Chapter 187

He bowed and vanished.

I stood in the center of her empty room and realized I was breathing too fast. My hands didn’t shake—I don’t shake—but the cold climbed my arms anyway, an old friend with bad timing. The blue fire in the grate hissed and fell to embers.

“She didn’t take the ring,” I said to the cat, who had followed me and now leapt onto the bed like it owned the world. “She hates rings.”