Stellan spun the bracelet to another password. “We were starting to cook up this crazy scheme where the three of us would work together under Fitz. Be some kind of special Circle-wide Keepers or something, and have Elodie do it, too.” He shrugged self-consciously when he saw me raise my eyebrows. “Before this new round of Order attacks, things were easier in the Circle. We were idealistic. But then Oliver Saxon happened.”
“The oldest Saxon brother.” The brother I’d never know. I remembered how Jack shut down when I asked about him.
Stellan nodded. “He was less than a year older than Lydia and Cole. You know how siblings born in the same year are called Irish twins? They called themselves Irish triplets.”
“So . . .” I did the math. “Just a few months younger than me.” I was starting to put the time line together. My father must have gotten married and started his family right after my mom left.
Stellan nodded. “It was a routine event. One of Jack’s first as a solo Keeper. It was just a freak accident, they said. A car plowed into the crowd. Killed four people. Oliver was one of them.”
I went cold all over. “Oh my God.”
“There was nothing Jack could have done. He saw it coming maybe half a second before everyone else and tried to push Oliver out of the way, but he only succeeded in landing himself in the hospital, too. He’s never forgiven himself.”
I shook my head. “Was it an accident? Or was it the Order?”
“We never knew. There were rumors, but the Order never claimed responsibility.”
“What does that have to do with him being mad at you?”
“Elodie and I were there, too, with Luc. Some things happened, and Jack blamed himself for being distracted . . . When he got out of the hospital, nothing was ever the same.”
“That’s why he’s so overprotective,” I said to myself.
“The Saxons kept him on, when there was speculation he’d be . . . well. You can guess. Oliver was his responsibility that day. The firstborn son of the family, lost under his watch. But Saxon—your father—he didn’t blame Jack.”
“And that’s why Jack feels so indebted to them,” I said quietly.
I felt a surge of affection for my father, for forgiving the accident. And for Lydia for still accepting Jack.
“That, and—” Stellan said, but stopped abruptly.
“What?”
“Nothing. Forget it.”
“What?” I snatched the bracelet out of his hand. “You have to tell me now.”
He actually looked uncomfortable. Stellan never looked uncomfortable. “It’s not—it’s going to seem like I’m trying to make him sound bad, but I’m not. I don’t think you really want to know.”
He reached for the bracelet again, and I held it away. “Tell me.”
He sighed. “The day Oliver was killed, Jack kissed Lydia Saxon. He said it was just the once. She initiated it—I think she’s always liked him. But it was at that event, and I saw it happen, and so did Elodie, who he was with at the time. It was the kind of stupid drama that sometimes happened when we were younger and had less responsibility, but we were all upset and preoccupied . . . and then this terrible thing happened.”
I let Stellan take the bracelet back out of my hand. On the other side of the monument, I could see Jack and Elodie, pointing up at a fresco.
That was awful. But also . . . Jack was upset about me being friendly with Stellan, when he’d kissed everyone I knew? And Lydia, of all people?
I followed Stellan blindly around the other side of the arch. This was stupid. What Jack did in the past didn’t matter. Yes, Lydia kind of looked like me. And okay, that meant when Jack had first realized I was a Saxon, he wasn’t just seeing some girl. He was seeing a different version of a girl he’d already had a thing with.
“I told you you didn’t want to know,” Stellan said, still turning the letters on the bracelet.
I snatched it out of his hand and looked up at the next column. “The next name is Gudin,” I said. “No wait, we’ve already tried that one.”
“No we haven’t,” Stellan said.
I pointed. “Oh. I saw it over there, but it wasn’t underlined.”
I twisted the bracelet into Gudin. The second I clicked the N into place, a pop sounded from the bracelet, so loud I nearly dropped it and a couple elderly tourists shot us an alarmed glance. Where the inside of the bracelet had been smooth, the whole word—Gudin—was now raised half a centimeter above the rest.
I looked up at Stellan, and my shock was mirrored in his blue eyes. He pulled me out of the crowd and into a shaded corner, where we sat on the low ledge jutting out from the arch, hunched over the bracelet in my lap. “It actually did something.” I turned the bracelet over and over in my hands. “This is it. This is right.”
Stellan took the bracelet gingerly and inspected the now-raised portion. “What does it mean? The rest of the letters don’t seem to spell anything, and I still can’t see whether there’s anything inside it.”
I grabbed his arm, and he held out the bracelet so I could see, too. Under the raised portion was a thin line of what looked like topaz, but he was right—we twisted and pulled on it, but this was as far as we could get it open.