Apprentices don’t belong on red carpets.

She lifted her head slowly. “Someone just triggered the private archive door downstairs.” Mr. Bellamy’s face drained of color. “The vault,” he said. Elaine snapped her head toward him. “That door was supposed to stay sealed.” Nina’s mouth curved slightly, and that tiny smile told me everything. Not that she had won. Not yet. But that she had not been cornered the way we thought. She leaned in just enough for only me to hear her next words. “You should have stayed in the workshop.” Then she looked past me, toward the curtain, where the live red carpet was still waiting under the lights, and said, much louder, “If the archive door is open, maybe it’s time everyone saw what she’s really been hiding.” The room exploded into motion at once. Staff turned, security talked over each other, and the livestream monitor showed a swarm of confused faces rushing toward the stage entrance. Mr. Bellamy shoved the folder under his arm and grabbed my elbow. “We have to go downstairs now,” he said. I stared at Nina, at the necklace on her throat, at the second stone on the tray, at the key in the plastic sleeve, at the open case with my initials on it. Then the monitor flickered. For one brief second, the backstage camera cut to the lower level hall outside the archive door. And there, standing in the dim light with a hand on the handle, was someone none of us had expected to see.