Page 57 of Vicious Knight

I smile back at him. “Why are you back here?”

“Two things. I found this in the tunnels. Ivy dropped it.” He hands me a little blue pouch with Ivy’s name on it. “Two, I had to tell you that Eilish is worried about her. Apparently Ivy got on Tiffany’s wrong side when she defended Isabelle.”

Isabelle always needs defending. She thinks I’m scary. She’s right, but unknown to her, back in high school the bullies stopped bothering her because I kicked the ever-loving shit out of them for teasing her about her mother’s death. It was my parting gift before my graduation.

“Eilish doesn’t know Ivy is with me. Does she?”

“Of course not. If she did, Eilish would be here, not me. Please send Ivy back to Myrddin in one piece.”

“I swear. Scout's honor.” I make a show of placing my hand at my heart, but he can still see the horns on my head.

“Thorne, you were never a boy scout.”

“Exactly. Run along now, Lucian. We’re done here.” I raise my brows and he sighs.

He knows not to argue with me so he leaves.

As soon as I hear the door close I go back to looking at my prize, then I open her pouch. It reminds me of one of those little bags a bride would carry on her wedding day.

The pouch has a few things inside. A mini notepad has musical notes written on it, an iPod which probably has all the classical piano music that was ever created, including her own, and there’s a ring.

An old-looking platinum ring. It looks like the kind some old Knighting families would make for their children for their sixteenth birthday. I never got one because my family was dead by then.

I hold up the ring and look at it. My interest is drawn to the crest engraved on the front.

It’s a family crest. A Knights’ family crest. It’s not Levgen’s, but it’s one that looks familiar. So familiar it produces sharp tingles in my nerves. The kind you get when your nerves are amplified by fear.

The design of the crest is a griffin catching a leviathan snake with its mouth.

I don’t know all the family insignias of the Knights, but some are as memorable to me as the algorithms in a computer program. This is one of them but I don’t remember it as being anything good.

I stare at the crest a little longer until it suddenly hits me. The memory of where I’ve seen it before.

This is the family crest specific to the Bershov family.

The last surviving member of that family is Gustave Bershov. I remember him and that name because he sits in prison rotting for his part in the mass murder plot of the Russian Syndicate. And for his suspected connections to the attack on my family.

I saw this crest when I was looking through the files on my family and the people Aleksander suspected were involved with the attack.

Why would Ivy have this ring?

It makes no sense to me. How would she even know that family?

The answer comes when I flick on the light and notice an engraving on the inside:

To my daughter Annika, love you forever.

I look at Ivy on the bed again as my mind spins. Something pulls on my heart as I attempt to ask myself what this might mean.

I felt she had secrets.

But… not something like this.

If this ring is what I think it is then her secrets run darker than I thought.

Chapter 13

Ivy

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