My fingers trembled as I ran them along the hard gold. I couldn’t believe it. For years I’d walked around with a godforsaken artéfact around my neck. “What if whatever it does could have hurt someone?”
“I don’t believe it can.”
I glared at him. “You mean you know what the necklace does?”
“Not exactly. When I touch it, I can’t get a feel for it. But I think whatever it does has to do with magic.”
“You must be drunk. It’s an artéfact. Of course it has to do with magic.”
He sighed. “That’s not what I meant. I think the necklace is somehow keeping other artéfacts from having an effect on you.”
“What?”
“Think about it. There has to be a reason why you’ve been immune to Alastair’s ink, and the only good one I can think of is sitting on your neck.” He leaned forward. “I asked Yrsa about the interviews. She said that bronze compass didn’t work on anyone in Durc. She can’t get it to lead her to suminaires, but it still reacts when she’s in a room with one. It points to them.”
It didn’t point to me. When Alastair explained how the compass worked, I’d assumed Yrsa couldn’t use it properly. Not this.
“You can still use magic,” Bel went on, “still feel it and see it when it’s used on things surrounding you inside the hotel, but it seems your body and mind are immune to magic’s direct effects, probably even untraceable by my atlas.”
“So my mother’s necklace has been protecting me this whole time?”
“I think the necklace played the biggest role in keeping you safe, yes, but there are other ways you probably used your magic that helped you go undiscovered.”
I remembered our conversation in the map room all those weeks ago. “You mentioned basic magic once, that suminaires can use it if they don’t have an artéfact.”
He nodded. “Some call it première magie.”
First magic.
“How does it work?”
“Most of what I know has been pieced together through secondhand accounts. But I do know it just works without you having to summon it, like healing. There are stories of suminaires with no artéfact walking down a street in broad daylight without anyone realizing they were ever there, and suminaires finding themselves lucky in life when a normal person struggles to get by. Première magie is said to be responsible for it all. There are even stories of suminaires who kept themselves hidden and their magic controlled without artéfacts by putting themselves in dangerous situations that forced première magie to take effect,” he said. “Along with healing, protection and good luck are the two other things it’s said to offer.”
“Good luck,” I repeated.
I’d seen girls get kicked out of Bézier’s for preposterous things like scattering crumbs after a meal or forgetting to lock the front door, but Bézier never bothered us. I always thought it was because she had a soft spot for my sister. My little good luck charm, I sometimes called Zosa.
She was the extraordinary one. The voice who could fill a flour jar with coins in minutes. The sprite who could come away unscathed after wandering by herself outside the village walls, while I worried myself sick.
But in all those instances, I was always beside her, behind her, holding her hand, searching for her, fretting about her. I was with her.
Then, once we were inside the hotel, there were so many times where I was able to sneak around and not get caught, like during that first soirée.
I’d thought Zosa was my good luck charm, but if Bel’s theory were correct, it was the other way around, and première magie had been protecting us for years. It meant I was the lucky one all along.
“If you knew what I was since that day in Durc, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Right after you’d arrived, I didn’t think there was a point in telling you the truth about your magic—I thought it would be safer for you. Jani, the things I’ve seen . . .” The muscles around his mouth ticked. “Trust me when I say I didn’t enjoy keeping that secret from you. But . . . I kept it because I’d convinced myself that if I told you what you were, you would have somehow used it to get to your sister, and everything I’d gone through to hide you would have been for nothing. Then I got to know you.” His attention shifted to my face, and I felt his gaze under my skin.
“And?”
He looked down at his hands. “God, I wanted to tell you—so many times you have no idea.”