“Isla already spoke to him about that. He’s got a handful of lower ringers willing to talk as well as the priests who presidedover the Culling ceremony. They were in a righteous fervor about the Viper patriarch sullying their precious holy day.”
“More than I expected.”
“They should be put under guard.”
Nascha’s gaze shot to me as she dropped the blue dress back to where it had been hanging and turned to face me as though I’d lost my mind.
“By what enforcement?” she asked. “Cosmo has control over the Guardians.”
“Not all of them,” I replied, hoping that was true but not having any real basis for the judgment other than the feeling that they couldn’t possibly all remain on the side of a man who’d beheaded a fifteen-year-old boy in front of his mother. “But if we can’t trust the Guardians, we’ll do it ourselves. We have plenty of First Ring sons and daughters who’ve spent their whole lives training to fight and compete in the Trials. They should provide adequate support. If nothing else, the sight of a First Ringer hanging around a witness might keep Cosmo’s associates from arranging any unfortunate accidents before the trial.”
“You want me to send First Ringers down to the lower rings to protect lower ringers?”
Nascha blinked at me as if wondering whether all the time I’d spent reading the rantings of a madman had begun to affect my mind in much the same way. A fury sparked within me at that expression.
“Are you proposing we lose our chance to convict a murderer of his crimes because of our own prejudices?” I asked, tone burning with challenge.
My grandmother stared at me as if she no longer knew me, the corners of her lips slanted in an unforgiving frown.
“We don’t have enough bodies to guard nine witnesses,” she told me. “At least, I can’t think of nine of our own willing to do such a thing. And if you think for a second Raghnall–”
“Let Isla worry about Raghnall.”
Nascha raised a brow.
“You already trust her so implicitly?” she asked. Her expression told me everything I needed to know about what she thought of my trust, how foolish she believed I was being. “Perhaps you’re just infatuated. Newlyweds so often are. Trust cannot be found between a woman’s legs, Milo, not even those of your wife.”
I bristled and, before I could stop myself, blushed. I hadn’t been between my wife’s legs, not in the weeks since our marriage or ever before, but my grandmother didn’t need to know that. Her warning was clear, as was the fear underlying her words. She worried I was losing my rationality to my emotions and perhaps I was, but it certainly wasn’t lust driving me.
Nascha sighed then, closing her eyes and shaking her head once more before wobbling toward a closed cabinet inside her closet I knew contained her jewelry.
“I never got to give you your wedding present,” she said then.
I just blinked at her, feeling off-balanced by this conversational whiplash.
“I don’t mean to be crude, hafid,” she told me, voice gentler than before. “I’ve simply seen far too many men fall to the seduction of a woman and I know your gentle heart. You want to do right by your wife, as any good man would. You’ve already done more for her than any before you, assuring her succession and more thoroughly tying our Houses together as you have, but you mustn’t forget your own place in favor of hers.”
I nodded and did not speak the argument rising within me. I hadn’t forgotten my place. Nor had I forgotten hers.
“When I rose to the seat of Matriarch, my grandmother pulled this from her own neck and gave it to me. She told me the same had been done for generations. Either the wife of the Patriarch or the Matriarch of House Avus herself had worn this aroundher neck for as long as anyone could remember. I never wear it out and about anymore. It’s too ostentatious for the image I’ve curated of the city’s kindly old grandmother. But I wear it every night. It makes me feel closer to her, to a family that once was and has long since been, to our ancestors. My grandmother died a week after she gave me this and I’ve cherished it since. I had hoped…I wanted you to have it, to give to your wife.”
From within the cabinet, she pulled out a pendant set on a thick silver chain and dangling at the end. It was an amulet the size of my palm, a wide circle with spokes sparking off at odd angles. Most noticeably, it glowed. I didn’t mean that it was so shiny it reflected the light in a blinding way. It actually emitted a soft glow from deep within the cerulean gem trapped inside. The air around it was tinged a pale blue and seemed to be disturbed in an unnatural way as she handed it to me. I took it hesitantly, carefully.
“What–” I started. “How–”
“No one knows,” she replied, anticipating my question before it came. “I asked the same thing myself. Do you want to know what my grandmother said?”
I nodded as I reached for it and took it gently by the chain, dangling the amulet in front of my face so the blue light illuminated my eyes. There was an engraving around the edge in a language I didn’t understand. Something about it was familiar but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what.
“She said it was lucky,” Nascha told me with a smile. “That’s why it glows. It’s some sort of ancient artifact left over from the gods, the real ones.”
My gaze shot to her to find her watching me closely. So this was why she was so convinced other, older gods existed. She thought she had a piece of them right here in her closet, one she wore upon her neck every night as she slept.
“Give it to Isla,” Nascha told me a moment later. “She deserves some luck and you’ll win a fair amount of points for bringing her a big, shiny jewel.”
I snorted but pocketed the amulet. I almost swore it was emitting some faint amount of heat against my thigh as I turned to face my grandmother.
“Thank you,” I said.
