She pushed it toward me. “You may open it.”
The top of the box was closed with a thin strip of masking tape, easily torn. I expected there to be some sort of packing material to go through, but there was only one item in the box—a bulky and rather ugly bracelet.
I took it out and turned it over in my hands. It was a lot lighter than I expected, made of some pinkish-coppery metal, though I was fairly sure it wasn’t copper. It looked old, too—pitted and scarred, as if had been knocked around for a few hundred years. Overall, “ugly” really was the best way to describe it. “It almost looks like an old-style shackle,” I said, tugging it open easily. “Except there’s no place for a chain to attach.” Peering closer, I could see an opening that could possibly be a key hole.
“It needs no chain, and it is a shackle—of a sort. It was quite difficult to acquire.”
I set it down on the table. The thing made me vaguely uncomfortable. “And you’re giving this to me…why?”
“This will offer you an added level of protection above what I can provide.” Eilahn said, eyes steady on me.
“What, is it some sort of arcane artifact?” I asked, switching over to othersight to peer at the thing. To my disappointment it appeared perfectly mundane.
“The opposite,” she replied. “It suppresses the arcane, and it will make it nigh to impossible for you to be summoned as long as you are wearing it.”
I let out a breath. “That’s fantastic!” Then I saw that her expression was guarded. “What’s the catch?”
“It dampens all arcane. Including yours,” she said, tone serious. “You will not be able to summon or use othersight while wearing it, nor will you be able to sense arcane that you are accustomed to sensing. And you cannot wear it for extended periods, lest you become ill from it.”
I swallowed. “Ill how? Like, sick to my stomach, or like cancer?”
“You will feel tired and then generally unpleasant. I believe an appropriate analogy would be the feeling of having influenza. But that would only happen with extended wear. The sensation should disappear as soon as you take it off. Which you would only do when you are within wards,” she added with a warning tilt of her eyebrow.
That wasn’t quite so bad then. As long as I wasn’t wearing a piece of uranium on my wrist that would give me some sort of lymphoma somewhere down the road.
“Put it on,” Eilahn said gently, and I realized I’d been