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And that was fine. Perfectly fine. As long as the bastards stayed out of my hair, we wouldn’t have a problem.

Lugh had a deep gash down the right side of his face that bled profusely, and his jacket sleeve was shredded. Mine was similarly shredded, and moisture oozed, so we’d definitely at least skinned our arms when we’d crashed and slid down the wall.

I retrieved the first aid kit from the pack and carefully opened it. There wasn’t much more than saline, antiseptic, painkillers, and bandages, but that was all we immediately needed. Darby could heal us both easily enough once we got home, although if we kept injuring ourselves every time we went out, she’d start insisting on coming with us.

I raised my gaze to my brother’s. “Anything broken?”

Nothinglookedbroken, but given his tendency to ignore such things and just carry on, one had to ask.

“No.” He raised a grimy hand and pushed the hair from my face. “You’ve a nasty gash on your cheek.”

“You can deal with that once I deal with yours.”

“What about the sword?”

“The mage snatched it away when we hit the wall.”

He swore. Violently. “Cynwrig and Mathi?”

I shrugged. “I sent air chasing after them in an effort to cushion their fall. Hopefully, it worked.”

Hopefully, they hadn’t become little more than two bloody stains on the landscape.

A sick sense of doom rose at that thought, but I pushed it back down. They’d be okay. Theyhadto be okay. I didn’t want to lose anyone else I cared about...

Lugh grimaced and dragged his phone out. “I’ll see if I can contact them.”

While he tried, I took care of the cut on his cheek. It was deeper than it looked and full of grit, some of which I just couldn’t remove. I applied antiseptic and a sticky plaster, then said, “Any luck?”

“No, although whether that’s because we’re underground or there’s simply no signal in this area, I couldn’t say.”

“What do the little signal bars say?”

He squinted at the screen. “Can’t say. There’s too much damage to the phone’s face.”

I dragged mine out of my pocket and was greeted by a similarly smashed screen. Face recognition wasn’t working, which could have simply been a matter of there not being enough light rather than a result of the smashed screen, so I keyed in the code. It, at least, worked. The signal strength indicator on the home screen wasn’t showing anything, but I nevertheless attempted to make a call. There was no dial tone, no connection. The phone might still be functioning, but its ability to connect to the network’s cell towers had been broken.

Which would have been bad news had one of us been seriously injured. The best we could have done was run down to one the houses further down the hill for help—and to be honest, I’d have had serious doubts about the safety of such an action, given we had no idea if the Looisearch remained in the area. Just because the mage had apparently fled on the wind didn’t mean the rest of them had.

Presuming there was a “rest of them,” of course.

“There’s one more thing I can try.”

I tugged the Eye out from under my clothing and wrapped my fingers around it, pressing its cage hard into the palm of my hand so that the stone met skin. Then I closed my eyes and envisioned the two men, trying to get some sense of them. Energy stirred through the Eye’s dark heart, and I had a sense of life, though it was very distant.

“Anything?” Lugh said.

“They live. More than that I can’t say.”

“At least that’s something.”

Somethingwasn’tall that comforting when they could still be broken and bloodied. Once again, I pushed the thought away and handed Lugh the first aid kit and the water. While he’d stoically borne the discomfort of getting patched up, I didnot.

When he’d finished torturing me, I shoved the kit away then sat back on my haunches. “Now what do we do? Retreat and regroup? I’m sure one of the houses down the hill would have a phone we could borrow. Or we could just drive to one.”

“I think our time would be better spent heading into this cave to confirm the forge exists. After that, we find the fucking ring before the Looisearch can get their grubby hands on it.”

“The problem being, they’re not actually looking for it. They’re just waiting for us to find it so they can steal it. In fact, it might be safer to simply sit on our hands and donothing.”