But the look on Jillian’s face didn’t change or even fade. She said, “Her earrings.”
Theo examined them as best as he could at this distance. They were the only slight touch of color on Izzie because they were the only piece of jewelry she wore with visible settings, but no one would have objected to these: they were pure silver spirals adorned with their own pearls. They were distinctive and he liked them enough to note that he wouldn’t mind having a pair of them for Jillian. They would look gorgeous against the soft skin of her throat.
Still, he didn’t think Jillian coveted them badly enough to be this upset by them belonging to someone else.
“What about them?”
“They were my mom’s,” Jillian said. She swallowed. She said each word carefully, like she had to make sure she was pronouncing it right. “My dad gave them to her on their honeymoon, and when they got divorced, she left them behind. She said her new husband could buy her something better.”
“It’s just a coincidence,” Theo said. But all the same he was uneasy.
“Theo—they were handcrafted. Dad paid for them to be made from a sketch my mom drew. There’s nothing else like them.”
He thought back, walking through the Marcus house again in his memory, trying to remember what he’d seen when he’d opened the antique jewelry box in the safe and seen the jewels laid out against the gray velvet. Did he remember these?
Yes. Even then, he’d thought about them swinging gently from Jillian’s ears, little galaxies swirling around, brushing the soft skin of her neck. He had wanted them for her until he’d seen the dislike cramp her face when she saw them.
They had been in the Marcus house before the explosion... and now they were here in Riell.
All at once, he knew what had happened, and a kind of sick anger churned in his stomach.
“I’ll handle this.”
“He’s here,” Jillian said. “He came here. It was him.”
“I know.” He took her hand and raised it to his lips and pressed a kiss against her knuckles: for once, he was the knight and not the dragon, the knight pledging himself to his lady before plunging into battle. “I’m sorry.”
“He almost killed me. He almost killed you.” Her hand tightened into a fist around his fingers and he was surprised at the strength of her grip. “All of that... all of that so he could run and hide here? Pay them to overlook a human?”
That made the music stop. The harpist held her hands poised above the still-reverberating strings; the violinist let her instrument fall from below her chin. Everyone was turned towards them, lips curled at the gauche behavior of the intruder in their midst.
Well, Theo felt his own seething contempt for the crowd. All those childhood stories of the importance of remembering the moral weight of the red-and-gold. All that talk of honor and nobility. All those convictions that they were so superior to the brash, unscrupulous humans who gathered up their possessions greedily and violently. All this decorum, when they were no better at following their laws than anyone else. They were only better at pretending.
“Isabelle!” He let the sound carry. He chose her formal name deliberately. She was an adult now, and she’d come into his company with stolen property.
Isabelle lowered her eyes to the floor. Her face was blanched whiter than her dress. She knew, then, what she had done. She knew what she was wearing.
“Where did you get them?”
“You know where I got them, cousin,” Isabelle said quietly. And then she did surprise him by lifting her head and meeting his gaze directly with flinty challenge in her eyes. “And if you think about it for more than a minute before making a scene, you’ll know why I wore them, too.”
That was optimistic of her. He didn’t.
But Jillian did. She said, “It’s your parents?”
Of course. Dragons valued family loyalty as one of the first and most important parts of honor. Isabelle wouldn’t have felt she could come to a distant cousin, no matter how well-liked in her childhood, with a story about her parents. Theo’s closest family had been gone too long for him to remember that. Jillian, of course, had never been allowed to forget that complicated pull.
Izzie had put on the earrings and worn them where Jillian would see them hoping that Jillian would notice and identify them. Brave girl.
He could see Izzie’s parents silhouetted against the far wall. Her mother was crying and her father looked like all he wanted to do was swoop forward and snap Izzie up in his mouth. No wonder she had been afraid to do anything but sneakily wear the earrings. These people were his cousins, too—had been his cousins—and what had they done?
Theo knew the crowd was waiting for his response. He was the center of attention and for once, he didn’t mind.
“Dimitri and Elizabeth Benoit, I formally accuse you of tainting this community and the honor of our kind by giving aid and shelter to a thief in exchange for his money. For you to have enriched your hoard by injustice is inexcusable. Do you deny the charges?”
Izzie had started to cry. Jillian wrapped her arms around her.
“You little brat,” Dimitri said to his daughter, striding forward. His eyes had flared into an ugly, vicious yellow. “After all we’ve done for you.”