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The news of Mr. Lebedev’s murder came a month after the award.

Little was known about what had happened except that he was seen meeting with a Japanese officer in a restaurant before he was shot.

Mr. Lebedev, Anyu remembered, was the middle-aged man in a fire opal suit, the one who had been first to speak up to support her admittance to the Guild.

Isaac was shocked, his face grave. He said lugubriously that he had a sense of foreboding; he was unable to work for days.

Samuel swore he didn’t know about the murder, and he had stopped seeing Rose as promised.

Anyu believed him. Samuel was a decent man; he was lured to talk about Mr. Walters and Mrs. Brown, but he didn’t know about Mr. Lebedev or the Guild.

Samuel vowed to find out whether Rose had used him, and a few days later, he broke down.

He said he had gone to interrogate her, but she had disappeared.

When Anyu relayed to Mrs. Brown what Samuel had told her, the British woman pledged to investigate, just as she had promised after Mr. Walters’s death. In her quavering voice, she also confessed that she still hadn’t found a secure alternative to the vault.

Anyu could no longer concentrate on her work. Who did this? Who targeted Mr. Lebedev and Mr. Walters? Who did Miss Rose work for?

One day, Isaac, his face pale, closed the door after Uncle David and Samuel left the workshop and asked Anyu to sit on the stool across from him.

“Anyu, I’ve been giving it much thought, and I fear our Guild is in grave danger, and you are in grave danger, too.” His eyebrows were knotted, his eyes somber.

“You’re overthinking it, Isaac,” she said, trying to comfort him.

“I fear Mr. Lebedev is only the latest victim, and the Guild is exposed. We’ll face the biggest challenge in our life. No matter what happens, I want to ensure you’re safe.”

Anyu kept her composure; she didn’t look at the cache where they hid her egg.

“I have something to show you.” Isaac unbuttoned the top of his shirt to reveal a necklace with a pendant. He unhooked it from his neck and held the pendant with two hands. “Tell me what you see.”

Anyu took a loupe and studied the stone under a flashlight.

It looked inconspicuous, weighed about ten carats, and was shaped in the earliest cut, a table cut, with a flat surface on top and a small flat surface at the bottom, its edges unpolished.

To an untrained eye, it would be mistaken for a flawed blue aquamarine with weak opalescence.

But when she examined it more carefully, she found her hand trembling with excitement.

“This is an extremely rare blue diamond, not yet treated; it shows high brilliance in the color bands and a feathery line of inclusion, but it has clear purity of color and fluorescence. Where did you get it?”

“It’s a diamond that belonged to my father, and his father, and his father’s father. They were all jewelers, and the stone was passed on from generation to generation. It’s called the Midnight Aurora.”

“Midnight Aurora?” She remembered Samuel had mentioned that.

Isaac nodded. “We believe this stone is legendary, as ancient as civilization as we know it. My family’s lore has it that this diamond traces back to prehistoric times and holds the essence of the creation of light. Some of my relatives even believed this was a tzohar .”

“ Tzohar ? ”

“A luminous gemstone God gave Noah when he needed light to construct the Ark. Now, I know it’s hard to believe, and tzohar was only mentioned once in the Bible, and its reference was vague. Some would even argue it meant a skylight, not a luminous stone. But we know what we know.”

“You believe the diamond I’m holding is the very stone that Noah used for illumination as he built the Ark?”

“Precisely.”

Anyu wasn’t convinced, but she could agree that it was, indeed, a rare diamond.

“What I want to tell you is this diamond is also called the Diamond of Life. It has a special power; it grants the wearer the ability to evade the claws of death.”

“You mean it grants the wearer immortality?”

“Oh no. That would be a curse, wouldn’t it?”

“Maybe. But isn’t it true that some diamonds are cursed?

” Anyu said, recalling whispers of maleficence associated with extraordinary diamonds such as the Hope Diamond, the Koh-i-Noor Diamond, and the Regent Diamond.

These diamonds were said to be part of a divine body, and when they were stolen, the gods cursed the thieves, and thus all the owners of those diamonds met their disastrous ends, murdered, executed, ripped apart by dogs, or dead in penury.

