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I ran back and threw myself at him. He caught me with a tired grunt and laughed softly. “This is the kind of greeting a man could get used to.”
“Don’t, because if you ever put yourself in danger like that again, I will kill you.”
“I was never in danger.”
“Liar.”
“I would never lie to you, Beth. Not about something as important as that.” He paused, a tired smile flirting with his dusty lips. “Which does not discount the prospect of me simply not mentioning it.”
I laughed softly, then caught his face between my hands and kissed him fiercely. He tasted of sweat and mud, and I didn’t care. He pulled me closer and deepened the kiss, seeming to need it as badly as me.
Behind us, Lugh cleared his throat. “I appreciate that a near-death experience can be something of an aphrodisiac, but we aren’t out of the woods yet, so to speak, and we need to get moving.”
I broke away somewhat reluctantly and swung around to face my brother. “Not before I get a drink and some more of that chocolate you brought along. There’s no way known I can ascend a rope on an empty tank.”
He unzipped his pack and tossed me a bar of fruit and nut. I plopped onto the edge of an old cart—the image I’d seen in my vision—and started in on the chocolate. My stomach felt a whole lot better, even if the rest of me ached like hell.
Getting out was a slow and careful process. All three of us were bone weary, and that’s generally when accidents happened. After surviving a fucking lichanda collapsing mountain, the last thing any of us needed was to be taken out by our own stupidity.
We were all cold, wet, and exhausted by the time we reached the exit a few hours later. Cynwrig pressed his hands against the ground, his gaze narrowed as his power rose.
“I can’t feel any undue weight on the ground,” he said eventually, “but that doesn’t mean there’s no one out there. I suggest we remain wary.”
We moved out in single file, splashing quickly through the bitterly cold water. After relocking the gate, we made our way up the hill toward the old mine manager’s office. The day had darkened toward night, and thin slashes of pink and gold lined the clouds that streaked across the sky. The whole area was quiet; hushed. There was no movement, no sense of danger, and yet...
Something was wrong.
I stopped. “Cynwrig, could you check the ground again?”
He immediately did so, then glanced back at me. “I’m still not feeling anything untoward, though if there’s an ambush party waiting in the hut, I wouldn’t, given its foundations are wood, not earth or stone.”
I scanned the building ahead uneasily but couldn’t see anyone or anything that tugged at my instincts. Maybe it was just nerves. Maybe the inner pessimist just refused to believe we could so easily walk away from the mine after everything else that had happened.
“I think we’d better be ready for trouble,” I said softly. “Something just doesn’t feel right.”
Lugh reclaimed Jack and Jill, then moved out. I gathered air around my fingers and followed the two of them up the steep slope.
Then Lugh slapped at the back of his neck, the sound echoing. He didn’t seem concerned, but my trepidation nevertheless increased.
It wasn’t the right season for midges. It was too damn cold.
When Cynwrig slapped at his neck a few yards further on, trepidation became certainty. The area might appear empty as far as the eye could see, but we were no longer alone here.
“Gentlemen, we have a problem.”
“Indeed, we do,” Lugh said, in a voice that didn’t really sound like his. “That wasn’t a midge—”
The words stopped. As did he. Alarm surged through me. My gaze jumped to Cynwrig. His expression was one of fury and consternation, and his movement, like Lugh’s, ground to a halt.
I hurried over to my brother and pulled down the back of his coveralls. That’s when I saw the dart.
Oh fuck...
I swung around and scanned the area above the waterfall, where the dart must have come from, but the fading light made it difficult to see anything. Then the air stirred gently around me, and I heard the steps. I turned again.
A figure stepped out from the other side of the mine manager’s hut. He wore black from head to foot, which made the silver gun he held even more obvious.
I gathered the air around my fists but didn’t unleash it. Until I knew what the two men had been darted with, I couldn’t react with any sort of violence, no matter how much I might want to. The man ahead might or might not be able to tell me that, but he couldn’t have been responsible for the darts, because the angles were all wrong. There was at least one other person here.
