“No,” Margaret said gently, but there was no give in it.
“Right now, marrying into another family is the only way out.”
She held Neve’s hand between both of hers.
“I’ve confirmed it, sweetheart.
Sylvie came back, just like you.
Last night she put every property in her name up for sale, all at once and well under market.
No one does that unless they know something the rest of the world doesn’t.”
Neve went very still.
“As things stand, the Sinclairs can’t compete with the Ashfords.
And once the rain comes, there won’t be any laws left to hold them back.
If they want us dead, it’ll be easier than ever.” Margaret’s thumb moved slowly over her granddaughter’s knuckles.
“That’s why Nana has to find you a stronger family to stand behind.
At the very least, someone who can protect you when I can’t.”
She explained it patiently, one piece at a time, the way she had once explained long division and why the stove was hot.
Neve looked down at their joined hands for a long moment.
Sylvie was back.
Sylvie remembered everything, the roof and the pendant and every word that had passed between them at the end.
And Sylvie had already started moving.
“Okay,” Neve said quietly.
“All right, Nana.
I’ll do what you want.”
So many people had died for her in her past life.
Silas, Declan, Walter, and the whole Hughes family.
Eli, Wyatt, Lucas, Jude, and dozens more whose faces she still saw when she closed her eyes.
They had given everything for a girl who hadn’t deserved it.
This time, she wanted to be the one protecting them.
If marrying a stranger meant the Ashfords couldn’t touch her family, then she would marry a stranger.
She had never been in love anyway.
There was no one she was waiting for, and no one she would be giving up.
Whoever it turned out to be, it didn’t really matter.
At least this way, Nana wouldn’t have to worry anymore.
Neve took a breath and lifted her head.
“Nana, there’s something else you should know.
Three years after the rain starts, the whole capital floods.
Everything.
The streets, the towers, all of it goes underwater.”
Margaret’s brows drew together.
“Everyone with power or money ends up moving to Highcrest County.
It’s about six hundred miles from here.
It’s the highest ground for thousands of miles in any direction, except the mountains, and no one goes into the mountains.
Not after the first year.
The plants and animals up there mutate.
They’re worse than the zombies.”
She shivered slightly, remembering.
“Highcrest is high and wide open, and there aren’t many people there to begin with.
By the time the floods come, every inch of land in Highcrest will be worth more than gold.
Nana, shouldn’t we buy a house there now?
If we wait, we won’t be able to get one at any price.”
Margaret was quiet, turning it over.
Then she nodded slowly.
“I’ll remember that.
Good girl.” She rose from her chair.
“Now come with me.
I have some things I want you to put in your space first.”
She led Neve out of the study and into the small sitting room next door.
Once they were inside, Margaret shut the door and locked it.
Neve looked around, puzzled.
She’d been in this room a hundred times growing up.
It had always been more or less empty, with a sofa, a bookshelf, and a pair of old paintings on the walls, a misty landscape and a still life of pears.
She used to hide in here during hide-and-seek, because no one ever bothered to look.
Margaret walked to the landscape hanging beside the bookshelf and carefully lifted it from the wall.
Behind it was a pane of dark glass, about eight inches wide and a foot tall.
Margaret stepped squarely in front of it.
A faint blue light swept across her face, and the glass panel slid smoothly upward into the wall.
Neve realized with a jolt that it wasn’t glass at all.
It was a facial-recognition scanner.
Behind it was a small numeric keypad.
Margaret keyed in a long code without hesitating once.
There was a soft mechanical click, and a section of the wall to the left of the door swung inward.
Neve’s mouth fell open.
There had been nothing there.
She had leaned against that exact stretch of wall more times than she could count.
There was no seam or hinge, not even a hairline crack in the paint.
“Nana…”
“Come.” Margaret took her hand, stepped through, and pulled the door shut behind them.
A narrow staircase led steeply downward, lit by small recessed lights that flickered on as they passed.
The air grew cooler with each step.
They walked down and down for what felt like a long time, far enough that Neve guessed they must be two full floors underground, maybe more.
At the bottom was a bare concrete room, roughly six hundred square feet, completely empty.
On the far wall were three heavy steel doors.
Margaret entered another code at the first door and hauled it open.
Neve stopped breathing.
The room beyond was two or three hundred square feet, and it was full of gold.
Gold bars were stacked in neat pallets from floor to shoulder height, row after row.
They caught the overhead light and glowed a deep, warm yellow, so much gold that it barely looked real.
Before Neve had even begun to recover, her grandmother had already moved to the second door and opened it.
This room was filled with boxes of every size.
Some were lacquered wooden chests, some were old leather cases, and some were plain archival crates stacked against the walls.
Neve reached for the nearest one, but Margaret was already opening the third door.
It held more boxes, packed just as tightly as the second.
Neve flipped open a long wooden case at random.
Nestled in faded silk lay an antique jade statue of Guanyin, serene and luminous, surrounded by carved jade bangles, pendants, and seals.
She opened a larger chest beside it.
It was filled to the brim with jewelry.
There were strands of pearls, heavy gold necklaces, emerald brooches, and rings with stones the size of her thumbnail, all glittering in a careless heap.
Neve straightened up and turned to her grandmother, completely stunned.
“Nana, where did all of this come from?
How does our family have this much gold, and jade, and jewelry?”
“Your ancestors left it to us.” Margaret was already gesturing briskly at the stacks.
“Hurry up and put it all in your space.
We don’t have all day.”
As Neve laid her hand on the first pallet of gold and focused, Margaret went on.
“More than two hundred years ago, the Sinclairs were rich beyond imagining.
People used to say they were wealthy enough to rival a small nation.
But a hundred years ago, war came, the country fell into chaos, and the family lost a great deal of it.”
The pallet vanished beneath Neve’s palm.
She moved on to the next.
Margaret watched her with a wry, faraway smile.
“So believe me, sweetheart,” she said, “this isn’t really all that much anymore.”