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“Thank you.” Bri dropped her hand and gave a little curtsy, then looked to Alie. “Now Alie has to ask me about your ring.”
Alie rolled her eyes with a smile. “Fine. Tell us.”
“That diamond,” Bri said, launching directly into her answer, “was mined from the Golden Mount.”
Lore’s brow furrowed. “Wait. That can’t be true, can it?”
“It can.” Bri beamed, thrilled to have a reason to explain. “It’s been tested by the best jewelers in the world, and its structural makeup is different from every other diamond mined anywhere else—it’s most like the others from the Burnt Isles, but even those aren’t a perfect match. Apparently it shares some other component, another type of stone rare enough that no two jewelers agree on what it is. Between that and its yellow coloring, the only explanation is the Golden Mount.”
“Or an extremely creative salesman,” Alie said.
Bri shrugged. “The Arceneaux family has believed that it’s from the Golden Mount for generations. Not that any of them got a great look at it—after the stone was tested, Gerard Arceneaux had it hidden within the Church somewhere. Most people thought it was a myth, especially since Gerard said it had been given to him by Apollius.” She grinned. “The fact that Bastian knew where it was, and gave it to you as an engagement ring, is quite the scandal. I find it terribly romantic, personally.”
Lore tried to smile, but the muscles in her cheeks would only twitch.
“Bastian.” Alie said his name like a warning; Lore turned to see her fiancé striding toward them, wearing a wolfish smile and a glint in his eye. Bri and Alie gave quick curtsies; Lore wasn’t sure if she should follow suit, or if such things weren’t required of her.
The King answered the question by taking her arm and planting it once again in the crook of his elbow. “Ladies.”
“Majesty,” Bri murmured, dipping her head. Alie said nothing, her lips pressed tightly closed.
Something in Bastian’s stance withered a bit at her silence, but it didn’t make his smile falter. “I have to steal my Queen away from you for just a moment.”
“Of course.” Bri took Alie’s arm. “We were just going to tour the new ship.”
“If you have any ideas for a title, let me know,” Bastian said. “I have to name the thing in half an hour, and I have nothing.”
Lore let him lead her gently away, her ring-heavy hand pressed against his arm. She’d known the ring was valuable—it was an Arceneaux heirloom; it’d be astronomically expensive from that alone—but mined from the Golden Mount? That pushed it from valuable into mythic, regardless of the story’s veracity.
The Golden Mount existed—pre-Godsfall maps confirmed it—but no one knew where it actually was, other than somewhere in the miasma of fog and ash surrounding the Burnt Isles, just off the coast. There wasn’t a consensus on if the Mount even still existed after Apollius had thrown Nyxara into the Isles during Their final confrontation, before directing His early followers to take Her body and inter it in Dellaire. If the diamond in Lore’s ring really was from the Golden Mount, it would’ve had to be mined before the Godsfall happened. Which made sense within the context of Bri’s story, Lore supposed. If one believed that Apollius Himself had dictated the Tracts to Gerard Arceneaux, it wasn’t much of a leap to think He’d given him a ring, too.
Though she hadn’t the foggiest idea why. Or why such a thing would’ve been kept in Church storage, rather than displayed as another sign of the Bleeding God’s favor. Myriad hells, if the story was true, August would’ve had the thing permanently attached to his face, if Anton didn’t beat him to it.
As for how Bastian knew where it was… she thought she understood that part.
“You’re thinking hard about something,” Bastian murmured, leaning close so his lips brushed her ear. “Care to let me in on it?”
“It’s nothing.” Lore followed his lead, leaning into his shoulder to soften the impact of her refusal.
A few more empty greetings and equally mindless conversations later, Bastian turned the two of them with purpose toward the yet-to-be-named ship. It was open for tours like the others on the docks, the gangplank guarded by two Presque Mort, the daggers in their harnesses glinting afternoon light. They had to be sweating buckets. The sun was high, and the midsummer heat was making itself known. More than one carefully created hairstyle was frizzing in the humidity.
“Once we go up there to name the ship,” Bastian murmured, “we’ll channel together, like before. It’d be nice if we could do something useful, but like Malcolm said, that’s currently out of our scope, so maybe just something like that day at prayers—”
“I told you I won’t, Bastian.” Lore’s voice was small but not timid.
He didn’t look at her, eyes fixed on the ship and the horizon beyond. But a tremor went through the muscles her hand was trapped between, still tucked into his arm.
“I want to honor that,” he said, a tremor in his voice to match the one in his arm. A but lingered at the end of the sentence, one he didn’t say.
He turned away from the new ship, meandered around the velvet ropes to the other dock, going back to working the crowd.
The King’s demeanor changed as they stepped onto the dock nearest the barricade of bloodcoats and Presque Mort. He straightened further, squared his shoulders, as if shoring himself up for battle. “We should go see our honored guests.”
No question who he meant. The Kirythean diplomats stood near the velvet ropes lining the dock’s edge, sipping wine and chatting with two other courtiers. The lady of the pair laughed, throwing back her head. Amelia Demonde, gorgeous as ever, with a pleasant expression on her face that didn’t recall midnight meetings and hissed religious pronouncements.
Maxon inclined his head as Bastian and Lore approached, a slight smile on his face. He dressed in Kirythean fashion, now—more austere than what most Auverrani favored, a flowing dark shirt with no vest tucked into simple trousers and shorter boots than Lore was used to seeing. A golden laurel wreath was embroidered around the shirt’s collar, open nearly to the middle of Maxon’s chest, just like the tunics they wore over their armor. The man was almost as ridiculously handsome as Bastian. “Quite the party you’ve thrown. I’ve seen less lively gatherings for Consecrations than you’re having for a new ship.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Amelia purred, sipping her wine, her eyes flicking to Lore. “The last few Consecrations I’ve been to have been quite diverting.”
