Nyra was brought into the archive after the confession because the locket began to sing.
It was not a song with words. It was worse than that. A low, humming vibration rose from the iron bowl, trembling through the table legs and onto the floor until every relic in the room answered faintly. The Morcant journals fluttered. The bone crown clicked once inside its wrappings. Valerius’s thorn mark bled through another layer of cloth.
Delara decided, with considerable irritation, that if the Red Herald’s message had awakened the locket, the Red Herald could risk being eaten by the explanation.
Nyra entered under guard, her red cloak removed, weapons taken, a thorn circlet still resting across her brow because three separate attempts to remove it had made the estate wards scream. Up close, sh
