A single bracelet fell out, landing on the wood floor with a thud.

I stared at the bracelet in shock. What the—? That was it?!

Shoving my hand inside the velvet pouch, I wiggled my fingers around inside before raising it up to my eyes in disbelief. All I could feel were the thick, decorative embroidered lines inside the pouch.

In all my seventeen years of life, I had never been as dumbfounded as I was right now. If all that had been inside that little pouch was one lousy bracelet, then why had those men chased me for so long? Why?!

“A bracelet.” I threw the red velvet pouch down in disgust. “All that trouble for one lousy bracelet,” I muttered, glaring at the offending piece of jewelry.

Maybe it was a really valuable bracelet, I sourly thought as I picked it up, studying the piece of jewelry. It was a very plain, gold-colored band set with a large, dark red faceted stone of a kind I’d never seen before, and I’d pretty much seen it all. Could it be some mage’s trinket? Those usually went for a lot of money, depending on what they’ve been enchanted to do.

Twisting the bracelet this way and that, I tried to find a craftsman’s mark, anything that might tell me of it’s worth. There was nothing. No jeweler’s mark to say who’d made it, no mage’s rune to say it’d been enchanted, nothing. With how my day was going, it probably wasn’t even real gold and the dark red stone was cheap glass.

As for why those guards had chased me so determinedly, I can only guess. Some people were more offended by the act of thievery itself, than what was actually being stolen. Which would make perfect sense in this case. Why else would a merchant send his own personal guards after me? After a shoddy bracelet?

I examined the bracelet again, as if it’d somehow become more valuable with another look. Rubbing my thumb over the dark red stone, I thought I saw a spark, but it must have just been a reflection from the fading sunlight coming in through the cracks of the walls of the house.

Another rub proved it’d only been a trick of the light. I tapped my fingers on the floor, thinking of how much I could get if I sold it to Yabar, the pawn-broker I usually dealt with. Yabar didn’t care where something came from or how you got it, the only thing he cared about was profit, and there would hardly be any of that with this piece of junk. I’d be lucky if the skinflint paid me more than five copper coins for this, and I didn’t seem to be very lucky today. If I were a religious person, which I wasn’t, I’d say I was cursed or witched.