Chapter 41: A Debt in Winter

Nothing is more seductive than an answer that arrives too easily.

The pursuit collides with the museum director hunting a crown that rewrites recorded history, forcing an alliance that neither Nell Harper nor Rafi Cole is ready to name.

The evidence survives, but reaching it requires a choice that exposes the group to a new enemy.

Nell Harper keeps the larger goal in view: return each artifact before dawn and keep the outside world from being rewritten. The immediate problem is smaller, sharper, and impossible to postpone.

They disagree without leaving. For both of them, that becomes a more intimate choice than agreement.

Their attraction grows through competence, danger, and the first honest confession.

The recurring signs of marble, gold, midnight bells return with a different meaning, linking this choice to what came before.

The evidence points toward someone they have both been protecting.