Page 83 of Daughter of No Worlds

“I have something for you,” Max said, at last. The lightness to his voice snapped the thread of tension, and I exhaled. He rose from his chair and disappeared down the hall, emerging a moment later with a small, unassuming box in his hands. He placed it in front of me. Then he leaned back against the doorframe, casual and yet oddly tensed.

I looked down at the box. It was perhaps the size of my splayed hand, flat, neatly crafted from brown leather.

I flicked my gaze back to Max. I couldn’t help it. A lump was already rising in my throat.

He barked a rough, uncomfortable chuckle. “Open it before you give me that look. It could be a terrible gift.”

I obliged, and all I could do was sit there and blink at what was revealed, utterly stunned.

Inside the box was a golden necklace in a bed of black silk.

The back of it was an elegant thread of gold, which then widened into a beautiful, tangled mass of glimmering butterflies. Their wings were so perfectly crafted I could have sworn they quivered— the metal so delicate that it seemed like light refracted through it. Glinting vines and thorns and familiar blossoms twined between them, weaving them into a wild landscape. On closer inspection, I saw that there was one snake nestled in between it all, small and unassuming, curling off to one side.

He’d had this crafted for me. He must have. It was too specific.

My chest hurt.

“Flip it over,” Max said, quietly. I obeyed. And there, where the metal would rest against my skin, were three tiny Stratagrams.

I didn’t notice that he had moved until I felt his breath next to my face, leaning over my shoulder. “This one,” he said, pointing to the first Stratagram, “will help you heal. Not a lot, but enough for little cuts and bruises. I had Sammerin help with it.”

That thought touched me so deeply I thought my heart might fold in on itself.

His finger moved to the next circle. “This one will bring you warmth. Help you start fires. Again, limited, but—” He paused, letting out an awkward, scuffing laugh. “I thought maybe if you’re traveling all over Threll, you might need that kind of thing.”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

There was a long pause. Max’s hand hovered.

“What about this?” I said at last, pointing to the third Stratagram.

Max straightened. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, rougher, as if he were tethering something back. “That one will bring you here.” He paused, cleared his throat. “If— if you ever wanted to return. It’ll only work within a few miles, but…”

His voice trailed off and did not resume.

Gods.

At once, I understood. This was not about the necklace, beautiful and finely crafted as it was. He wasn’t giving me another pretty trinket. No, Max — Max, the man who had taken such great care to carve out his own solitary corner of the world — was giving me what I’d never had.

The real gift was not the necklace. The gift was a home to come back to.

“Just… if you want to,” he said, quietly, awkwardly.

My eyes burned.

I wanted to say,Of course I want to return.I wanted to say,I don’t even want to leave.

But I didn’t even smile, because I didn’t know what would come out of my mouth if I opened it. Instead I slipped the necklace into Max’s hand, then lifted my hair, presenting my neck. As he fastened it around my throat, every brush of his fingers left little paths of fire along my skin, burning as they hovered there at the nape of my neck.

“Thank you,” I murmured, finally. “It is perfect.”

I let my hair drop. His fingers slid from my shoulders. “I figured you should have something both beautiful and functional, like you.”

He said it so quickly that it almost didn’t register. I whipped my head around to look at him. “Max,” I breathed, touching my heart with exaggerated awe, “you think I’m functional?”

A dancing smile glinted in his eyes. “I think,” he said, “that you are breathtakingly functional.”

My fingertips brushed those butterfly wings as I swept my eyes over him — over the muscle twitching in his throat, over the twist at the corners of his mouth, the unruly wave of the strand of hair that fell across his forehead.

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