Chapter 18
AMULETS
I'd put it off long enough.
Hours upon hours were spent carving the band and bezel from hard wax—then many more refining the form with rasps and wax files, coaxing the surface toward uninterrupted smoothness.
At every stage, I carefully lowered the ruby into its seat, checking and rechecking the fit, unwilling to risk even the slightest looseness—as if the stone itself were waiting for an excuse to object.
Once the ring was cast in eighteen-carat yellow gold, I knew there would be no room for correction—only restraint.
Every adjustment now would have to be deliberate, precise, and kept to the bare minimum.
The juxtaposition between creating the ruby ring and working on the yellow diamond was night and day.
Every moment spent with the ruby was steeped in trepidation—fear of the design, fear of the outcome.
My hands were guided by unseen forces; magic prickled beneath my skin, restless, demanding release.
I hovered between surrender and restraint, terrified of what might happen if I let go.
I couldn't yet see the endgame—only the unsettling sense that the universe was using my hands and tools to reach backward through time and pull someone from the grave.
This ring I was designing was, somehow, meant to call back someone precious to a vampire whose very existence—and the choices she had made afterward—had set terrible wheels in motion.
And, if Granny Margaret was to be believed, those same turning gears were connected to Bastien, the vampire who ended Agnes's life and stole Baird's human one, condemning him to centuries of solitude.
And yet, despite all the violence and grief Bastien had wrought, it wasn't lost on me where Baird and I stood now.
Together. Happy. As close as two people could possibly be.
A life I never could have imagined for myself—more than I ever dared hope for.
While I had doubted the depth of Baird's love in the beginning, I had no such reservations now.
Still, the pendulum swing of emotions the ruby demanded of me left me nauseous by the end of every session at my bench—too much meaning, too much consequence, packed into something so small.
But the yellow diamond…that was another story entirely.
Every second spent on its design—following the very same process as the ruby—was joyful, energizing.
Magic coursed through my veins, my hands guided by the same unseen force, yet everything felt effortless, right.
There was no fear—only that rare creative flow that blesses makers from time to time.
Subject to the usual rhythms of the human condition, yes—but untouched by outside emotion or worry.
The yellow diamond was all sunshine and clarity.
If the ruby was a demanding god, the diamond was a golden retriever—eager, enthusiastic, and certain I knew what I was doing.
It was almost as if I were creating beings with distinct personalities: one dark, seductive, and stormy.
The other bright, lucid, irrepressibly optimistic. Yin and yang.
The casting of both rings had gone flawlessly.
I held the still-screaming-hot casts in long tongs, my hands protected by heavy leather mitts, as I lowered them into the quench.
A sharp hiss echoed through the studio when the molten metal met water, steam rising as the plaster form slowly dissolved away.
At the center of it all, the rings remained joined—golden twins born from the same womb—still connected by a thin vein of metal known to jewelers as the sprue.
Once it had fully cooled and the plaster scrubbed away, I dried the piece with a soft cloth.
The surface gleamed a warm gold—matte for now, not yet polished.
I reached for my flush cutters to free the rings from the main sprue.
At the precise moment the blades touched metal, something made me pause—just for a breath.
A sudden, irrational certainty settled over me: that I wasn't merely severing gold but severing pieces of myself I'd only just realized could coexist. The darker part, still burdened by doubt on some days.
And the part others had always seen—the light I'd only recently learned to recognize in myself.
Were they meant to exist separately? Or did each require the other, bound together to create something greater than the sum of its parts?
I shook the feeling off and pressed on. A sharp click sounded each time the cutters closed, severing the metal umbilical cord that bound them together, followed by a soft plunk as each ring dropped free and settled on the bench.
I lifted them one by one, holding each to the light, rotating them slowly as I searched for imperfections left behind by the casting.
There were none—save for the narrow gold vein where each ring had joined the main sprue, soon to be filed and sanded smooth.
A casting this clean was rare. Two this perfect was nearly impossible.
