“Gryphon?”
He blinked. Realized his mind was getting away from him again. Skata, if he wasn’t hearing voices, he was living in a freakin’ fantasy world. He gave his head a swift shake. Slammed the heel of his hand against his forehead, hoping to knock something loose. He needed to get a grip, like now. “No, I heard you scream and went back for you.”
She eyed him as if he had a third eye. But that was okay. That he could deal with. That, at least, was normal for him. It was when she looked at him as if he were a real person that things went straight into the shitter.
Her gaze skipped past him to the darkness of the cavern they’d come through, and she shuddered. When she turned back to the remains and reached for the satchel hanging off one side of the skeleton, he saw her hand shake. “Do you think they’re gone?”
She was talking about the kobaloi. He looked behind him, didn’t see any sign they’d been followed. But that didn’t mean they were safe. “Yeah,” he lied, not entirely sure why he cared if she was scared or not. She was not his problem. “I think we proved they shouldn’t mess with us. They’re tricksy gnome-elves. They like to cause trouble, taunt people, but that’s it. I doubt they’re violent.”
She didn’t look so convinced, but as she turned to glance over the remains, he noticed the way she tucked her dark hair behind her ear, the way the light caught the delicate line of her jaw, the way—even dressed in all that black and those ridiculous boots—she was soft and feminine and tempting as hell.
Skata. He was losing his ever-loving mind. What the hell was he doing? She was a means to an end, nothing more. The sooner he remembered that, the better off he’d be. What he should have been focused on was the fact he’d been so swept up in some insane psycho lust because of her, he’d nearly forgotten they weren’t alone in this cavern.
He slid the sword into the scabbard draped across his back and was silent as she pawed through the satchel, pulled out a wallet. Tried like hell to remember what Orpheus had said about her during those miserable hours his brother had sat in his room trying to cheer him up while he stared out the window wishing he could stab out his eardrums. Somehow she was linked to the gods, but he couldn’t remember which ones. She wasn’t a goddess herself, but she’d been the one to tell Orpheus where the Orb of Krónos was located.
What if she was casting some kind of magic over him? What if she was playing head games? She’d been trying to escape from the colony herself tonight. He didn’t put it past her to use whatever means she could to get free of him. She’d gone from scared shitless to queen of irate to completely turned on faster than he could flash in Argolea. Something was off with this female. Something that sent a shiver of foreboding down his spine.
She opened the wallet. It too was blackened and crusty, as if it had been burned, but the contents inside were still readable. She turned it so he could see. “Vladimir Aristov. That sounds Russian.”
Cautiously, he took the wallet from her, ignored the way heat arced from her fingers into his. Ignored the fact that just that little contact reminded him what she’d felt like, all hot and bothered between him and those rocks. “It is. Aristov…That name’s familiar.”
She pushed to her feet next to him, and he smelled jasmine. Remembered the rush of heat that had sent him into a tailspin only moments before. He wanted to move back, but there was nowhere to go except into the freezing river. And he wasn’t risking that again.
“Wasn’t Aristov the name of the Misos who built the castle?” she asked. “The one the colony is housed in? I’m sure there’s a plaque in the library about him.”
Gryphon’s gaze slid to the blackened skeletal remains, and understanding dawned. “That’s why no one’s ever found the colony.”
“What are you—?”
He pulled the ore from his pocket. The one she’d dropped earlier when she wigged out and left his ass behind. “He must have come down here and taken samples back up. When the ore is warmed, whatever it’s touching becomes invisible. I bet you ten bucks there’s a room in that castle full of these.” He looked up and around, a new tingle sliding down his spine, one that had nothing to do with arousal and everything to do with urgency. “It’s not the mountains and the lake protecting the colony, it’s the ore. And that means there’s some kind of access from the castle down here to this cavern. One a whole lot easier to access than the way we came through.”
Sonofabitch. They needed to make tracks before Nick and his men caught up with them. They’d wasted precious time getting warm, drying out their clothes, kissing.