“There’s no record of that,” I said. “But then, there was no record of these compartments, either.”
Wilder set the snake and the frame on my desk. “May I see the box? You are a clever girl, as was your mother. Maybe there’s a false bottom?”
“I don’t think so.” Yet I handed him the box.
Wilder went entirely still as he stared down into it. “Where did you get this?”
His voice sounded oddly hollow as he took my mother’s ring from the box. He held it between his thumb and forefinger, and light reflected from a dozen different facets of the large stone, illuminating my bedchamber with bright white reflections.
“I told you. It was in the box. It belonged to my—”
“This is not your mother’s ring, Amber.” He turned it, and Yoslyn gasped as the reflections shifted and flickered all over room. “She was buried with the only ring I ever saw her wear.”
“The one my father gave her.” Shewasburied with it.
Could he be right? Was that why I had no memory of her wearing such a large stone?
“So then, where did I get this one? Do you thinkthiswas in the table compartment?” My heart began to thump almost painfully. “Do you think Lord Calyx hid it in the research library, one hundred fifty years ago?”
Yoslyn made a strange, awed sound as she rose from the bed and came closer, staring at the ring.
“Amber,” Wilder said, and he was looking directly at me now, rather than at the brilliant stone. “This is QueenAvalona’sring.”
“No,” Yoslyn said. “Her ring is famously green, and it’s an oval cut. It’s on display in the palace historical—”
“Not that one.” Wilder handed me the ring and stood to pace between my bed and the chair. “There’s a portrait of Avalona in the Panacea wing. In it, she’s heavy with child and smiling radiantly. Her hand is on her belly, and she’s wearingthisring. Dr. Winhoof has a theory that it was given to her by—” He shook his head. “That doesn’t matter. The point is that as far as I know, that’s the only time she was ever pictured wearing it, and no one’s entirely sure where it came from or what happened to it, since that portrait is fromafterEldon gave her the emerald.”
I held the ring up to the light again and was nearly blinded by the reflection.
And suddenly one of my new memories slid into place with an almost audible click of my mental gears. “This is the ring from the stained glass tableau.”
“What?” Wilder frowned.
Yoslyn’s hand slapped over the O her mouth had formed. “It certainly is! The light through her ring in the spiraling Conservatory ceiling showed us where to find the tiny frame. And that ring isclear. Not green.”
His frown deepened. “I never noticed.”
“It’s the same one,” I insisted. “It has to be. If you’re surethisring is the one in that other portrait?”
“It’s pretty hard to mistake,” he said. “That stone is huge, and clear, but I don’t think it’s a diamond. And…well, you can come see for yourself. That painting is in the main corridor of the Panacea.”
I glanced at Yoslyn, and she nodded.
“Let’s go.” I set the bracelet and frame back into the box, along with the ring, but before I could close the box, I found my attention strangely captured by the shape the three objects had formed.
The frame was entirely encircled by the bracelet: a square inside a circle. When I’d set the ring down, it had fallen half into the frame, and I now realized something I’d overlooked before, distracted as I was by its luster.
The stone was a perfect circle.
My hand trembling, I picked it up again by the band and placed it stone-surface-down inside the frame. It was a perfect fit.
A circle inside a square, inside a circle.
All that was missing was the triangle.
“That’s it,” I whispered as I gazed at the framed portrait. “That’s the ring.” I stared in awe at the stone I held up to the painting, comparing it to the one Queen Avalona wore on her right hand as it caressed her pregnant belly.
“Do you think Lord Calyx gave it to her?” Yoslyn blinked against the glare of light reflected in the ring.
