My blood turns icy in my veins. “Blue iron.”
Carefully I feel his wrists and ankles, looking for manacles like the ones FIRE restrained me with when they captured me, but Seven’s limbs are unencumbered. His breath rattles in his lungs, and I quickly unbutton his shirt to give him more air.
“Those fucking evil bastards,” I say when I see a row of stitches on his chest. Under the stitches is a raised section of flesh in a misshapen square.
“Gods! Is that what I think it is?” Eva yells.
“Bring me a knife from the kitchen. Quickly! And a clean towel.”
She runs from the room and returns with a paring knife. Good enough. I don’t hesitate but slice the stitches open and dig my fingers into the wound. Seven doesn’t flinch or moan, and I try not to think about what that means. My fingers clamp around a stone, and I drag it from his flesh, feeling all my energy drain away as I do. As soon as it’s out of him, I fling it across the room and catch my breath. My luck bubbles up again in my veins.
“They sewed blue iron into him?” Eva shouts incredulously. “What kind of psycho would do a thing like that?”
“I don’t know, but if I find out, I’m going to kill them.” I press the clean towel to the wound and run my hands over every inch of his body, looking for more. I don’t find any. “Eva, try giving him luck again. It’s the only way to know that it’s all out of his system.”
That enormous, fiery bird rises over me again and sinks into Seven as her hands come to rest on his arm. The effect is instant. He draws a deep breath into his lungs and then cries out, fisting the sheets. For a second, his eyes are wild; then they fix on me.
“Sophia? Thank the gods.” One arm flops around my neck and pulls me to him. He presses his lips to my forehead.
“What happened, Seven?” Eva is pacing now, her luck fluttering around the room. “For fuck’s sake, there was blue iron sewn into your chest!”
He looks at her for the first time, then reaches over to grab her hand. “There’s something I have to tell you. It’s bad Eva. It’s so bad.” He tries to sit up, and fresh blood pours down his shirt.
“Fuck. Hold still.” I press the towel to his chest again. “The doctor will be here any minute. You need that wound cleaned and probably stitched.”
He closes his eyes for a long beat. “This can’t wait.” When he opens them again, I’m sure his luck is coming back because they’re glowing bright emerald. His gaze shifts to Eva. “Dad made a deal with Rayrcore for… stones, something he was getting from Devashire, a valuable mineral. Rayrcore made it extremely clear to me that his imprisonment is no excuse for not delivering the goods.”
“What mineral?” Eva spread her hands. “Rayrcore supplies us; we don’t supply them.”
My head is spinning. “Back up. Who is Rayrcore, and what exactly do they supply you with?”
Eva flashes me a pitying look. “Rayrcore is who Seven just met with. They’re an American mining conglomerate run by Alex Hearst. They provide us with rare earth metals, which we use in a variety of our products—anything that can run on a battery, like our slot machines for example.”
I shake my head, completely confused now. “And your father was bringing stones to them? What kind of stones?”
“Something called malivite. They claim they’vepaidfor a delivery of this stuff. I’d never even heard of it.”
“Wait, so your father has a secret mining operation happening somewhere in Devashire, and because he was arrested, he wasn’t able to deliver the goods?”
“So it seems,” Seven says.
I pull the stone from my pocket. “This was in Adam Barker’s hand when he was murdered.”
Eva reaches for it and turns it between her fingers. “Is this malivite? I’ve never heard of it either.”
I squint at both of them. “Isn’t mining in Devashire illegal? I thought Godmother put a stop to it a hundred years ago because of the environmental impact.”
“She did,” Seven says. “She knows our bread and butter is getting humans in the door, and none of them want to be breathing in dust from mining activities. They come here for the natural surroundings and for the fun. That’s why Rayrcore took it upon themselves to kidnap me rather than take this to the authorities. They wanted to show me in no uncertain terms what would happen if I don’t keep supplying them. I just can’t figure out how their payment to us slipped by me. There should have been a red flag raised if they paid us for something we never delivered.”
Eva’s face pales, and she sits down on the edge of the bed. “They did pay us.”
Seven grunts with the effort of turning his head to look at her.
“It was the day you found out about Dad—the meeting with the accountants. Dad was supposed to attend, but I filled in for him at the last minute. He grabbed me right before the meeting and said he had to go. That was the day Godmother arrested him. In that meeting, I noticed a large payment from Rayrcore. No one could explain it, and we tabled it to ask Chance when he was back in the office. He was never back in the office. I’ve been so busy I forgot about it.”
Seven runs a hand down his face. “Well, Rayrcore remembers.”
The same niggling questions surface in my brain as when I’d talked to River earlier. “How did Chance get to the cabin so fast that day? We arrived at your father’s place at the same time he was scheduled to meet with the accountants. If he was in Evangeline’s office right before the meeting to ask her to take his place, how did he get to us, an hour outside of Elderflame, so quickly?”
