A fresh wave of guilt washed over her. A fifth child on the way, and now she was a widow. Her other children had fled. She prayed they would come back when their grief and anger subsided. Surely they would not leave her for good.
But something told her that their family had permanently shattered. More important — the future of the entire world had splintered. Together, her children might’ve completed their father’s work. Separately, they had gone into the world with secrets powerful enough to change history. Judging from what Gideon had told her, each of them carried a serum that would fundamentally alter their chemistry, instilling greatness and talents to them and their descendants for generations to come. They might be saints or monsters, kings or villains, but Olivia feared that separately, the children of the Cahills would never achieve Gideon’s dreams. They would keep fighting, struggling with one another as they had always done, but now their squabbles would shape the course of civilization. The world would be their battleground.
We will be together again, Gideon had said — a cruel last memory of her husband. She looked down at his lifeless form and clasped his fingers. His gold ring glinted, its strange rows of engraved symbols even more pronounced with soot filling the grooves.
Many times she’d pleaded with Gideon to hide the ring or send it away, but he’d insisted that he could only keep it safe by keeping it close. Now that burden fell to Olivia.
Above all, Lord Vesper must never have it, Gideon once told her. If he asks about it, tell him it has sentimental value. Perhaps an heirloom from your family, which you gave to me as a token of our marriage, eh? Perhaps that will keep him from demanding it. The man is like a crow. Shiny things catch his eye.
Olivia’s eyes fixed on the golden band. Blood rushed in her ears, and she was so overwhelmed with dread and grief that she didn’t hear the approaching footsteps until Damien Vesper said, “My dear Olivia. I’m so sorry.”
Vesper so rarely spoke to her, at first she was too astonished to respond.
He was dressed in black velvet, with soft leather boots and a silver chain around his neck. His expression was appropriately mournful, but his eyes were bright and greedy. Like a crow, Gideon had remarked.
Vesper’s hand rested on the pommel of his sword. She noticed his eyebrows had been scorched clean off. Behind him stood two guards — men she’d never seen before. Already he’d replaced the two he’d lost in the fire.
“You demon,” Olivia spat. “You did this. Your men are in the ruins, dead. You killed my husband.”
Vesper’s expression hardened. “I assure you, madam, I did not. As for my men, I’m sure they came here to help. I grieve as much as you do. I consider this fire a great tragedy.”
Olivia realized that he meant it but for all the wrong reasons. He cared nothing for his dead servants. He barely looked at poor Gideon’s body. Instead, Vesper was mourning the ruins of the lab — all those valuable secrets gone.
“Gideon thwarted you,” she said. “Whatever you were looking for, it’s been destroyed. Though I suppose you’ll want to pick through the ruins yourself.”
He met her eyes. Olivia did not flinch. Vesper had a reputation for reading faces, but Olivia was an actress of great talent. She’d grown up in a family of older brothers, all of them smart and strong. She could lie as needed, and swaggering men like Lord Vesper did not scare her.
“You know of Gideon’s research, madam?” he asked.
“I’m a woman,” she said flatly. “What would I know of such things?”
Vesper hesitated, then nodded. Olivia marveled at how blind men could be. Vesper might be a genius, but women and children were alien species to him. Gideon had been right. Hiding the formula with his family had made it nearly invisible to Lord Vesper.
“Your family is safe?” he asked, though he did not seem terribly concerned.
“Gone to the mainland,” she said. “They could not bear the sight of these ruins. Or of you, my lord.”
“Indeed? Leaving you all alone?”
“I’m sure they’ll be back soon,” she lied, “with the priest and the town elders and a good number of townsfolk. Gideon was well loved by your people.”
Lord Vesper tensed, and Olivia knew he understood her meaning. Vesper might have many servants and allies around the world, but he was not well loved by his own people. If word began spreading that Vesper had a hand in Gideon’s death, killing a man the peasants believed was a saint, working to free them from the plague …
“I see.” Vesper backed up a step. He looked down at Gideon’s body, and his nose wrinkled with distaste. Then he froze. Vesper had noticed the ring.
“A beautiful trinket,” he mused. “It looks different somehow….”
“A token of my love to Gideon,” Olivia said as casually as she could manage. “An heirloom of my family.”
“Will he be buried with it?”
Olivia felt the moment’s importance, as if she were poised on the edge of a knife. Generations of Cahills — the future of the world itself — might be shaped by what she said and did next.
She tugged the ring off her husband’s finger and thrust it toward Lord Vesper. “Do you want it, my lord? My wedding token to Gideon? Would you deprive me of that, too? Go on, then. Take it!”
Vesper’s lip curled. He stepped away, immediately losing interest.
As Olivia had hoped: Anything freely given couldn’t be worth much to a man like Damien Vesper. And a token of love? Worse than useless. He was a predator, a hunter by nature.
“There is no need to search the ruins,” he decided. “Nothing could have survived.”