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I couldn’t help a snort of laughter. Lugh was a six-foot-six bear of a man with unruly red hair and frost-green eyes. The term “wee” didn’t even fit me, and I was eight inches shorter.
“I do believe we’re paying you extra for no questions asked,” the lad replied mildly.
“Fair enough,” Holgan said. “But I’d appreciate forewarning if you believe anything unusual is about to happen.”
“If anything unusualdoeshappen,” Lugh growled, “we expect you to stick around and ensure we get off the mountain safely.”
Holgan smiled, but there was a decidedly steely glimmer in his brown eyes. “I never abandon a client.”
Unless he was paid to do so. He didn’t say that, of course, but there was a part of me that couldn’t help filling in the unspoken blanks. It appeared my natural pessimism was doing its best to darken an already dark day... and I seriously hoped that’sallit was.
I finished my tea, shook the remaining droplets out, then handed the cup back to Lugh. Once he’d repacked everything and slung the pack back on, we continued.
Holgan certainly hadn’t been kidding about the ferocity of the storm on the scree slopes. While my weather bubble remained locked around us, it couldn’t fully blunt the force of the storm. Going was slow, and we seemed to be trudging on forever. By the time we reached the highlands, my limbs were shaking with effort, sweat trickled down my spine, and the air was so cold, my lungs hurt. I was sure there were icicles hanging off my scarf, because the damn thing seemed to have doubled its weight. There weredefinitelyice crystals on my eyelashes, and that was a damnably weird sensation.
The only reason I knew we’d actually arrived at the summit was that Holgan stopped at what looked to be a cairn and said so. The world up here was nothing more than a sea of shifting gray, and there was a decidedly otherworldly feel about it.
I hoped it meant the confluence was accessible, but given I knew absolutely nothing about them, it was totally possible that otherworldly feeling was nothing more than imagination or even wishful thinking.
I stopped beside Lugh and Holgan and looked around. Though I’d studied several maps before we’d left, the shifting gray made it impossible to judge where exactly we were on the summit, or even which cairn we’d stopped next to. “How far away is the edge?”
“Maybe two dozen steps directly ahead of us.” Holgan studied me for a second. “You planning to throw that sword over it or something?”
I half smiled. “Or something.”
“Whatever that ‘something’ involves, can I suggest you put on the harness and rope the wee lad has been carrying? Better to be safe than sorry in these conditions.”
“Oh, she’s not goinganywhereunless she’s roped to me.”
I wasn’t entirely sure being roped to my brother would do any good if the confluence was some sort of portal to another dimension, but as Holgan had noted, better safe than sorry.
Lugh placed the pack on the ground, then handed me a harness. While I pulled it on over my coat, he carefully unlashed the sword. We both wore silver-laced silk undergloves under our regular ones just to be sure we could handle the sword safely. While neither he nor I were mages, and therefore never likely to be a target for the unholy power that lay within the sword, we weren’t about to take any chances. Not when the mere act of touching its hilt with unprotected flesh would not only unleash a siren’s call to any evil that inhabited the area but doom our souls to the stygian—which was not, as human legend would have it, the river presided over by the boatman Charon. There was no actual river or even a boatman, and the stygian were simply the souls of those charged to bring fresh fodder to whatever dark god they served.
The jewel in the black sword’s pommel chose that moment to come alive, and my inner unease strengthened. It shone with the same unearthly purple that had appeared when I’d unsealed the chest it had been hidden in, and while I wasn’t sure what was causing the light now, there was a big part of me hoping we didn’t find out.
“How do you want to play this?” Lugh asked.
“Cautiously.”
I didn’t see him roll his eyes, but I could practically feel it. “Now is not the time for levity, dear sister.”
I actually thought it was the perfect time, given the shit might well hit the fan in a matter of minutes, but I refrained from saying it. I rubbed my arms, but it didn’t in any way ease the inner tension.
“Once I grab the sword, I’ll step away from you both and call the confluence. We can play it by ear from there.”
He nodded and held out the sword. Tendrils of dark purple shot out from the jewel’s eye, briefly illuminating the gray.
There were shadows in the gray.
Human-shaped shadows.
“We ain’t alone,” Holgan said casually. “I’m guessing you’re expecting that, though.”
“No, we certainly weren’t.” But the sword did call to darkness, and I guessed the souls of the dead could be classified as that. “I suspect they’re nothing more than the ghosts of those who have died on this mountain.”
And if luck was on our side for a change, these ghosts would be the only ones who answered the sword’s call for help—because that’s what I suspected the pulsing dark light was. At least there was no known dark gate around these parts, because the last thing we needed was another Annwfyn attack.
Of course, the Annwfyn were the whole fucking reason we were in this mess in the first place.
