Chapter Forty-Seven The Lady Abandons All Hope #2
When they reached the treasury door, Emer felt chastened enough by Lia’s words that she strode forward to break the lock without Lia asking.
The door of the Room of Golden Wonder had been commissioned by a fanciful king of days gone by to look like the top of a pirate’s chest. Carved skulls and crossbones in the corners, and stylized heaps of coins wrought in golden wood.
And a great, golden lock.
It broke in Emer’s hands like butter.
Once, Emer had lined up with the other maids at the treasury door to receive her wages. There was no reason to dole out coppers in front of a room of gold, except to remind servants of their place.
When the door swung open and Emer saw what she had only imagined before, her eyes dazzled.
Literal heaps of gold, loops of pearls festooning the heaps and jewels as big as the eggs of the Emperor’s monstrous roc.
Emer used to dream of enough gold to run away and buy a cottage.
She scooped up some brilliant coins. She was holding enough to do that now.
“Should we take a sack and fill it?” Emer asked Lia.
“No.” Lia sounded almost absent-minded. “I’m looking for something else.”
“What’s that?”
Orichal weapons, perhaps? Lady Rae wore the gauntlets of Lia’s family. She had stolen them, though now the stepsisters shared them. It made sense that, once robbed, Lia would want orichal weapons to keep her safe, a blade or a shield.
“Something of my own,” replied Lia. “I must thank you, Emer, for making things so clear to me. My sister used to tell me I would be queen. The Cobra too seemed certain that through some man’s love I would climb high.
I thought of ways I could effect change, once I had the power they told me was my destiny.
But the Cobra and my sister were liars. The king’s favour.
The court’s admiration. The rebels’ faith.
Your strength. None of it was ever mine.
It’s not really my power, if it will leave me as soon as someone else changes their mind. ”
She paced among the heaps of gold, soft white skirt whisking behind her. Emer’s stomach sank with every word she spoke.
“The idea if you seem good enough, or lovely enough, or charming or sweet enough, that the world will give you everything you desire if only you do not demand it, that’s a trap.
Can a smile break steel, or stop the Emperor hurting my sister?
I am done borrowing the power of others, done with everything being snatched back from me when they discover I committed the great betrayal of being human.
I want something else. And there it is.”
There it was, lying on the gold like a black worm coiled at the heart of a yellow rose.
The Abandon All Hope Diamond. Emer remembered how it had burned above Lady Rae’s black and blue dress.
She remembered how fast Lady Rae could run in the Cauldron, how strong she had been, and remembered Lady Rae’s frightened eyes.
How unlike Lady Rae it was, to show fear.
“The cursed necklace,” Emer said thickly.
She did not want to go anywhere near it. She did not want Lia anywhere near it.
Lia smiled. “Mine now.”
Lia’s fingers closed around the gems, which Emer had last seen burning darkly around Lady Rae’s throat. The great jewel at its centre, which superstition called one of the lost god’s lost eyes, drew you in and swallowed all thought like a burning void.
Emer shuddered at the memory of how little she had recognized Lady Rae, wearing that necklace, when they met in the Cauldron.
How Rae had become the Beauty in Bruised Midnight with her wild eyes and stormy hair.
How little Emer had recognized Key as the Emperor, with the other God’s Eye burning in the hilt of his sword.
What happened, Emer had to wonder, when you caught a god’s eye?
“Lia,” she said urgently. “Don’t take it.
If I have been harsh to you, if I have judged you too cruelly, think only that I held you up so high that any fall shocked me.
Let us try again, on a level with each other, to see each other clearly, and be kind.
I swear to you I will be better. Put the God’s Eye down. ”
Lia’s face shone. She made all joy look gentle and luminous. The Pearl of the World, the court called her, and even among riches Emer could not dream of, Lia still looked like the greatest treasure in the room.
“And if I will not?”
“Then I leave the Room of Golden Wonder,” said Emer. “Without you.”
Lia stared down at the jewel in her palm, moving her hand slightly as though measuring its weight. She didn’t even glance at Emer, and Emer was unsurprised. What did Emer have to offer, in exchange for the power of a god?
“Where will you go?” Lia’s voice sharpened. “Back to Forge Strike?”
“I will go to find my friends.”
Lia only shook her head, as if Emer might do as she pleased, and Lia would too. Slowly, Lia reached up and fastened the cursed necklace about her lovely, fragile throat. The crimson fire in the dark gem’s heart seemed to leap as if to greet her.
Emer looked back only once, at the brightest thing among all the dazzling heaps of gold. Then she turned and left her lady behind.