Thump. A hand curled around the side of Crispin’s chair, gray and liver-spotted. Never before had Crispin seen so old and withered a limb. It was a skeleton’s hand: gnarled, knob-knuckled, and blue veined. Great rings weighed down those ancient fingers; scratched, old gold set with amethyst and alexandrite. Golden chains hung upon her wrist, and pearls. “My family is dead, Marlowe. My son. And his poor sons. His wife and her sisters. And their children. Do you know how many nobile children there were on Linon when your father sucked all the air out of the palace?”
