He had to get that necklace and fix it somehow. He’d lain awake too many nights, sweating and plotting and worrying about the fucking curse. Maybe the answer was finding a good jeweler to repair it and sending it anonymously back to the temple in Mysuru from which it had been taken. Or maybe he should just destroy it completely.

Or maybe, a very pessimistic voice inside his head thundered, maybe it was too late now that the rubies were falling, especially since three of the original rubies were lost completely. Grey didn’t know. What he did know was that he couldn’t just watch the thing count down his fate and sit there idly, letting the curse happen to him. He was utterly done with being sent away, with having his life course already decided, with feeling like he’d been born simply to cause heartache to his parents and live a life devoid of love or companionship only to die young. Because if that was true… what was the point? Of anything? What was the fucking point?

Breathing harder, he stalked to the far corner of Jaya’s room and rummaged through her desk. A few neatly opened letters from home, sachets of lavender-scented potpourri, stationery with her initials embossed in gold at the top. Grey squeezed his eyes shut for a moment.

Pulling himself together, he turned to her vanity, careful not to look at himself in the mirror. The top was organized neatly with her perfume, makeup, and an ornate silver jewelry tray all arranged parallel to each other. A few necklaces were looped carefully around the corner of the mirror. None of them were the ruby pendant. He opened the first drawer—and stopped short. A black velvet bag sat there, looking innocuous enough. But he imagined he could feel something… a kind of dark energy, pulsing through the fabric.

Grey took the bag out and gently shook out its contents into his palm. The heavy rose pendant lay waiting, its tightly coiled center now completely bare, the remaining rubies grinning at him like a handful of bloody teeth. He wanted to throw it across the room. He wanted to rip each remaining ruby from its socket and crush them under his boot. Instead, he picked the pendant up carefully, intending to slide it back into the velvet bag to take with him, to decide what to do with it in the safety of his own room.

Ping!

Grey wasn’t sure at first where the sound had come from. Then he looked at the pendant and understood. Another ruby had fallen, bringing the total to four missing. As he traced its path and saw it roll under Jaya’s vanity, he heard the noise again, twice in quick succession. And when he looked, he saw two more rubies had fallen. Twelve rubies remained in their sockets.