“So, she’s not returning to the safe house tonight?”
“No. The last place anyone will think to look for her is Jun’s.”
No doubt because of Tris’s involvement with Darkside. “She can’t stay there forever.”
“She won’t—she’ll head back tomorrow night via an Uber. It’s too risky for her to use her car at the moment.”
“Too risky for any of us,” I commented.
She nodded. “Which is why I’ve extended the hire time on the SUV.”
“And why I’ll not be using the motorbike in the short term.” Luc took a long drink of his beer. “Have you any idea why the shield pointed us toward the King’s Tower?”
“None at all,” Mo replied. “There are plenty of old weapons in the vaults, of course, but even if one of them had responded, it shouldn’t have been visible. Where’s the shield?”
“In the SUV,” I replied.
She nodded and motioned to our drinks. “Once you finish those, we’ll head off.”
I picked up my coffee but didn’t gulp it down. “Did Barney ever send you the enhanced images of the writing on the King’s Stone?”
“Actually, yes. I just haven’t had the chance to look at them.”
She dug into her pocket and dragged out her phone. I slipped off the stool and stood behind her as she opened the first of the three images. The writing remained somewhat fuzzy, but you could at least pick out that it was text now, albeit a language that was ancient and probably long forgotten by most.
“Okay, this one says …” She paused for several seconds. “That which is … beautiful? is not always powerful.”
“Obviously not a fan of De Montfort women,” Luc murmured.
I laughed and nudged him lightly. “Smooth, Blackbird, smooth.”
Mo flicked over to the next image. It was a little more legible and her translation was faster. “That which is plain often hides a mighty heart.”
“This is where you make some comment about me,” Luc said.
“There is nothing plain about you, I’m afraid,” I replied obligingly.
He grinned but didn’t comment as Mo moved on to the final image. After a few minutes she said, “The hand that claims one will never be worthy of the other.”
I blinked. “Does that mean …?”
“I believe it does,” she said. “And thank the fuck for that.”
“That’s presuming the prophecy is true,” Luc said. “There’s nothing in the archives that suggests whoever draws the sword out of the King’s Stone is incapable of drawing Elysian. And, in times past, she was the sword in the stone.”
“Yes, but not for many, many centuries.” Mo put her phone away. “We’ll have to run on the presumption that he might be able to raise Elysian, but I have no reason to doubt what was written. Ready to go?”
I gulped down the rest of my coffee and then followed her out. The night was icy in comparison to the bar, and I crossed my arms in an effort to repress the shivers and contain some warmth. Luc immediately wrapped an arm around my shoulders and tugged me closer to his big body. I smiled and tucked an arm around his waist, determined to enjoy this moment of intimate normality before it all went south again.
He released me once we neared the SUV, and my body mourned the loss of heat and closeness. Once he unlocked the SUV, Mo opened the rear hatch door, then undid her coat and pulled out a rather plain leather scabbard.
“Where on earth did you get that?” I queried. “Or is it better not to ask?”
She dropped the scabbard into the trunk, retrieved the shield, and then slammed the hatch door closed. “I didn’t steal it, if that’s what you’re inferring.”
“Which doesn’t answer the actual question.” I opened the rear passenger door for her, then climbed into the front.
“The council has a number of artifacts on display in their chamber,” she said. “None of the swords were as old as Elysian, of course, and the one I stripped the scabbard from is in fact eighteenth century, but it should fit quite nicely.”
“And it certainly saves me having to make a temporary scabbard tonight,” Luc said.
He reversed out of the parking spot and then headed out into the street. “Did you recognize the magic the shield’s emitting?”
“Yes—it’s Mryddin’s.”
“He made a fake shield as well as a fake sword?” I asked. “Why?”
“To annoy the hell out of me, no doubt,” she muttered. “As I’ve said before, he always did like his games.”
“Meaning the shield might not be connected to the witch kings?”
“Oh, it’ll be connected. Whether it’s relevant to our current quest is another matter entirely.”
It took twenty minutes to get across to the King’s Tower, thanks to many of the streets in the old town being inaccessible to a SUV. It probably would have been faster to walk, but we had no idea if Darkside had watchers out overhead. It was better not to take a chance, especially after the mess we’d made of them on King Island.
Luc didn’t stop in the parking area behind the tower, but rather one of the nearby side streets. I climbed out and scanned the sky; aside from the faint glow of distant stars, there wasn’t much to see. There was no whisper of darkness stirring on the wind and little in the way of life or sound coming from the surrounding neighborhood. This part of Ainslyn held a number of museums and had nothing in the way of after-hours nightlife.
The old tower dominated the area from its position on top of the mound. It was quadrilobate in shape, rather than the usual circular design, with each “lobe” holding different functions. The ground floor area contained a souvenir shop, a display room, toilet facilities, and the circular stairs down to the vaults. The upper floor—which was the most intact and original portion of the tower—contained the bedchambers. Though it couldn’t be seen from this angle, a small chapel had been built between the east and south lobes, spoiling the symmetry of the building on that side.
Mo handed me the shield, and I pointed its face toward the tower. Once again the rose came to life, shooting a beam of light toward the tower that exploded over its old wooden roof. If anyone had been in the area, all they would have seen was a firework-like display.
Hopefully, any Darkside demons or halflings who might be out and about nearby would think exactly the same thing.
As the display faded, two brief pulses of white shot skyward and then faded.
“They came from the other side of the tower rather than the tower itself,” Luc said.
I glanced at Mo. “Would the chapel have anything Witch King related? I thought the place was empty?”
“It is—anything of worth was stripped from it centuries ago,” she said. “Its only real point of interest these days is its medieval architecture. It was a private chapel built for the king alone, and far too small to be a useable display area.”
“There has to be something in there—there’s nothing else on that side of the building that could be responding.”
“Remember who set this all up.”
The more I learned about Mryddin, the more annoying he became. “How are we going to get into the tower without raising the alarms?”