"I don't think we have time to figure out how..." she began.
"There! Look at that," Valentine crouched down and pointed to where a small piece of silver lay beside a barrel. It looked about the size of a coin. Yelena caught Valentine's hand before he could reach for it.
"Don't touch it with your bare skin. Midir is a master, and there might be a compulsion on it," she warned.
Valentine tore off a scrap of material from the bottom of his shirt and picked up the token. "This is how he has gotten past the portal wards. His fucking spy has scattered these about the city."
"We will figure out the magic later, Val. We need to go and shut the others," Yelena said, tugging him back to his feet.
Valentine wrapped up the token and shoved it into his pocket. "Lead on, beautiful."
Yelena fell into a fighting rhythm, and they moved down to the next level of the city. Her magic and her body moved in sync with Valentine like they had been fighting together forever. She tried tofocus on the fight. She had no time to delight over the connection between them.
They found Avallach and Emyr fighting in front of a portal, a pile of dead fae at their feet. Avallach was splattered from head to toe.
"Working off some of those captivity frustrations, big brother?" Yelena asked, coming up behind them.
"And it's working! Get this damn thing closed already so we can go help Owain and Reeve," Avallach called back.
Threads of Valentine's power wove with hers, and like a blanket smothering a fire, their magic covered the portal and snuffed it out.
"Well, that's something I have never seen before," Emyr said, wiping her sweaty brow.
"Look around for a silver token. It has to be here somewhere," Valentine said, shoving a body out of the way.
"What's he talking about?" Avallach asked, looking at Yelena with a furrowed brow.
"Long story. Just look, or we will have another portal opening any second," she said and helped Emyr shift her pile of bodies. They found the token wedged into a carving of a dragon.
"Should we wrap these in some kind of mini ward? I don't want a portal suddenly opening where my dick is," Valentine said, making Yelena choke back a laugh.
"That would be a waste of an excellent dick," she agreed.
"Nice." Emyr grinned as Avallach pretended to gag.
"I'll explain this magic later, too," Yelena said and quickly wove a silver pouch out of her magic before wrapping it around the tokens and the scrap of shirt.
Valentine's eyes went wide, and she could just about hear his thought process trying to figure out what she did.
"No time," she replied before he could ask.
"Fuck. Okay. Where are Owain and Reeve?" Valentine said to Avallach, the glazed look in his eyes going away.
"Two levels down. Come on," the knight replied, and they ran on.
It was going to be a long night.
31
They found a total of seven tokens before all the portals were shut for good. Midir's warriors were dead, but they had caused chaos, murder, and destruction before they were done.
By dawn, Valentine and Yelena had finished helping carry the wounded to the healers and placing the dead enemy warriors onto the platforms, ready for the knights to burn.
Valentine was tired and pissed off when they got back to the palace. Taranis was furious, his magic pulsing about him in an aura of heartbreak and rage.
"Please tell me you two figured out how the fuckers got in," he asked, sending the people around him scattering at his tone.
Valentine took the scrap of shirt from his pocket and opened it. Taranis snarled.
