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“Yeah.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
I shoved the other knife into its sheath through the caving suit, then concentrated on the ascent, letting them pull me up but helping where I could through the tricker, narrower sections.
As I neared the exit, Cynwrig reached in, slipped his hands under my armpits, and gently dragged me out. Lugh released the rope and then pulled me out of Cynwrig’s arms and into his. He didn’t say anything. He just hugged me fiercely for several long seconds, his shaking body and the frantic beat of his heart telling me everything I needed to know.
After several minutes, he dropped a kiss onto the top of my head, then pulled away and quickly scanned my length. Alarm flashed through his expression when he got to my boot and the partial arm that was still attached to it via the claw.
“Hate to say this, but I don’t think removing that thing would be a wise move right now.”
“On that, we agree,” I muttered.
The claw hadn’t just sliced through my boot and foot, it had gone right through. There was a good inch of its needle-sharp point sticking out of the sole. While I was definitely bleeding—the wetness of my sock was testimony to that—I knew enough about first aid to understand that the claw might be acting as a temporary plug, stopping me from bleeding to death.
“We’ll need to pack that foot to prevent too much movement before we do anything else,” Cynwrig said.
He appeared on my other side and swung off his pack. His face was drawn and his cheeks hollow; all magic had its costs, no matter what its source. For those able to control living energy, be it earth or flora, that cost was our strength. It was utterly possible for an elf or pixie to use so much personal strength in their quest to alter or reshape their element that they had nothing left to live on.
“Packing it isn’t going to make it any easier to walk on,” I said. Especially when even twitching my toes had warmth flooding my boot and pain shimmering up my leg. Of course, I guessed I should be thankful Icouldwiggle my toes; it meant nothing vital had been severed.
“You’ll be crawling through most of it, so your foot shouldn’t be impacted too much as long as you can keep it raised,” Lugh said. “The bits we can stand up in, we’ll assist you.”
Keeping the foot raised was going to be problematic given the long ascent ahead, but he knew that as much as I did. I returned my gaze to Cynwrig. “Is there any record of a dark gate in this area?”
He pulled a first aid kit from his pack. “Do you honestly think I would have let you go in there alone had I known?”
His reply held the bite of annoyance, and I grimaced. “Well, no, and I didn’t mean to imply that you would.”
He nodded and glanced at Lugh. “Hold her foot still for me. Beth, this will probably hurt, but I’ll try to be as gentle as I can.”
I automatically clenched my fists though he hadn’t even started yet.
“To answer your question, yes, there are records of dark gates around this region.” He looped the end of the bandage around my ankle and heel then retrieved a number of bandage pads, placing one either side of the bit of claw poking out of my foot. Then, carefully, he wound the bandage in a figure eight around the two of them and my upper foot. “The majority of them have been inactive for decades, however, and the one that isn’t lies over near Swansea.”
That made sense. The gates tended to follow the ebb and flow of the human population, the older ones going offline while new ones formed. Not that, as far as anyone knew, the latter had happened for eons now.
I sucked in a breath as the claw moved fractionally. Cynwrig gave me an apologetic look but kept on wrapping and padding.
“Is there any record of aquatic Annwfyn?” I asked, when the pain eased enough.
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“It’s damnably frustrating we still know so little about them,” Lugh growled. “Even after all this time and all the lives lost to them.”
And the little wedidknow came from the very few men and women who’d been taken as breeders—in the same way humanity used sheep and cattle to ensure a steady supply of fresh young meat—and had somehow escaped back into this world. They’d never been the same, of course, their minds and bodies destroyed by what they’d been through, but the government had nevertheless employed telepaths to pluck what information they could from them.
“You know, there’s a big part of me that actually sympathizes with what the Looisearch is attempting to achieve,” I said. “If it didn’t mean wrecking our entire world—if the power of the Claws could be used to solely target the Annwfyn—I’d be stepping back and wishing them good luck.”
“It would indeed be tempting,” Cynwrig said. “But the genocide of an entire race because we do not like their actions is, in the end, unjustifiable.”
“That hasn’t exactly stopped anyone in the past.”
“Yes, but it doesn’t make it right.”
I suspected there’d be far more who’d agree with me rather than him. Which still didn’t make it right, of course.
