Then she waved impatiently.
“Are you coming?”
“Yes.”
I walked toward her.
No cane.
No brace.
No fear of the stairs behind me.
At the edge of the garden, I stopped.
The emerald pendant rested warm against my skin.
For decades, Cordelia had believed the necklace held the secret that could destroy her.
She had been wrong.
The secret was never the emerald.
It was never the house.
It was never even the documents Grandfather had hidden.
The thing that destroyed Cordelia was much simpler.
She had spent her entire life believing other people were too frightened, too loyal, too injured, or too dead to speak.
Eventually, she pushed the wrong woman down the wrong staircase.
And when I signed away everything she wanted, she mistook surrender for defeat.
That was her final mistake.
Because my grandfather had taught me one lesson that Flynn and Cordelia never understood:
Sometimes the safest way to protect something is to let a thief believe they have stolen it.
