“You’re absolutely right, Flynn,” Arthur said. “No one listens to you.”
“Whether we trust him or not,” I said, fixing Corbin with what I hoped was a withering stare, “I think we’re stuck with him. So let’s try not to be…what’s the word? Wankers. Let’s try not to be wankers.”
“I love when you talk British, Einstein.” Flynn flipped a red curl out of his eyes.
“I trust him,” Rowan whispered.
Corbin grunted. I wasn’t naive enough to assume that was agreement.
“As far as I’m concerned, if Blake helped get Connor back, I’ll put him forward for a knighthood,“ Jane added.
“Give us a few days, mate,” Arthur said to Blake. “We didn’t expect to be sharing Briarwood and M—” he paused and cleared his throat. I wondered what he’d been about to say. Was he going to say ‘and Maeve’? A flash of one of my erotic dreams danced in front of my eyes, of all five of them surrounding me, their hands and mouths and cocks pleasuring me. I rubbed my bare arms, feeling the hairs stand on end, the tingles of my magic simmering under my skin.
Goddammit, it’s getting hard to focus on anything with all this testosterone in my face all the time.
“Speaking of that dream trip we took yesterday,” Arthur said. “I have some questions. Namely, how the hell did I end up with my sword?”
“Mate, don’t question the Deus-ex-Maevina,” Flynn grinned.
I snorted at his comment. “That’s hilarious, Flynn.”
“I know.”
“But seriously, I didn’t give Arthur the sword. I didn’t have anything to do with that. So how did it get there?” I glanced at Blake, who shrugged.
“Don’t look at me, Princess. I’m not in the habit of doing favors for people who aren’t you. Best I could figure, when you drew these guys into the dream you somehow gave them the power to manipulate it.”
“That would have been nice to know at the time,” Arthur said, touching his shoulder where a fae had given him a long cut with a bone blade.
“Tell me about it. I could have got one of you to bring me a curry.”
“As interesting as this issue is, we have to put it aside for now. It’s not getting us any closer to stopping Daigh.”
“But how do we stop him if we don’t know what he’s going to do?”
“We know what he’stryingto do. He’s trying to raise the Slaugh. But our ancestors sent the fae intoTir Na Nogprecisely so they could never raise the Slaugh again. It’s supposed to be impossible. So we need to know why Daigh thinks he can do it.”
“He said he had a weapon the likes of which we cannot imagine,” I recalled with a shudder. I’d thought that was the Slaugh, but maybe it wasn’t? Maybe it was the means of raising them?
How could that fae possibly be my father? I hadn’t had a moment since we returned to really register that. But the man who gave me half my genes wanted to raise the spirits of the dead and wipe out the population of the earth. My stomach churned.
“Fae say a lot of things that aren’t necessarily true. But there’s definitely something going on here we’ve never seen before. Here’s what we’re going to do,” Corbin sat up in his chair, thumbing through the grimoire. “Maeve, you and Jane go into the village and get her set up with that baptism. If possible, try and get out of the vicar the names of other babies who aren’t being or haven’t yet been baptized. It’s a small village. The vicar will know everyone. Take Arthur with you for protection.”
“We don’t need protection,” I said, thinking of the fae safely behind Blake’s ward spell.
“We might,” Jane said quietly. I glanced at her, noticing for the first time the color had fled her cheeks.Is it something to do with her profession? Is there someone else out there who wants to hurt her?
“Well, take him for eye candy, then. The rest of you are staying here and pouring through these books. There’s got tobe something here that will help us. I’ll give you all the ones in English, and I’ll work on the translations when I get back.“
“I know Old Brythonic and Gaelic, if that’s helpful,” Blake said.
“I’lldo the translations,” Corbin growled.
“Fine by me,” Blake shrugged. If anything, his bored expression seemed to be making Corbin even angrier. It would’ve been hilarious if I wasn’t so worried about Corbin.
“Where are you going?” Flynn asked.
Corbin stood up. “I have to take a little trip, but I’ll probably be back within the day.”
