Who Cast It

Thane’s study was closer than her own chambers. Neither of them argued about ending up there instead, too shaken yet to care whose room they borrowed for the conversation neither could afford to have in front of anyone else.

He shut the door himself, tested it once to be sure it had caught. He lowered himself into the chair behind his desk with the care of a man whose legs hadn’t quite finished the night’s work. Isolde took the chair across from him rather than pace. Pacing required more steadiness than she currently trusted herself to fake.

“Say it,” he said. “Whatever you saw down there, say it now, plainly, before either of us starts doubting our own memory of it.”

“A ring. Old Marrow silver, a single black pearl set in it. The kind of piece that doesn’t get made anymore, because the mine that supplied the pearls ran…