Free Thief With No Shadow by Emily Gee Page B

placed the bowl on the tray and held her hand out to the girl, palm up. “If you wish...” The injury was nothing, a graze, tender and scabbed over, but it would tell Liana who she was. I have the same despair as Hantje, but my heart is no longer honorable.
    Liana met her gaze. She made no move to touch her. The expression in her eyes was assessing.
    Melke closed her hand and let it fall. “It was never my intention to harm,” she said. The words choked in her throat, halting. “I didn’t know there was a curse.”
    “A curse.” Liana’s mouth twisted. She turned her head away.
    A draft ruffled the closed curtains and made the candles flicker. The patterns of light and shadow shifted on the walls. Liana’s hair shone, as white as the moon.
    “Sit,” the girl said, her face still averted. “I will tell you.”
    Melke sat. There was tension inside her. It stiffened her spine and made arms and legs awkward. Her fingers knotted together, white-knuckled.
    Endal yawned widely. He laid his head on his paws and closed his eyes.
    “You know what the necklace is.” It was a statement, flatly said.
    “Sea stones.”
    Liana looked at her sharply. Her eyebrows drew together. “Sea stones?”
    “The salamanders said...sea stones.” Pretty and of little value. “Are they not?” Melke clenched her hands more tightly together and felt a scab split. What had she stolen?
    “No,” said Liana. “They are psaaron tears.”
    For a moment Melke couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. She was on her feet, but had no memory of standing. “No,” she said. “No.”
    Liana’s face was mostly shadowed. Her eyes glittered as she looked up at Melke. “Yes.”
    “I didn’t know.” The words were useless, worthless sounds. She might as well bleat like a sheep for all the value they were. “I didn’t know”.
    Liana’s mouth tightened. She looked away, to Hantje.
    Psaaron tears. Rare beyond anything. Priceless. Melke sat, blindly. “How did you come to have them?”
    The girl’s laugh was bitter. “We stole them.”

 
     

     
    CHAPTER FOURTEEN
     
     
    M ELKE OPENED HER mouth, but no words came out.
    Liana glanced at her and laughed again, a sound as sharp-edged as broken glass.
    Melke found her voice. “You and Bastian stole the psaaron tears?” She shook her head.
    “No, not us. The sal Veres. Our family.”
    “Oh.”
    Liana held Hantje’s hand. “You know what psaaron tears are?”
    Melke nodded. “When a psaaron dies, it sheds a tear.” How many stones had been on the necklace. Fifty? Sixty? “Each tear is...they say it holds memory or...or soul .” The necklace had sung to her. Voices had crept over her skin, inside her. Voices of the dead. Tiny hairs rose sharply on her skin. She shivered.
    Liana nodded. “A part that never dies.” She raised one hand and touched a fingertip to her throat, a gesture that seemed unconscious. “Imagine...your family never dies. You have them with you always.”
    Melke blinked back tears. Imagine. She cleared her throat. “The necklace...it was a family?”
    “Many generations of a family, yes.”
    “And somebody stole it.” It took her breath away. She couldn’t believe that anyone could be so stupid.
    “My grandfather’s uncle. Alain sal Vere.”
    Melke shook her head. “How?” It was impossible, surely, to steal from a psaaron.
    “The necklace likes sunlight, did you know?”
    Melke shook her head again. There were no psaarons in the oceans of her home. They preferred warmer, southern waters. She knew of them through myth only, and that, very little.
    “That’s what the psaaron had been doing. Sunning the necklace. On our shore. And Alain—” Liana closed her eyes. Her face contorted.
    Melke looked at the floor, at Endal dozing, his black coat swallowing the candlelight. The expression on Liana’s face was too personal.
    A draft whispered through the curtains. Candlelight flickered.
    “Do you know why he stole it?” Melke asked quietly, watching Endal