Chapter 10: Lira Picks the Lock on a Living Contract

The sapphire caught the room's light and multiplied it.

It had always been a beautiful object — that was part of what made it useful, beauty being the first thing a person looks at when they should be looking at what's behind it. But here, in the Counting House, under the weight of two centuries of calcified vows pressing up through the stone floor, the sapphire did something Lira had never seen it do. It brightened. Not glowed — it was not a glowing sort of gem. It brightened the way a face brightens when it recognizes someone it has been waiting for.

Aldric watched her bring it out. He did not reach for it. He did not call for guards. He watched with the particular stillness of a man who has had two and a half centuries to learn the difference between a threat and a reckoning, and has stopped treating one as the other.