Page 60 of The Secret of the Three Fates
“WHAT TOOK YOUso long?” Ruan had grown downright irritable in my absence, but who wouldn’t be after having a bullet taken from one’s shoulder. He’d be even more cross if he knew what I’d overheard upstairs. I hoped he couldn’t hear my thoughts at the moment. He already mistrusted Andrew Lennox, and there was no need to fuel that particular fire, at least not until I’d parsed out what exactly that conversation meant.
“Shall I?”
Ruan gestured at the penknife. “I’m useless at the moment.” The deep divot between his brows returned as he looked at me.
I reached up, smoothing it with my thumb out of habit. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”
He hesitated, struggling for the words.
“Ruan, what’s happened? You’re starting to frighten me…”
“I can’t… I can’t hear you at all. I thought it was just—the distance. You went off to see Owen, but now…”
“You can’t…”
“I can’t hearyou. I can’t hearanything. It’s silence.” He tapped his temple.
My guilty hand went on its own to the fresh scar on my chest.
“It’s not your fault…” He must have guessed my turn of thoughts.
But itwas. If he hadn’t been with me on the bridge, then none of this would have happened.
“It will be fine. We’ll be fine.” He touched my arm gently before opening the hinge on the ring. Even days ago, when he’d touch me that way, I’d feel the cool rush of his power washing away the tension in my mind—but now the only sensation was that of his skin against mine. I could have wept.
And there was that damned word again.We.I brushed it away like a hoverfly, wetting my lips and tugged the knife from my pocket. “Hold the ring still, will you?”
I flicked open the knife and gently pried the hair from the channel.
Therewassomething beneath it. Neither of us breathed as I carefully extracted the small braid and placed it alongside the ring in Ruan’s scarred palm.
My throat constricted as I struggled to focus on the task at hand and not on the fact that the White Witch had been right in her warning. I might not have killed him but I most certainly destroyed Ruan Kivell.
I struggled to shove those thoughts from my mind, and focus on the ring. On what itmeant.I had to find what the mediums were hunting, and this ring and those glass negatives were the only clues we had. I studied the now-empty inner channel filled with decades’ worth of debris and dirt. And there, beneath it all, was a very faint engraving.
“You clever, clever girl,” Ruan murmured, his voice humming with approval.
Warm with praise, I shot up from the bed and went to the worktable on the other side. The white sheets drying from the rafters billowed in the fragrant evening breeze. I picked up an old pewter ewer and poured some water into a basin before submerging the ring, taking a small bit of clean bandage in my nail and running it along the channel. The water grew cloudy as decades of dirt dissolved.
I withdrew it from the water and rubbed a dry corner of the bandage through the channel, repeating the process until I could read the words.
Forti Nihil Difficile
“‘For the brave nothing is difficult,’” Ruan murmured over my shoulder.
I jumped at the sound of his voice, not noticing that he’d left the bed and come to my side. “I didn’t realize you read Latin.”
The edge of his mouth curved up into a small smile. “Oxford had its uses.”
I looked at him curiously, tucking a dark brown strand of hair behind my ear. “What other languages do you speak?”
“Speak? None but English and Cornish. But I can read Latin and ancient Greek. I knew a chap at school who was fascinated by languages, but I never had the knack for them as he did.”
This Pellar of mine was full of surprises.
He’s not yours, Ruby,that wicked voice reminded me. And he never would be if I knew what was good for him.
“What do you suppose it means?” he asked.
