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“Yes.”
I ignored the sting in his tone, picked up my cutlery, and started eating. And discovered I was absolutely famished, which wasn’t surprising given it had been over twenty-four hours since my last meal.
“I never said he wasn’t right, but in order to create a key that will close each gate you must first create the correct auditory sequence to open it.”
“If the gate was inactive, that shouldn’t matter.”
“Just because it’s inactive on our side doesn’t mean it is on theirs. It simply means they are not, for whatever reason, currently using them.” He began to eat. “Finding the right auditory sequence for the individual gates isn’t truly hard, especially if you’ve been around them as long as the Myrkálfar. There are, however, two problems. One, certain frequencies can be very destructive. Two, gate activation from our side is a call to arms for them.”
I stared at him for a second. “The Myrkálfar have tried auditory locks?”
“There is nothing wehaven’ttried. To date, our best offense remains fusing the gates to their structures and that, as we all know, does not last.” He glanced at Lugh. “Did Mathi find anything else?”
“The dead were all buried in the local cemetery, and the government then bought all the surrounding farms and removed everyone from the area.”
I frowned. “That’s a lot of time and money spent covering up what could have simply been attributed to an actual Annwfyn attack.”
“Yes, and it leads me to suspect something else happened there. Perhaps something to do with the Key.” Lugh picked up his cutlery and began to eat. “Which is why I think we need to detour past Pynwffynnon before heading on to Gwynedd. If nothing else, we can try to find the gravestone in the picture and see if that provides us with any clues.”
I wrinkled my nose. “That might not leave us much daylight to check out the mine, and I really don’t want to be squeezing through impossibly small tunnels alone at night.”
Cynwrig’s fingers slipped over mine and lightly squeezed them. “You willnotbe going into any tunnel alone, no matter how small.”
I smiled lightly. “I appreciate the gesture, but as you’ve already said, it would dangerously drain—”
“Yes,” he cut in softly, “and I don’t care.”
My gaze met the heat of his, and my heart twisted. It would be easy, so very easy, to believe the emotions so visible in those silver depths were more than just the caring of a friend and a lover. But this is what the Myrkálfar did. They made you believe, made youdesire, things you absolutely should not.
I pulled my hand from under his and reached for a piece of toast. “Maybe we should stay in Swansea and start out fresh in the morning. It’ll give me a chance to try out the tracker on the token.”
Lugh hesitated and then shook his head. “We’d have to backtrack to go to Swansea, and I don’t think we can afford the time waste.”
“It’s not a time waste if it gives us information about the bastard in charge of the Looisearch.” I studied him for a second. “Has Rogan been in contact?”
He grimaced. “Yes, and he’s getting a little narky about our lack of progress. Apparently, he has a meeting with the higher-ups about next year’s exhibition. I think he was hoping to make the Claws the main draw.”
“That will never happen,” Cynwrig said. “If they are not—or cannot be—destroyed, they’ll be returned to the Tenebrous Hoard, from which they were initially stolen.”
“Rogan isn’t aware of our destruction intentions,” Lugh said. “And he has had other hoard items on display in the past.”
“Not from the Tenebrous Hoard, I assure you.”
“From the Éadrom hoard?” I asked curiously.
A smile tugged at his lovely lips. “Even the Ljósálfar are notthatslack.”
They were certainly slack enough to allow someone to sneak in and steal the whole goddamn hoard from under their noses. That no items from the hoard had yet hit the black market wasn’t actually comforting, because godly items sometimes had a habit of taking matters into their own hands.
I mean, how did someone like Gilda, the working-class elf Mathi had been fucking during our relationship, get hold of one of the rubies from the Shield of Hephaestus? The rubies held the power of fire and were so goddamn dangerous that even the Ljósálfar had stored them separately. Gilda had been thoroughly vetted before she’d begun working—and sleeping—with Mathi, so if there’d been any black-market links, they would have been found.
And yet the ruby was in her possession, albeit hidden where no one other than a pixie might have found it.
I doubted it was an accident. It would have come to her for a reason, and I was beginning to suspect it might have been agodlyreason. The fuckers seemed to be waking from their long sleep and once again intent on playing games with humanity.
“Meaning they came from the third hoard?” I asked. “The one no one talks about?”
“Yes,” Cynwrig said.
