Page 57 of Gilded Locks

The entire door would have to go. Now the wood was definitely contaminated.

Trembling despite her intense effort to remain still, she examined the gold on the frond. The metal wasn’t spreading yet, but with how the plant had landed, she couldn’t tell if anything beneath it had been contaminated. She could only hope it hadn’t.

Grace felt sicker with every passing minute. Her eyes strained with the effort of watching the gold, and her heart thumped harder and harder in her chest.

Fidara was in worse straits than she’d thought. Someone, possibly James, had the rest of the Zerudorn gold Mr. Milner had stolen. That had to be the case.

What did that mean? Had it just been discovered? Or had it been in the world for far longer than she and her parents had realized?

And, why use it on the door? The vandal had no qualms about destroying anything and everything. Simply breaking a window would have been just as good.

But,Grace thought, the first rogue had been caught in the act of breaking into the jail with Zerudorn gold.

Her parents had thought, since they’d been allowed to remove and claim the door handle, that the significance hadn’t occurred to anyone. But maybe it had. Maybe James knew more about the Rogue than she thought. She’d had time to think of an explanation for his possession of a verdure cloak—who knew what belongings the departed Protectors had left behind in secret hatches? As the buildings were scavenged, a cloak was bound to show up.

Possession of the gold, however, meant something more.

But what?

No amount of panicked brainstorming, as she maintained a twitchy-eyed supervision over the gold, produced answers.

Garrick returned first, about the time a butterfly that had been perching in plants near Willa’s porch fluttered over to the frondand began fiddling with the feather-thin gold protrusions. Grace shooed the insect away as Garrick set the tools on the porch.

“What do we do?” he asked.

Grace shook her head. “We have to wait for Willa to come back with my parents.”

“Oh.” His one-word answer left an awkward emptiness in the air.

Risking a glance away from the gold, Grace looked up at the man standing over her, a physical embodiment of his opinion of their relative social positions.

Grace rose to her full height. She was still shorter by a head, but it was better. Then she turned her back and continued to stare at the gold.

“Will it spread suddenly?”

Grace looked over her shoulder. “No.”

“Oh.” He shifted uncomfortably. “I thought… well, you’re staring at it quite intently.”

She returned to watching the gilded metal, wood, and frond. After a moment, she heard a heavy sigh behind her but ignored him.

A handful of minutes ticked by in stiff silence. Finally, Grace heard the pounding of running footsteps and looked to the cobbled path.

Willa dashed toward them, her parents nowhere in sight.

“Where are my parents?”

Between panted breaths, Willa said, “Getting… the ice… and wheelbarrow. I ran ahead.”

Grace frowned. “Well, we just have to wait for them anyway.” She returned to her vigil.

“What are they going to do?”

Willa and Garrick were going to watch. No use in keeping her idea from them.

“We will take the door down and rest it across the wheelbarrow. With enough ice in the bottom, if the gold liquifies when we saw the boards, it will hopefully all fall onto the ice. That should prevent spreading long enough to move it somewhere safer.”

“Where?” Garrick asked.

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