2024-09-11 00:22:05“What’s in the gift?” Lyra asked, her eyes sparkling with curiosity as she glanced at the neatly wrapped package.
Sophia hesitated for a moment, then carefully untied the ribbon.
“Oh wow! It’s an emerald necklace, from Elegance & Co!” she gasped, clearly surprised by the luxurious gift.
Sophia’s excitement was quickly replaced by a hint of discomfort.
“This looks really expensive,” she said quietly, unsure
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Chapter 846
The first bullets tore into the floor where Alex had been sitting.He was not there any more.The pearl was already disollved in his blood, and the whole world had gone slow. He could see the flash at the end of each barrel.He could see the bullets come out of the dark, turning lazily, like bees in summer. He stepped between them the way a man steps between puddles.The first gunman never saw him arrive. Alex took the gun out of his hands, turned it round, and tapped him once on the forehead with the handle.The man folded up on the floor like a deckchair."He's there!""No, there!"Nine guns swung left. Alex was already on the right. He caught the next man by the collar and threw him into the two behind him, and all three went over the sofa under its white sheet and did not get up again.Somebody fired wildly at the ceiling. Glass rained down.Alex caught the barrel of the gun, still hot, and squeezed. The steel bent in his fist like warm toffee.The man stared at it. "What are you?
Chapter 845
Old fraud. Senile fool.The words hung in the candlelight. Nobody in that ballroom had ever heard them said out loud about Master Gregory. Most of them had never dared even to think them.Four hundred faces turned to the last row.Alex sat with one leg crossed over the other, his paddle still raised, as calm as a man ordering coffee.The banker's wife froze with her paddle halfway under her chair. The fat man who had bought five charms forgot to close his mouth. In the front row, Tyler Hunt twisted right round in his seat, and slowly his grin came back. Here it was. The idiot was going to drown himself in front of everyone.The auctioneer's hammer stopped in mid-air. "Ten… ten million dollars, in the last row."Master Gregory did not move. For three long seconds he only looked at the boy in the plain dark jacket, the way a man looks at a fly that has landed in his soup."Senile," he said at last, very gently, as if he were tasting the word. "I have sat at the tables of dukes. Princes
Chapter 844
The auction had not started yet, and already there was a queue.It ran down the side of the ballroom, past the gold chairs and the tall black windows. At the head of it, at a little table with a white cloth, sat a tall man with a silver beard cut to a point and rings of green stone on four fingers.Master Gregory had come down from the hills twenty minutes after Alex. The whole room had turned for him, like a field of corn in the wind."Master Gregory, from the capital!""They say the Duke's mother waited six months to see him.""And the charm, they say it will give health, luck and longevity. You cannot buy it unless you buy it directly from the master. Meeting him here is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."On the white cloth lay a pile of little yellow paper knots. A banker's wife held out both hands for one, as if it were a newborn baby."Master," said a fat man in the queue, "twenty thousand dollars for a peace charm. Please.""Twenty thousand is nothing," said the man behind him.
Chapter 843
Alex hit the old tree at four in the morning, and the old tree did not care.His fist stopped a metre short of the trunk, the way it always did now. The air jumped. A few yellow leaves spun down onto the wet stones of the harbour wall, and that was all.He stood there with his breath smoking in the cold. The energy of heaven and earth came to him thin as the mist, a cup at a time, when what he needed was a river. To raise his cultivation, he needed rare herbs, a pill or an elixir. Westmere had none of them.When he got back, Felicia was sitting on the kitchen step with a plate of bread on her knees."You've been out since four, Prince.""I was hitting a tree.""Did you win?""It's a draw."She held up the plate. "Then eat. Even trees have breakfast."---At ten he walked up into the misty hills. He could hear the cough before he reached the door of the long grey house.Mr. Wolfe sat bent over a handkerchief that was not white any more. Nina knelt beside his chair, holding a glass of w
Chapter 842
"The tenth prince." Hector came away from the door, laughing softly."Sir, did you hear her? The idiot of the Tiffany kennels. The whole coast has laughed at him for fourteen years. He sleeps by their dogs."His voice rose. "And you bowed to him. Twice. In front of me.""Hector," said Mr. Wolfe."You bowed to a kennel dog, sir!""HECTOR." The old man did not raise his voice often.When he did, the brushes jumped on the table. "One more word, and you will leave this house and never come back to it."Hector's mouth shut. His face went from red to white.He stood there with his broken wrist in its cast, and the paper with the herbs on it crushed in his good hand, and he looked at Alex as if he were memorising him.Alex smiled at him. Then he turned back to Nina."I learn many things," he said."That isn't an answer.""It's the only one you're getting.""I could tell the whole coast," she said. "The idiot prince fights like a demon and writes secret arts in school notebooks. Do you know w
Chapter 841
They came at him from three sides at once.The old man in the middle like a wall. Nina high and fast from the left. Hector low from the right, one good hand, his face white with hate."Now!" roared Mr. Wolfe.None of them could touch him.A brush of fingers under Nina's elbow sent her flying past her grandfather. The old man's great palm came, and Alex was not there. He was behind them, on the stone where Nina had started, with both hands back in his pockets."Again?" he asked."Again!" Nina screamed.They came again. And again. And Hector stopped fighting like a disciple of anything. He went for Alex's eyes with his thumb. He stamped for the back of his knee.When that missed, he tried to drive his cast into Alex's throat.On the fourth time, Alex caught him by the collar."You're a guard of this family," he said. "Fight like one."He turned once and let go. Hector flew past Nina and landed face down in the rain puddle between the roots of the old tree, so hard the water splashed her
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