This Wicked Fate (This Poison Heart #2)(26)

Inside it were dozens of gold rings adorned with jewels of all different colors and shapes. She pulled a white glove out of her pocket and slipped it onto her hand.

“Something I thought you might be interested in,” she said as she gently lifted a ring from the back row and turned it toward me. It was solid gold with a leafy pattern stamped around the band. Its face was a small oval indentation where something had once been painted. I leaned in and saw a figure with three faces. The Colchis family crest.

I reached for the ring and Dr. Kent drew it back.

“I can’t allow you to touch it,” she said. “It’s very old, and while the staff here has cataloged it as something from around 540 BCE, it is in fact much older, made from the remnants of a piece of jewelry that may have once sat on Medea’s own wrist. I thought that might be of interest to you and your family.”

Circe inhaled sharply. “How did you—”

“Oh yes. Descended from Medea.” Dr. Kent smirked and set the ring back in the drawer. “I know. And you’re already putting other things together aren’t you?”

Circe took a step back.

“You should return it,” Marie said.

Dr. Kent chuckled. “Excuse me?”

Marie cocked her head to the side. “The ring. It doesn’t belong to you, just like most of the other stuff in here. If you know it belongs to their family, keeping it here is theft.”

“Not exactly,” Dr. Kent said.

“Yeah,” Marie shot back. “That’s exactly what it is.”

Circe cleared her throat. “Is this where we’re supposed to talk? I thought you were taking us to an office or something.”

Dr. Kent roughly closed the drawer and stuffed the white glove back in her pocket. She turned and walked the rest of the way down the narrow aisle until she came to the far wall. Placing her hands against it, she gave it a solid push, and a doorway opened along an invisible seam. Behind the hidden door was an elevator. She swiped her badge in front of a panel, and the doors slid open. She stepped inside. I hesitated.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“My office,” Dr. Kent said. “To talk.”

Circe stepped inside the elevator. “Remember what I said, Briseis? About whether I was right or wrong?”

I nodded.

She met my gaze. “I’m right. Trust me on this.”

I took a deep breath and stepped in. Marie stepped in, too, but stood directly in front of Dr. Kent. My entire body tensed as Marie’s eyes darkened.

“You’re a little too dramatic for my taste,” Dr. Kent said. There was no fear or wonderment in her voice. She wasn’t fazed by Marie’s transformation at all. “What?” she asked. “I’m supposed to be intimidated by your little show? You’ll have to do better than that.”

The elevator doors slid shut, and we dropped farther and faster than I’d anticipated. I expected us to come to a stop quickly. We’d climbed in at ground level, and there couldn’t have been more than one or two stories belowground, but the descent felt like we were going much deeper than that. My stomach lurched, and I reached for the rail. I leaned on Marie. Dr. Kent eyed me as Marie wrapped me up, faint hint of a smile on her lips.

The elevator finally came to a rest, but the doors didn’t open immediately. From the wall near the buttons a panel unfolded, and Dr. Kent put her hand on top of it. A light filtered through her fingers, and the doors opened.

“This way,” Dr. Kent said. “And watch your step.”

The air was markedly cooler in what I assumed was some kind of subbasement. The walls along the hallway were rough-cut stone, and the distinct musty smell of dirt and dampness lingered in the air. As we approached the end of the hallway, we passed under a grand archway with two marble pillars on either side. The space beyond was cavernous, cut deep into the bedrock far below the museum. A roaring fire stoked in a deep pit illuminated the space along with dozens of half-melted candles. There were tables and chairs made of wood and stone, and a shallow pool filled to the brim with water that seemed almost luminescent. In the center of the space stood a wheel the size of a large tire mounted to a wooden stand, and wrapped around it was a skein of glowing golden thread. All around, alcoves cut into the rock were stuffed with threads that shared the same strange hue and others that were dark and frayed. I gripped Marie’s jacket, and Circe pressed her shoulder into mine.

“What is this place?” I asked.

Dr. Kent lowered herself into one of the chairs and tented her fingers under her chin. “I call it the Grotto. It is where I work.”

I turned to Circe, who was trying and failing to stay calm. She kept opening her mouth like she was going to say something but she couldn’t get it out. Marie was silent.

“Who are you?” I asked. “Is your name even Madeline Kent?”

“That is one of many monikers I’ve used over the years.” She glanced to the spinning wheel. “There was a time when all I did was sit and weave together the lives of mortals. Their short, delicate threads have always been of particular fascination to me.”

“I knew it,” Circe whispered into the dark. “I knew it couldn’t be a coincidence that you knew so much about Medea, that you just happened to be the one ready to answer Briseis’s questions.”

“There are very few coincidences in life,” Dr. Kent said. “And you’re right to assume this isn’t one of them.”