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S KIPPING THE FORMALITIES, THEN. NO W ELL, HELLO, O LIVIA. D ID you have lunch with your horrid relatives? Whyever not? Right now, I’m grateful for Leonie’s economy of time, her lack of pretense. She knows why I’m here.

“Did you even want to spend time with the family, or did you want to come to your inn to relax and didn’t trust your descendants to be left in Volenvell unsupervised?” I ask.

Leonie sighs heavily with eyes half closed.

“This week has been trying,” she confesses. “I haven’t socialized much in the past ten years. An old woman needs a day to unwind.”

I hide my surprise. I thought this trip continued our weeklong game of lies, exchanged like compliments or sword strokes or currency. Or some of each. Just another scheme—a test to see who might leave the vault. Instead, my grandmother’s answer is ordinary.

I permit myself only a moment of sympathy. Then, coming closer, I confirm my first suspicion. Leonie isn’t wearing her necklace.

Projecting nonchalance, I glance over to where the lone robe hangs on the hooks near the door. Obviously, I need to make my move extremely carefully. I can’t just steal it right in front of her.

I walk over to the towel hooks, where I remove my robe. I’m grateful for the room’s warmth, no longer feeling the urge to shiver or hasten my steps. Calmly I step into the steaming water, which feels unreal. Even an heiress with a heart of ice has to exhale from the pleasure of the hot rush.

Leonie smiles, though not unkindly.

“Who will inherit this place?” I ask. “Or will you be buried with this, too? Maybe turn this whole fjord into a monument to yourself?”

Leonie chuckles. “Tempting. I do love a necropolis.”

Likewise. I love necropolises , I want to say. Something else I’ve observed, however, is Leonie’s distaste for sarcasm. She finds such evasions cheap or inefficient.

Her eyes fall on me. “I could leave it to you,” she says.

I hide my shock. The wind gusts over the fjord, stirring the surface outside. “I’m not sure hospitality is in my future,” I reply.

Leonie nods as if it’s a real consideration instead of a completely fucking ridiculous conversation we’re having.

“It would be a lot to handle, especially if I leave you Volenvell,” she concedes. “No,” she continues measuredly, “No, perhaps here is more fitting for Mia. She likes to travel.”

I meet Leonie’s dizzying words head-on now. No more lying games. No more sparring sarcasm. “What?”

“Mia,” Leonie repeats, as if she fears I have forgotten my least-favorite cousin’s name.

“I pity the girl. So much ambition, but I suspect she doesn’t have what it takes to win.

She should focus on what she’s good at. Traveling, exploring, living.

Sonnfjord could remind her of that. I hope you’ll look out for her,” she remarks in passing.

“No,” I say, despite my shock at my grandmother’s estimations of my terrifying cousin. “Volenvell. You would never leave it to me. You don’t even like me.”

Leonie frowns, her icicle eyes sharpening.

“Why would I leave my prison to someone I like ?” she snaps.

While Leonie looks out over the fjord, where the jagged mountains cut into the clear sky, I note her word choice. Prison? Not the vocabulary I would’ve gone with for the fifty-room mountain mansion with private chefs. If Leonie hates Volenvell, why does she never leave?

The performed weariness returns to her voice when she continues.

“Whoever inherits Volenvell will have to deal with the irritations of my younger children, not to mention my nieces and nephews. It won’t be a gift, I can promise that,” she says.

“No, in fact, I only have one possession I would consider truly of worth.”

The invitation in her words is obvious. I know what she wants. The question she is, for whatever reason, prompting me to inquire.

When have I ever refused one of Leonie Owens’s invitations?

Why start now?

“What is it?” I ask.

Leonie’s gaze goes distant on the fjord. As if she’s looking past the crystal lake, past the mountains’ frozen embrace, somewhere far away. Finally, she speaks.

“Andrew and I honeymooned in a cottage in the Cotswolds in England.” She smiles. “We were so young, so glamorous.”

The change in the conversation catches me off guard. I suppose I should have expected Leonie to find the one exception to my cynicism about the Owens family.

In the years after my grandfather’s death, when I couldn’t quite fend off grief, I used to read everything I could find on Andrew Owens. Not for research or plans or opponents. For myself.