But then again, it wasn't just my skill as a jeweler at work.
I'd had a little supernatural help along the way.
I slipped each ring onto my finger in turn, checking the fit.
Both were a size six—the same as my ring finger—chosen because my mysterious buyer for the canary diamond claimed his girlfriend wore that size, and because Sorcha had insisted I could make the ruby ring any size I wished.
The universe's magic, she said, would guide my hand.
And it had. Some quiet sixth sense had urged me to make it my size as well.
Just as surely as the thought had appeared, so too had the understanding that these rings were, in some ineffable way, part of me—like pieces of a puzzle where I was a central figure—designed by forces I didn't yet comprehend.
I softened a couple of chunks of Thermolock with my heat gun until it molded snugly around each ring, to protect the metal while I set the stones. Once cooled, the hardened plastic would shield the shanks as they were locked securely into my bench vice.
I lowered the ruby into its seat—a narrow ledge cut just over a millimeter below the stone's girdle—to check the fit, then shook my head in disbelief. Absolutely perfect. I reached for my ten-power lighted magnification visor, needing a second opinion.
It wasn't necessary.
Steadying myself for the delicate work ahead—bending the metal over the edge of the ruby, I did some somatic breathing—inhale to the count of four, exhale to the count of four, repeated until I felt still.
I picked up my hammer in one hand, bezel pusher in the other, until something made me stop—not fear, but the sudden awareness that this was the point of no return.
I dropped them both and called out the Dutch door for Baird.
A blur of color and speed crossed my vision, coming to rest just outside the doorframe. Worry was etched across his face, but it softened instantly into that familiar smirk—the one that melted me from the inside out—when he caught sight of me waiting for him, ridiculous visor and all.
“What is it, lass?” he asked, one eyebrow arched in quiet curiosity.
“I'm about to set the ruby,” I said, “…and I don't want to be alone.” I winced. “Physically, emotionally…or magically.”
“What do ye think is going to happen?” Baird asked—not alarmed, just ready.
“Best case?” I said. “Nothing. Worst case? I invent a whole new category of supernatural OSHA violations. “
The quizzical look on Baird's face told me OSHA hadn't made it into his vocabulary—nor, apparently, into vampire culture at large. “I dinnae ken what that is, love,” he said mildly, “but I'll take your word that it's a concern. Either way—ye're safe with me.”
God, how I loved that protective streak—the part of him he'd kept hidden from me during that first week we'd met.
Only later did I learn he'd spent sleepless nights watching from afar, guarding me without my knowledge, afraid of what Bastien might have planned for either of us.
I opened the bottom of the door and he wiped his boots as I pointed to the chair in the small seating area across from my bench.
“I have no idea what is going to happen, but whatever it is…I feel better with you here.”
He leaned in and placed a kiss on the top of my head as he passed and then squeezed his large frame into one of the upholstered seats.
He sat on the edge expectantly, resting his arms on his knees, eyes intently focused on me.
I picked up the hammer and pulled my visor down again, pulling the stool up behind me to sit on, and then running my hand along the bench until my fingers found the bezel pusher I'd dropped minutes earlier. “Here goes nothing.”
I positioned the tool just off one corner, the face of the pusher angled at forty-five degrees, and delivered a single, confident tap to begin moving the gold over the stone.
I rotated the piece in the vise and repeated the motion on the opposite edge.
Secure an edge, turn, repeat—methodical, deliberate.
Once all four corners were locked in place, I worked my way down the sides between them, always rotating the ring, always pushing metal from opposing directions.
After what felt like a thousand tiny taps, the stone was finally held fast—perfectly seated.
The design included four one-millimeter white diamond accents set at the cardinal points—north, south, east, and west—along the outer edge of the bezel, a traditional compass rose.
I'd added the element in the hope that its symbolism might help the piece find its intended.
Once the ruby focal point was fully set, I turned my attention to the tiny accents.