Five
It was close to ten by the time I woke up. The building’s cheery song told me Ingrid and the crew were already downstairs, setting up for the day, and my mind was helpfully providing a rundown of the things I had to do over the next couple of hours. I definitely needed to get up and get going, but for the longest of time, I couldn’t. I just snuggled deeper under the comforter’s warmth and did my best to ignore the mental list. Partially because I was still damnably tired, and partially because I was still mad at myself for not accepting the situation with Cynwrig, especially if those dreams were a precognitive warning rather than a natural result of the fear that had haunted me since my father’s proclamation.
Besides, it wasn’t as ifnotfucking him would, in any way, ease the anguish when he took a wife. I might not have known him all that long, we might still be strangers in every way beyond the bedroom, but I was already too far down the rabbit hole of caring not to fall apart when he married.
I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling. Maybe I needed to talk to Darby about Cynwrigandthat ticking clock. I couldn’t discuss it with Lugh, because it wouldn’t be fair to burden him with that until I was absolutely certain there wasno way I could win this game and stay alive. It probably wasn’t entirely fair to burden Darby with it, either, but she was a forester class light elf, which meant that while she was far more emotionally connected, she still had an elf’s practicalities when it came to men, life, and love. She would give me a straight, no-nonsense answer, whether I wanted to hear it or not.
Although when it came to Cynwrig, I already knew what her advice would be. But given she was the one who always picked up the pieces after a love affair of mine had gone south—and there’d been plenty of them over the decades because I was absolute shit at choosing partners—the least I could do was give her time to stock up on the cake, chocolate, and alcohol that were a standard requirement for our “he sucks, you’re awesome” pity parties.
As for the clock... well, she was a healer who specialized in poisons, with a secondary specialization in wound repairs. Maybe she could suggest a way around fate’s declaration. After all, my fucking aunt had used death to get around the restrictions of the red knife, so surely there was some way I could do the same.
The phone rang sharply into the silence and made me jump. I was tempted to ignore it, but the tone told me it was Mathi, and he rarely rang without reason. I groped for it on the bedside table, then hit the answer button.
“Hey,” I said. “What’s up? Not another theft, I hope, because I’m really not in the mood today.”
“If your face is sore, you should have gone to either Darby or your doctor to get it repaired.”
“Yes, I should have, but I didn’t, and now I’m grumpy, tired, and have absolutely no patience.”
He chuckled softly. “State normal, then.”
“You, Mathi Dhar-Val, can be a bastard sometimes.”
“Indeed, I can. It’s part of my charm.”
I rolled my eyes. “Why are you ringing?”
“Got the name of the person who owned that box our thief took the contents from. Thought we might do a little illicit searching of her property.”
“It’s not the cottage he hit yesterday, then?”
“No. Different.”
I frowned. “So why not just go talk to her? Better yet, given your father or his team probably already have, why not just read the report?”
“Because they haven’t found her yet, let alone talked to her. Apparently she hasn’t lived at that address for quite a few years.”
“But she still owns it?”
“Yes, and according to the neighbors, she randomly appears, stays for a couple of hours, and then leaves again.”
“She doesn’t rent it out?”
“No. She has gardeners and cleaners coming in once a month, though.”
“Your father hasn’t ordered an internal search to be done?”
“He has no cause—she is a victim, not a suspect.”
“Having no cause hasn’t stopped him in the past.”
“No, but there are, believe it or not, some lines even my father won’t cross.”
“Are there lines the son won’t?” I asked, amused.
“Depends entirely on the line. There is one problem, however.”
“Of course there is, because when has any relic search gone smoothly?”
