Ristan stormed in through the door and stopped cold looking down at me. His eyes lowering to my stomach, and filling with a look of absolute wonder as Ryder’s had done. He took the seat beside me and Ryder swung into leader mode effortlessly.
“Okay, so we know that the relics in Tèrra have all been relocated,” he said and glanced at me. “Tèrra is what we call your world, Synthia. Zahruk and a few others have confirmed they are being moved once a day, easily obtainable in transit. Alden, with the help of one of the Guild’s librarians has discovered a scroll written in our language. It’s believed that it was obtained some time ago, but we are unsure of how it ended up in the hands of the Guild,” Ryder said smoothly.
“Alden is still at the Guild?” I asked, feeling my stomach sink with the knowledge. It was too dangerous for him to be at the Guild when we now knew the Mages were running it. Leaving him inside was asking for trouble.
“Alden is fully aware of what he is doing, and the danger of being inside the Guild. Ristan is keeping in touch with him and if he even thinks Alden is in trouble, he will pull him out and bring him here,” Ryder said with his eyes watching me for any sign of objection.
I turned and looked at Ristan, who was still looking at my abdomen. He looked as if he was trying to see inside of it. “Ristan?” I asked, watching as he lifted his eyes to mine.
“Twins,” he said softly, “how the fuck did that happen?”
“Well, do you want the short version or the long one, Demon?” I asked, grinning from ear to ear. I was scared shitless of having twins, but I wasn’t passing up an opportunity to mess with the Demon.
He gave me a blank stare before he lowered his eyes again. “She didn’t let me see twins, Flower.”
“I would hope not, Demon, because had you seen them, and not told me, I’d be kicking your ass.”
His eyes lifted to mine, the silver inside of them shining. “Only you would have twins, just to fuck with me.”
“I blame Ryder,” I said, and smiled as snorts and grunts of agreement filled the room.
Ryder was smiling, as were his men. He shot me a smoldering look before he got the meeting back on track. “Like I was saying, the scroll that was found indicates there are more relics than we’d originally thought. We have one out of four that were hidden inside Tèrra, but this document shows that there are more pieces to the puzzle. Each relic has two pieces. These counterparts that were hidden inside of Faery are the activation pieces for lack of a better word of what to call them.” He paused and looked around the room before continuing. “I couldn’t make the scepter work beyond coming to life, but at least now, we know why it wouldn’t work correctly. Based on the scroll, Ristan was able to locate one of the secondary pieces. The problem is, it was hidden by the Fae. We hid it, and it won’t be as easily obtained as those inside the human world will be. Ristan, the room is yours.”
“I think the secondary piece was hidden to protect the power of the relics from being used by the humans, or in this case, the Mages. We had always thought that the relics would only work in the right Fae hands. However, the Mages have proved resourceful and they have been systematically finding ways around many of our magic. I think the ancients knew what might happen, and put safeguards in place for the relics. Those who have gone into slumber are even now being awakened. They would be able to tell us what they know, and exactly why they were hidden. Unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury of waiting for them to become fully awake. The Mages have followed us here, and we know they are not stupid.” Ristan nodded to Zahruk, who then took over the room.
“Okay, so it’s the same as last time. It’s going to be heavily guarded magic, but we have no idea of what kind, or if there are creatures set in place to thwart us from entering. What we do know is it won’t be as easy as the last one,” Zahruk said, winking at me.
Shit, if that was easy…what the hell were we in for this time?
“This is what we think is going to be there.” Zahruk flipped on a monitor and worked the flat screen from where he sat beside Ryder. On the screen were drawing and diagrams for what looked to be a huge cave. “This was set up by the previous Dark King; it’s the labyrinth.” Several strings of violent curses erupted from around me before Zahruk turned his eyes on me. “For those of you who don’t know what that is, I’ll be explaining it,” he said slowly, as if I was lame in the brain department.