rather than coffee, she grabbed a green bottle and filled the cup with red wine, nearly to the brim. “The destruction wrought from a thousand relics, the tragedies of too many family keepsakes to count.” She sat down again, cradling the mug in both hands, and took a sip, eyeing Nova. “I don’t need to see what that helmet has seen.”
Nova tried not to think too much about the early days of the Age of Anarchy. The sacrifices that Ace had made in service to his vision. The people who had been killed, the devastation wrought on this city and the world as other prodigies followed his example.
She supposed she couldn’t blame Millie for not wanting to think about those things, either.
“Can you look at this, at least?” she said, holding out the bracelet again. “What is it? What is it made out of? Anything you can tell me might help.”
Millie squinted, but still her hands stayed around the mug. “That pretty bauble was not there the last time I saw this bracelet.” Her mouth quirked teasingly. “I’d almost forgotten about the boy I’d seen then, the one who fixed the clasp. Now that I recall his face…”
“I know,” said Nova, feeling heat rise up her neck. “It was Adrian Everhart, but I didn’t know it at the time. That’s just a coincidence.”
Millie chuckled. “Once you’ve seen as much history as I have, you won’t believe in coincidences anymore.” She took another drink of wine, this one almost a gulp, like she was fortifying herself.
She sighed and set the mug on the floor beside her chair.
Finally, she held out her palm.
With a twinge of nervousness, Nova dropped the bracelet into her hand.
Millie jolted upright. She glanced at Nova with surprise. It was a brief look, and without explanation, she cupped her other hand over the star and shut her eyes.
Nova watched with mounting curiosity as Millie’s features went through a series of transformations. Sometimes her brows would rocket upward, other times they would furrow deeply. Sometimes her lips would move as if she were speaking to herself, and sometimes she would laugh inexplicably or clench her teeth with concern.
Nova said nothing through it all. After the first minute, she pulled a rickety wooden chair from the room’s corner and sank down onto it, fingers drumming on her thighs.
Five full minutes passed before Millie’s eyes popped open, slightly unfocused. She seemed to be waking from a bewildering dream as she scanned the room.
“Well,” she said. “That answers one question at least.”
Nova leaned forward.
“You sense a connection between this bracelet and your uncle’s helmet because they are deeply connected. They were crafted from the same raw material, taken from the same source.”
Nova peered at Millie’s hands, still clasped around the star, shielding it from view. “And that material is what, exactly?”
Millie giggled. “The stuff of stars,” she whispered, almost mockingly, and Nova realized that she must have seen some of Nova’s conversation with Adrian as they discussed the impossible star in his jungle.
She bristled. She knew it wasn’t a star. Stars were suns, billions of light-years away.
This was a fancy marble.
But what was she supposed to call it?
“You seem skeptical,” said Millie. Cradling the bracelet in one hand, she bent down and picked up her wine with the other. “Tell me, Miss Artino. Are you familiar with the Monteith Theory of Prodigy Origin?”
Nova’s skepticism grew. “Let me think. Is that the one that says all prodigies are descendants of ancient gods? Or that we came here aboard alien spaceships? Or, no, no, that’s the one that has something to do with radioactive sludge, right?”
“Actually, Dr. Stephan Monteith was an astrophysicist who speculated that all prodigy abilities are the result of our physical systems reacting to a cocktail of biological chemicals and the stardust that lies dormant in our physical makeup.”
Nova snorted. “Stardust. Right. I’ll go with the sludge, myself.”
“Don’t be so quick to judge. I have traced the history of several prodigy artifacts back to the very star from which their mystical abilities seem to have originated.” Millie leaned forward. “Consider that every chemical in our world is formed from stars that long ago exploded. From the salt in our oceans to the cobalt in that teacup’s paint.”
“You can’t be named Nova and not know about supernovas,” Nova said, growing weary of this conversation. “Are you going to tell me about the bracelet or—”
“I am, if you care to listen.”
Nova bit the inside of her mouth.
“According to Monteith,” Millie continued, pausing to