Page 16 of Dark Destiny: A New Thread in the Tapestry

As Julian walked over to him, Annani turned, curious to see what Anandur had brought.

"The guys who cleaned the chests found these." Anandur handed Julian a small plastic bag. "Rings. They must have fallen off their fingers when they turned skeletal."

Annani's heart began to hammer in her chest. Was Khiann's ring among them?

When she saw that Khiann's fingers were bare of rings, she had assumed they had been lost. Hers had disappeared during one of the hasty evacuations she had been forced to make for one reason or another.

Julian walked over to her and handed her the bag. "I think you should look through these, Clan Mother."

"Thank you." She took the bag from him with surprisingly steady hands.

The bag was a small, transparent thing with a seal along the top, and there was a label on it that someone had filled in with a marker.

Annani spread her skirt across her knees and upended the bag.

Twelve rings rolled out onto her lap and settled. Nine of them were plain, unmarked bands that were a little dulled. They were not identical, but they were close enough.

Three were not, but only one of them brought tears to her eyes.

Annani picked it up.

The special alloy had not tarnished. It had not thinned, or scratched, or worn away at the underside the way gold did. It looked the way it had looked on the day she had put it on Khiann's finger, and on every day of the few precious months they'd had together.

She turned it toward the light and looked inside the band.

The letters were still there. Not worn, not softened, not one stroke of them gone.

For eternity and beyond.

The same four words had been inside her own ring.

Annani held it in her palm, and when the tears came, she did not try to stop them.

She was permitted to shed a few.

Alena had long since abandoned her task of photographing the four guards and was now standing beside her chair.

"This is his joining ring." Annani turned the band between her fingers. "I had one to match. I lost it. I do not know where or when." She picked up the other two, made of gold and precious stones, though they did not mean as much. "These were his before we were joined." She turned them between her fingers. "He was a wealthy merchant's son, and he looked the part." She smiled. "He will be so glad to see these when he wakes up."

Provided that he remembered them.

Annani gathered the nine plain bands back into the bag and pressed the seal shut with her thumb. "Give these to Bridget and ask her to keep them somewhere safe," she told Alena.

"Of course."

Alena took the bag and went out the doors to look for Bridget in her office.

Annani lifted Khiann's hand from the blanket. It weighed almost nothing. There was flesh on it now, warmth, and the shape of tendons beneath the skin where three weeks ago there had been a claw, but it was still so insubstantial compared to how she remembered it.

She fitted the ring to the third finger of his left hand. It slid down past the knuckle, turning as it went, and sat at the base, loose enough that she could see daylight through the gap.

She took it off and tried the middle finger, which was thicker, but it was still too loose.

Annani looked at Khiann's hand and thought about how she had stood on a dais before gods and immortals and pushed this ring onto a finger that resisted her, working it over the joint. He had laughed, because he was so tall and she was so very small, or maybe just because he had been so happy.

She tried his thumb.

It went over the knuckle with a little resistance, settled, and stayed.