Her gaze dropped to my bandaged hands. "What is that?"

"The silver poisoning treatment. You knew about this. You called me in the hospital yesterday."

"I didn't realize it would be so visible." She said it like the bandages were a social inconvenience I had created on purpose.

Before I could respond, Valerie materialized beside her.

"Adele." She opened her arms wide, her voice full of warmth. "I'm so glad you came."

She pulled me into a hug. I felt her hands press against my back, and I smiled and returned the embrace, and the whole thing lasted exactly three seconds.

"Wouldn't miss it," I said.

Valerie pulled back and looked at me with those bright, practiced eyes, and I looked back at her, and we both understood each other completely.

I excused myself to find the bathroom.

The hallway beyond the ballroom was quiet and cool. The noise of the party dropped behind me as I walked, and I exhaled slowly, letting my shoulders drop.

I was about to turn the corner when something hit my arm.

A woman stumbled, and her bag slipped from her shoulder and hit the marble floor. Its contents scattered across the tile.

I looked down.

Melody.

She was Eric's secretary. Twenty-six, pretty in a soft way, with dark hair and careful eyes. I had seen her face in enough of Eric's schedule notifications to know it well. She was staring at me now with an expression that was trying very hard to be neutral and failing completely.

She looked frightened.

"I'm sorry," she said quickly, crouching to gather her things. "I didn't see you."

I crouched too, automatically, and reached for the items nearest to me.

My hand stopped.

On the floor, half-hidden under the edge of her bag, lay a pair of earrings. Emerald drops set in gold, antique-style, with a particular asymmetry in the left stone that I would have recognized anywhere.

My grandmother's earrings.

They had been left to me specifically. My grandmother had pressed them into my hands when I was twelve and told me they were mine. Two years later, my mother had quietly taken them and given them to Valerie, and when I had asked about it, she had told me I was being childish.

Something feels off, but I haven't quite figured out what it is yet. I straightened up slowly. "What are you doing here?" I asked.

Melody had already gathered the rest of her things. She was watching me with that frightened look still on her face.

"Valerie invited me," she said. It came out fast, like she had prepared it. "I know it's unusual, but she personally-"

"I understand," I said. I didn't plan to ask about the earrings. I wanted to see what they were really up to.

I didn't want to go back in there. I made it as far as my old bedroom on the second floor, the one I had lived in for six years before I moved out, and I sat on the edge of the bed and played a game on my phone until my heart rate slowed down.

Twenty minutes later, a servant knocked on the door.

"Miss Adele. There's been an incident downstairs. One of the birthday gifts has gone missing. The emerald earrings."

I was already standing before she finished the sentence.

The ballroom had shifted in atmosphere by the time I reached it. The music was lower. Guests had gathered in clusters, faces angled toward the center of the room where Valerie stood with tears running carefully down her cheeks.

My mother had her arm around Valerie's shoulders.

When she saw me, her eyes sharpened immediately.

"Adele." Her voice carried across the nearest cluster of guests. "Do you know anything about this?"

Every head turned.

I scanned the room until I found Eric. Melody was standing slightly behind him, close enough that his arm was almost in front of her.

I walked toward them.

"I saw the earrings," I said clearly. "Thirty minutes ago. In Melody's bag. In the hallway outside the east corridor."

The room went quiet.

Melody's face crumpled. "That's not true."

She upended her bag onto the nearest table without hesitation. The contents spread across the surface. Lipstick, keys, a phone, receipts, a compact mirror.

No earrings.

"She's lying," Melody said, and her voice broke on cue. "She's doing this because of Eric. Everyone knows she's been trying to push me out for months. I have nothing to do with this."

Eric stepped forward.

"That's enough." His voice was hard and directed entirely at me. "I won't stand here and watch you do this to her. Don't make accusations you can't prove."

Cora lurched inside me. The pain was sharp and immediate.

"The hallway cameras," I said. "Pull the footage."

Valerie's expression shifted into something almost sympathetic. "Oh, that section has been under maintenance since this morning. The system was down all day." She paused. "Adele. If you wanted the earrings, you could have just said so. I know you've always been unhappy about Mom giving the earrings to me."

The murmur that moved through the crowd was exactly what she had intended.

My mother looked at me with cold expectation. "Apologize to your sister. And to Melody."

I stood there and looked at all of it.

The circle of faces. The careful expressions of people waiting to see me break or bend. Eric standing in front of Melody like a wall. My mother's arm still around Valerie's shoulders.

I had grown up in this house. I knew every version of this moment.

I had learned very early that the only way to earn sympathy in this family was to be small. To cry. To make yourself look helpless enough that people felt sorry for you.

I had never been able to do it.

I reached out and lifted a glass of moonlight wine from the tray of a passing server.

I turned to face Valerie.

The deep red liquid left the glass in a clean arc and hit her emerald dress directly across the front. Valerie made a sound like she had been struck. The guests around her gasped and stepped back.

I set the empty glass down on the marble floor.

It shattered.

"Alright," I said. "Since you don't want to have a fun party, then your birthday is over."