Page 86 of Shield of Fire

His rise has been centuries in the making. We dare not risk our progress by rushing our final steps.

The man grunted, and the vision fragmented, leaving me battling for breath and trembling with exhaustion.

I released the Eye, shifted my legs, and flopped back onto the bed, spending the next few minutes breathing slow and deep in an effort to control my erratic heart rate.

Using the Eye—or indeed, the Codex—never seemed to get any easier. But then, they were godly artifacts, and the old gods always demanded some form of payment in return for borrowed power.

Which made me wonder, what was the cost of using the rubies? The closeness of the two attacks suggested it wasn’t a physical cost, but there had to be some sort of price paid.

Maybe I needed to go back into the Codex and ask... but not right now. I needed those promised whiskeys and a good helping of hot chips to restock the energy well.

I sighed, slung the Eye over my neck, and then put the Codex and knives back in my bag. After sending Sgott a text telling him everything I’d seen in the Eye—including the possibility Carla was a face shifter—I headed downstairs.

The hotel had two bars—a larger one for guests, and a smaller one for locals. The former had a sign up saying it was closed during off-peak periods, so I headed into the other, finding Cynwrig, Lugh, and Mathi sitting around a table looking up at the TV on the wall. Silence held the room, and after a moment, I realized why.

Images of destruction filled the screen.

Not just any destruction, but melted destruction.

Keelakm had finally unleashed the ruby capable of undoing what smiths had made. In this case, it was a building of metal and glass. The concrete walls had not been touched, but with the steel supports gone, they’d simply concertinaed.

The buildings on either side were covered in dust and pitted with holes that must have come from concrete fragments being ricocheted away during the collapse of the building’s floors, but most of the damage appeared minor.

I sat down hard on the empty chair next to Cynwrig. “Where is this? It doesn’t look like Deva.”

We didn’t have any buildings that tall, for a start.

“It isn’t.” Cynwrig’s voice was carefully controlled, but I could almost taste the fury that vibrated underneath it. “It’s London.”

London. Fuck. For some damn reason, I hadn’t expected their revenge to be so wide-ranging. But revenge is rarely restricted by time or place—how many times had I heard Sgott say that?

“What happened? Who—what—did he attack?”

A waiter appeared, not only placing a double whiskey down, but also a bowl of hot chips and several tomato sauce sachets. Cynwrig—or perhaps Lugh, given he knew well enough of my love for chips smothered in tomato sauce—had anticipated my needs.

I nodded my thanks, picked the drink up, and downed a good half of it. The fiery liquid burned away some of the tiredness, but not the sick certainty that this was just the beginning of our elves’ destructive plans.

“It’s the Eadevane Holdings building,” Cynwrig was saying.

I glanced at him sharply. “As in, Afran Eadevane?”

He nodded. I swore again. “Many hurt?”

“Unknown at this stage,” Lugh said. “There’re reports that a warning was issued five minutes before the building started melting, but that remains unconfirmed, as does the number of people who might have been inside at the time.”

“Eadevane Holdings allows work from home,” Cynwrig said. “The reports are saying many took advantage it.”

I picked up the sauce sachets and squeezed them over the chips. “And Afran? Was he in the building this time?”

“Some witnesses are saying he was.”

“They’re also saying the top floor—where his offices were located—had been locked off by forces unknown before the call came in and the building evacuated,” Mathi said. “The building melted before the fire brigade could even attempt a rescue.”

I couldn’t help but wonder if Halak had phoned Afran first to confirm he was there—and then kept him on the line while Keelakm melted his building around him. It was an action that would make sense after he’d escaped the destruction at Cynwrig’s. “What does Eadevane Holdings do?”

“They’re basically a mining exploration and development company,” Cynwrig said. “And that building is its organizational heart.”

My eyebrows rose. “I wasn’t aware the Myrkálfar were into mining.”

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