“The curses, as you know, were invented to prevent greed.”

“But it can’t be denied that evil begets evil.”

“Fair enough. So, if diamonds were cursed because of malicious intent, can a diamond with an auspicious origin and treasured by its rightful owner bestow blessings?”

“Ah. I can’t argue with that. But how do we know the diamond grants the ability to evade death?”

“It has been intertwined with my family’s survival for centuries.

I can relate to you my father’s narrow escapes from death, but you don’t know him.

I’ll tell you what I know. In October 1917, a few years after I became the guardian of the egg, the revolution broke out in Russia.

Hundreds of innocent men, Jews and aristocrats, were arrested, harassed, and murdered.

My father and Uncle David were separated while they tried to flee the city.

My father divided the jewelry for my brother and me and told us to go to the east and south, hoping to meet in another country someday.

It was a desperate time, and the three of us dispersed in the dark.

My father left first, and my brother and I followed behind.

But eventually, the Bolsheviks caught all of us and forced us to embark on a prison barge where many Jews and aristocrats were confined.

Soon after, the Bolsheviks threw a bomb onto the barge to kill us all.

My father died instantly. My brother and I went to help him, kneeling by his side, but a second bomb exploded.

My brother, along with many others, was killed.

Only I, of all people on the barge, survived. ”

This was Anyu’s first time hearing him recount his life and losses.

“And then there were attempts on my life by arsenic.” Isaac held the diamond with two hands, and his eyes swam with grief.

Poison in the soup that killed his wife and his mother, Anyu remembered Esther telling her.

“Shall I recount more tragic incidents? For the past ten years, I have fled with my family from St. Petersburg to Moscow, Vladivostok, and Shanghai. I’ve escaped an accident on a ferry, witnessed many unspeakable deaths, and survived attempted assassinations.

Many people in my vicinity have perished, yet I’ve lived. ”

Anyu looked at the diamond in his hands. Only with her trained eye could she see its special glow; for many people, it was only a cheap stone. “Do you truly believe a diamond could protect you and bring you luck, Isaac?”

“Do you, Anyu?”

She hesitated.

“You must believe it. In a world of murder and greed, a survivor must believe in blessings. Are you a survivor?”

She wanted to smile. Did she need to say more? After all these years, if there was one thing she had learned, it was this—she was only an orphan, and yet she had found a home, become a master jeweler, and owned a Fabergé egg. She was blessed indeed. “I am, and I believe in blessings.”

“Very good.” He walked behind her and looped the necklace around her neck.

“From now on, you’re the guardian of the Diamond of Life.

It will protect you and bring you blessings and luck in the face of disaster and death.

As the guardian of the Diamond of Life, you must promise you’ll always wear it, never sell it for profit, and you must vow that the only moment it leaves your body is the moment you find the next guardian of the diamond. ”

She trembled. He would entrust a legendary diamond to her? “What about you, Isaac?”

“I’ve been wearing this for twenty-five years, since my father appointed me as the head of my family’s jewelry house. But I do believe you need it more than I do. With the exposure of the Guild, the egg’s future is precarious. You, my successor, the sole protector of the egg, must be safe.”

She held the gemstone in her hand—it felt cool, its grayish-blue deep, unfathomable, like the stories of the past, like the sight of the future—and she understood he had given her not only a priceless diamond but also a life, a life of a jeweler, a protector, and a guardian.

The workshop’s door opened. Uncle David and Samuel came in.

“I’m delighted to meet the new chief designer of the House of Mandelburg,” Uncle David said.

“I don’t understand,” Anyu said.

“It’s our family’s tradition that the guardian of the Midnight Aurora becomes the chief designer of the house. You’ve been the most dedicated jeweler I’ve ever seen. We owe our success to you,” Uncle David said.

“I’m honored.” Anyu beamed.

“It looks good on you,” Samuel said.

“Samuel.” This should be his; he had wanted it.

“You don’t need to say anything, Anyu. Did Father tell you an important thing regarding the Diamond of Life?”

“What?”

He gave an enigmatic smile. “It stays in the family.”