Page 116 of Under Arthur’s Protection

The academic press would focus on the evidence. Then the historians would come out. This place would be crawling within a week of publishing, and I didn’t even need a peer review to bring them out.

Take that, Dr. Theodore Hopkins! Try chasing people away from Tintagel now!

I lowered the camera and checked my phone. No signal.

Looked toward the beach entrance. No Arthur yet, either.

Light spilled in from the far end, broken by three men picking their way over the rocks. People had been walking back and forth the entire time I’d been working, so three more visitors were nothing unusual. But I didn’t remember these men passing me on their way to the far end.

They were large, their movements too coordinated for sightseers.

I should have remembered them going by.

They were fifteen feet from me when the first one charged. One hand clamped over my mouth while the other seized my arm.

I drove my knee up, but he sidestepped, dragging me against his chest and locking a thick arm around my middle. The camera and my flashlight slipped from my fingers and cracked against stone. I slammed my elbow backward, but unlike at the archive, the man shifted his weight and took the blow without a sound.

These weren’t the amateurs from Champagne.

I kicked. Twisted. The second man caught my legs. I was off the ground, my scream muffled against a huge palm that tasted like salt.

The dim light hit the third man’s face.

Oh fuck.

Rick Younge.

“This was easier than I expected.” He picked up the sword case from where I’d set it down. He sighed as the men began carrying me to the far exit. “I was hoping I’d see Arthur again.”

Chapter 35

Arthur

“Jesus fucking Christ!” The wind shoved at me as I hauled myself up the second switchback. I had one hand on the wooden railing, but my knee had been protesting from the first step. “I should have been back in the cave three minutes ago. Gwen’s in there by herself.”

“So I’ll grab the drone,” Lance said in my ear.

“I need you on fucking overwatch, Lance.” Below, tourists explored the beach without a care in the world beyond when the tide would come in. Above me, the fog had swallowed the bridge and most of the headland. And somewhere in between, our eyes in the sky sat in a bush. “How did the damn thing go down?”

“It’s too small for this wind,” Tristan snapped. “We need better equipment than this.”

“I told you, we should have called in Bedivere,” said Galahad, referring to yet another of our Legacy teammates who’d ghosted me about the new company. “He’s actually trained for this shit. He could have flown it in a little gust.”

“Fuck you,” said Tristan. “I said I can handle this.”

“Everyone, calm down. I’ve got it.” I gritted my teeth against the pain radiating through every inch of my body. I’d had a solid plan. Exit the cave, confirm the net was quiet, get back to Gwen. Instead, I’d been greeted by the news that our tiny bird was grounded. I flipped to the video feed on our group call and pointed it in front of me. “Talk me to it, Tristan.”

“Off the path on your eleven o’clock. In the bushes. About twenty feet in.”

I stepped off the boards into the brush, wet fronds soaking my jeans to the shin. The quadcopter lay nose-down, its rotors tangled in branches and one skid pointing at the sky. I worked it free and turned it over. One prop had a slight bend, but the camera gimbal, by some miracle, was intact. I showed Tristan the damage. “Can you still fly her?”

“Of course I can.”

I held the drone out. The rotors spun up. She bobbled on my hand, lifted off, dipped hard toward the cliff face, caught herself, and finally climbed.

“See?” Tristan said. “I told you I can⁠—”

“I’ve got a boat,” said Lance.