Camwyn felt a telltale warmth in his hand, and he was trying more than anything else to keep that hand hidden under the table. Was the finger glowing now? Right here? Where Mikeli might see it? He did not dare look.

“Are you dining with Council tonight?” he asked.

“Yes. Since word got out—and I believe what you said, that you weren’t the source—I need to talk it over with them. Some of them. You?”

“I’m fine,” Camwyn said, sticking both hands deep in his pockets as he stood. The right didn’t feel any hotter than the left, actually. “I’ll try again with the exchange rates. After supper, maybe.”

“Don’t stint your sleep,” Mikeli said. “It’s not that serious.”

Maybe. Or maybe it was. He could not put thoughts of the strange regalia out of his mind … and as soon as he lay down that night, the image of the crown he’d never seen appeared. Blue stones, white stones … well, clear, but sparkling. It was a beautiful crown … and the ring … the bracelet …

Let us go. Let us go home again. Let us free.

The voice—how could a crown have a voice?—seemed to ripple in his mind like water chuckling in a stream. Camwyn felt less frightened than he thought he should. The crown had spoken to Mikeli: why would it not speak to a prince?

Our sister is held captive by evil.

Sister? The crown had a sister? How could a crown have a sister? Another crown, a crown for a queen? Camwyn was puzzling over that when another image came into his mind: not a crown but a necklace, star-bright in the darkness of his chamber.

Torre’s necklace, it must be.

No. Our sister, of the same making.

Camwyn wondered if he thought he saw these things only because Mikeli had spoken of them. He’d never seen the regalia himself. Only Mikeli, the Marshal-Judicar, and his uncle Mahieran—and Duke Verrakai, of course—had that he knew of. He lay still, trying to convince himself it was his imagination, that same imagination he’d always been told would get him into trouble. But he knew there was such a crown, a real one. And a necklace, now he thought of it: the one stolen from Fin Panir. So if there could be a real crown, a real necklace … and a dragon in the world, which he knew absolutely to be true … was it just imagination?

Without any warning, his entire hand lit up like a candelabra, making the room bright enough to see clearly from end to end.

Such magic would open the chest.

He shoved his hand under a pillow, blinking against the afterimage of light, before the words sank in. Open … the chest? The sealed chest that no one but Duke Verrakai had been able to open? That not even the paladin had been able to move?