“A city with only moonlight,” Fiacra said. She glanced at Gareth. “Mhorghast, presumably.”
His face was closed, but I knew what to look for: the shadows of Mhorghast turning in his eyes. I felt the dark touch of those memoriesmyself. Though I hadn’t been a prisoner in Kilraith’s moonlit city, I had played one of his sinister games. I had stood with Nesset on the shores of the black lake—an illusion of Kilraith’s design conjured from my memories. But it had been real enough. I’d heard his jeering voice as I’d endured trial after trial. Just as they had in reality, each one had ended with Petra’s death. No matter how hard I had tried to change her fate, Kilraith hadn’t allowed it. Every choice I’d made had led me down the same road with the same bloody end.
Gareth, when he spoke, sounded admirably calm. “If Lady Ifanna has a relic of Mhorghast, it could very well be one of Kilraith’s anchors. Did your contact tell you anything else, Posey?”
She answered at once in a language that was obviously fae and too obscure for most of us to understand, which was certainly the point.
Danesh scowled, but before she could protest, Gareth spoke quietly.
“A bridge between nowhere and everywhere,” he translated. “An unlocked door that no one can open. A tree that never sleeps.”
Posey gave him a grudging nod. “So he told me. But I do not see the significance, and neither did he.”
“It sounds like nonsense to me,” Danesh remarked.
I looked to Gareth just as he looked at me. A thrill passed between us, lighting up his eyes.
“An unlocked door,” I said. “That could refer to the key anchor.”
“And a bridge between nowhere and everywhere,” he said. “Perhaps that’s Kilraith’s ability to travel between the worlds and work his magic in either realm?”
“And a tree that never sleeps?” Fiacra asked, wide-eyed.
“Perhaps that’s where the key is held,” I suggested.
“Or it’s something that guards the key,” Gareth said. “This is a start, at least.”
Geddings was scribbling furiously in his notebook. “I’ll instruct our research teams to cross-reference these phrases against our project archives.”
The Warden steepled her fingers at her lips. “So,” she murmured, as if to herself, “one of the anchors of Kilraith’sytheliadcurse is in the hands of the fae.”
“Perhaps,” Gareth cautioned. “This is simply a possible lead.”
“The most solid lead we’ve had in ages,” I added.
Danesh pushed off the wall she had been leaning on and straightened her tunic with a sharp tug. “Wonderful. Let’s go get it.”
Posey laughed. “Did you not hear the librarian? This is the Court of Shadows. You cannot simplygo getanything that belongs to them, especially something this valuable.”
“And if Lady Ifanna does have the key,” I said, “or any valuable object from Mhorghast, she either stole it from Kilraith…”
“…or she is his ally,” Gareth finished.
Posey’s eyes flashed. The room rippled with a sudden heat, as if a gust of desert wind had swept over us. With the Old Country so fresh on her skin and in her mind, she was forgetting to tamp down on her fae instincts, which was one of the conditions of her stay at Rosewarren. I glanced at the Warden, ready to defend Posey’s lapse, but she seemed strangely calm, her gaze distant.
“My cousins would not ally with that creature,” Posey declared. “Other clans, yes. Weak ones, frightened ones. But the Cirrinoc-Frinthian bloodline would never agree to subservience.”
“You did,” the Warden pointed out quietly. “You serve us here at Rosewarren.”
Posey’s hands were in fists. “Because I do not wish to see Kilraith reign supreme over both our worlds. And I am not confident that such a thing won’t happen without considerable help, given your apparent inability to truly defeat him yourselves.”
“Say that again, Pointy Ears,” Danesh snapped, “and I’ll turn that green skin of yours black and blue.”
I raised a hand to ward off Danesh. “She has a point. We haven’t been able to defeat him, not permanently. But every anchor we dismantle further weakens his influence both here and in the Old Country.”
Gareth rubbed his chin, his brow furrowed. “We have to retrieve it,” he murmured. “This key, if it is the key. Or at least try to, no matter how difficult it may be. The Court of Shadows is aptly named.”
“We’ve tried to track the Cirrinoc clan dozens of times,” Danesh admitted. “It would be advantageous to have them as allies. But every path we’ve tried leads to a dead end.”
