At that moment, his brother reappears, stopping abruptly as he seems to take us in. “Antony?”
“Victor,” Antony snaps without taking his eyes off me. “Describe to me the Oracle’s features right now.”
Victor’s voice is wary. “Brother?”
“Do it!”
With every passing second, my mind returns to me, and with my sanity comes fear.
I closed the gap when Antony warned me not to.
I tried to touch him when he told me not to. The brief temptation and defiance I experienced before the vision took control came to full fruition while my will was not my own.
“Tell me what color her hair is?” Antony demands of Victor. “What color are her eyes? What does she look like?”
“Like a lowborn,” comes the answer, hurried but faltering. “Dull hair, faded blue eyes, average height. Brother, she looks just as she did when I left the room. She even has calluses on her hands, which you’re on the verge of breaking.”
Antony’s grip on my wrist is so tight now that tears spring to my eyes.
He shakes his head. A slow side-to-side motion.
I don’t understand why he’s asking Victor what I look like or why he told me my appearance is some sort of trick.
“Now it fades again,” he mutters. “This fucking illusion.”
What fades? My eyes? My hair? What?
I raise my head, refusing to let my tears fall. I’m not in so much pain yet that I’ll sacrifice my pride.
Antony’s voice remains perilously low as he directs another command at Victor. “Give me the ruby circlet.”
Victor quickly puts the new pieces of armor to the side.
Then he extends his left hand, palm up toward Antony.
A fine silver chain rests in Victor’s palm. It appears to have been wound around so many times, it could be several feet long when stretched out.
If it’s the ruby circlet Antony asked for, I’m not sure where it gets its name. It looks to be made of very fine, interlocking, silver links. No crimson jewels in sight.
Antony scoops the chain off Victor’s palm, neatly plucking it by its end with his naked fingers.
In the blink of an eye, he flicks that end toward my right wrist—the one he’s holding.
The chain snakes around my limb, and then it clicks as it fits itself around my wrist, forming a bracelet while the rest of the chain remains loose.
“What is this?” The question has barely left my lips when Antony snaps the other end of the chain toward his wrist. The armored one.
The metal whooshes through the air, making a threatening hissing sound, before there’s another click.
Finally, he releases me, leaving my arm upraised in the air.
I wince as my bones shift slowly back into position.
Antony takes a step back from me, his features smoothing out, his anger seeming to drain away, and, if I didn’t know better, I might even imagine a hint of regret enters his eyes while I flex my fingers and bite my lip.
Resolutely, I lower my arm, but it’s impossible to ignore that the chain is now attached to both of us, wrapped around my right wrist as well as his left wrist.
“This is a ruby circlet,” Antony says, his expression suddenly blank and his voice emotionless. “An innocent-looking chain. But should you try to cut it, you will trigger its metal teeth for five full inches on either side of the attempted cut.”
