Page 174 of The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King

Though, Goddess, I was happy to see her.

I lowered to grab my sword, which had fallen in Mische’s wild chair attack, and when she saw it, her eyes bulged.

“Is that—”

“Yes.”

“Gods, Oraya. You’ve actuallywieldedit?”

For some reason, Mische’s disbelief was the thing to make my own set in all at once, a wave that I’d been suppressing for the last two days.

It had been... a very, very strange two days.

“It’s... yes.” I didn’t know what else to say, so I just cleared my throat. “Let’s hurry. Guards might be coming or—”

“There were only those two.”

Mische put aside her shock, her face going serious.

The pendant.

Right. I went to my vanity and yanked open the top drawer.

“Why are you here?” I asked. “Why aren’t you in the dungeons?”

A beat of silence.

“Let’s just go,” she said, going to the door, her back to me. “You said we don’t have time.”

I paused. There was a note to her voice that seemed… odd.

But she was right. We didn’t have time. I rummaged through one drawer of my vanity, then another, my heart rate rising.

It had been in here.

The pendant had been in here.

I was certain of it. I had been very careful about where I put it. I checked on it every night. But in the drawer was only a nest of useless fucking silks.

No pendant.

Not even a hint of its magic.

“Goddess fucking damn it,” I muttered.

“What?” Mische asked.

“Did someone come in here?”

I ripped open another drawer, just in case I was wrong, even though I knew I wasn’t.

“Before me? I’ve only been here for a day. It took a few hours for them to—”

I slammed the drawer shut, hissing a curse.

They’d found it, then. They’d searched this room. Of course they had. Septimus was a prick, but he wasn’t stupid.

It was gone. If it was in this room, I’d feel it.

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