The Hidden Goddess by M K Hobson

Trieste,” Stanton explained. “Haven’t you been reading my books?”
    “No.”
    “It’s a meteorite diamond. Incredibly rare, outlandishly expensive.” Stanton took the box from her and removed the ring. “I rather wish I
had
captured it from the Dark Sorcerer of Trieste; it wouldn’t have set the Institute back quite so much, and we wouldn’t have had to go through such paroxysms of secrecy to obtain it.” He took her hand and slid the ring on her finger. “It’s to be your engagement ring. I was supposed to have given it to you before the lunch you didn’t attend, so you could flash it around. Oh well.”
    “The Institute bought me a big vulgar diamond ring?”
    “Well,
I
couldn’t afford it,” Stanton said. “If it were up to me, you’d keep that one.” He gestured to his gold Jefferson Chair ring that Emily had taken to wearing on her thumb. “But Fortissimus says you have to help reinforce the mythology. I supposedly captured this ring from an enemy of exceptional power and villainy. If you’re seen wearing it, it heightens the illusion.” He tilted her hand up to the light and placed a kiss on each of her fingertips.
    “It’s grotesque!” Emily said. “Think of the muscles I’ll have to grow to carry this thing around. I’ll have to have a dress of one size and a sleeve two sizes larger!”
    “Now, mustn’t overdramatize.” Stanton smiled, apparently wholly unaware of the irony. He slid the gold Jefferson Chair ring from her thumb and pocketed it. She swallowed a sound of protest; she’d grown quite fond of the simple gold band.
    “So what does this monstrosity do?” Emily tilted her hand back and forth, watching the diamond glitter. “Does it allow me to summon armies of the undead? Levitate on nights with a full moon? Read the hidden motives of the wicked and untrue?”
    “It doesn’t
do
anything.”
    Mildly exasperated, she let her hand fall.
    “Well, it must have some magical power, otherwise why did you risk your life capturing it from the Dark Sorcerer of Trieste?”
    “It wasn’t the diamond I risked my life for,” Stanton saidquite seriously, despite the fact that his life had been risked only in the most purely fictional sense. “It was an affirmation of the Manichaean principle of Ultimate Good triumphing over Ultimate Evil. Dreadnought Stanton does not battle for material gains, he battles to defeat the forces of darkness. The capturing of treasure is mostly incidental.” He sounded heroic—melodramatically so—and she smiled at him patiently until he got ahold of himself.
    A sheepish grin curved his lips. “One does tend to start thinking of one’s self in the third person,” he said more mildly.
    “So, no armies of the undead,” Emily said.
    “Like you said, it’s just a big grotesque diamond. It’s supposed to sit there and look pretty.”
    Emily stared mutely at the mostly incidental ring, which carried on blazing ostentatiously in the afternoon sunshine. Obviously, she could learn a lot from such a ring.
    Noticing her unexpected shift in mood, Stanton adopted a lighter tone. “Never mind, you’ll get used to it. Now … your ankle. And an explanation of the injury thereto.”
    Emily sighed, looking over her shoulder for a place to sit. Speaking about her ankle reminded her of it, and that was enough to set it throbbing. She eased herself onto one of the blockhouse’s weathered concrete abutments. She had been so looking forward to talking things over with Stanton, but now she didn’t want to. She wanted to forget anything had ever happened. She wanted to forget about the bottle of memories in her pocket, pretend it never existed. But unpleasant things could not just be forgotten, no matter how one wished they could. She drew a deep breath, let it out. The afternoon smelled of warmth and growing plants and sunshine.
    “I had a strange talk with Pap,” Emily began. “He had a lot of things to tell me.” She paused. “He told me that there