Magic
He had never seen her without it until they were wed.
It was an ever-present detail; always there, shimmering and beckoning underneath the hollow between her collarbones, and though in recent years his gaze had lingered over it and its surroundings appreciatively, its permanence was so fixed in his mind that the first time she took it off, he could hardly have been more startled had she removed her own hair.
It was the last thing she discarded at night, a ritual he learned not to interrupt after spending a painful and anticlimactic half-hour having the long silver chain disentangled from his hair. It knocked repeatedly against his forehead and cheekbones and he had the odd, singular sensation that it was actually laughing at him; that smooth silver-curved goddess-smile grinning tolerant amusement at all his ridiculous angular maleness. When he said as much she laughed too, the gleaming crescent of her teeth mirroring its shape, kissed his petulant chin, and did not contradict him.
Later, he watched it dangling from its nail on the beam, winking its twice-reflected light at him, and wondered if it was one of those baffling mysteries Dallben had mentioned…and how on earth Dallben would know.