now it feels fresh.

"How did they know?" he asks in a whisper, unable to look at Anthony. "Noel, and the priest. How did they know? It must be branded somewhere I can't see--"

As he speaks, he feels his chest get tight, feels his eyes burn again, and he clutches his mug like it might keep him from flying apart again.