Leonie is right. They had been glamorous.

They’d been perfect. I’ve seen the photos from their wedding, from New York Times social columns, from Rockefeller Center Owens Group events.

Leonie, the iconic European heiress, sparkling like Brigitte Bardot or Ingrid Bergman.

My grandfather with her. Handsome, yes, in the slick, square-jawed way of wealthy men in the sixties.

He’d been more, though. Rich with life. With intelligence.

“He was all new money, and my friends thought he was so classless,” Leonie reminisces.

“I thought he was… everything. Yes, he threw money around. He didn’t know how to play the games of real wealth.

He was uncultured, rough in manners. But his mind—oh, it was so sharp, and his heart… Well, that wasn’t sharp at all.”

In every other respect, my grandmother deceives, concealing her feelings in flawless reserve. Only when she speaks of Andrew does the ice sculpture crack. Her voice is emotional, hiding nothing of her pain.

I look away. I don’t want Leonie to see me crying.

I miss my grandfather. What’s more, I… know who else Leonie’s just described. It frightens me.

“He and I were so different. I admired how open he was with love,” she goes on.

“I wondered if being with him would improve me. He came into my life at a time when I was very vulnerable. Very alone. I tried to keep him out. He didn’t even have to sneak to get past my defenses, though.

Alas, as must be very obvious to you, not even the unconditional love of a good man could improve me.

When he left, I wept, even though I knew it was best for him.

He was safe from my enemies,” she says softly. “More than that, he was safe from me.”

My enemies.

Leonie’s overdramatic word choice strikes me. If my grandfather had been killed by a family member, divorce wouldn’t and didn’t save him.

Unless… Leonie’s enemies refers to someone else. Someone outside the family. Maybe Leonie had focused on the wrong enemies for too long.

I don’t say anything, not wanting her to stop talking. Maybe she’s forgotten I’m even here. I can’t explain why my grandmother has suddenly chosen to confide in the granddaughter she ignored for a decade, but I won’t overlook the free information.

“Before all that, we had the cottage,” she continues, her voice soft.

“It’s where we honeymooned. He bought it for me on our first wedding anniversary.

We spent every anniversary there until our divorce.

” She straightens, more of her shoulders rising from the steaming water.

“I haven’t been able to bring myself to go back since his death.

But I haven’t been able to sell it, either,” she explains.

“That cottage… It’s where I keep my real treasures. My happiest memories.”

I imagine them. It’s not difficult, not when I remember my grandfather’s cheerful kindness.

The Leonie in front of me changes into the woman who would’ve laughed loudly in the cottage when her husband said something funny, or run in from the English countryside rain with him, or cooked dinner together, taking pride in their homemade handiwork.

Then, without warning, I’m imagining myself. Remembering myself. Car rides laughing while Jackson enthusiastically sang whatever was on the radio. Stolen kisses under the cover of movie nights. The selfie he took on our way home from prom, his collar open, my hair messy, our smiles electric.

If I’m doomed never to escape the labyrinth, will my memories one day feel like the glimpses of Leonie no one ever sees? Forgotten figments of humanity shed on the descent into something darker?

My grandmother’s eyes return to me. The expression in them is different. Softer. Kind, even.

I came here in hopes of securing Leonie’s ring. Instead, I’ve found something else. Something like… connection. I might not like my grandmother, but I understand her more now.

More, even, than I want. If she’s the frozen sculpture in the heart of the Owens family, I’m unnerved to notice my own reflection in the ice.

“I’m not expecting to inherit your prison ,” I say, emphasizing the repetition. “But I don’t know if I want your mausoleum, either.”

Leonie smiles her cold smile. “That’s the beauty of inheritance. You’ll have no choice in the matter. I think you should have the Cotswolds cottage,” she decides. “Like Sonnfjord will be a reminder to Mia to be true to herself, I hope the cottage can be a warning to you.”

Outside, the fjord swirls, winter wind knifing into the surface. It can’t reach us inside the Sonnfjord spa, though. The pool remains serene.

What chill, then, do I feel under my skin?

“Don’t make the mistakes I did, Olivia,” she says. “Remember that real treasures are never safest in a vault.”