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“Not if she’s dead,” Lugh said. “The restrictions end when life is extinguished, remember.”

“Yes, but why would anyone kill her there and stuff her body elsewhere?” That made no sense at all. “What about the woman who was renting a room? The one installed by the Looisearch to keep an eye on her?”

“She’s also disappeared.”

“From the house, or more permanently?”

“They suspect the latter, as her stuff remains in the bedroom and a search at her listed home address showed no sign of recent use.”

“So no one came to retrieve her after we’d given Riayn the red knife?”

“No.”

Meaning maybe I’d donetoogood a job of restricting her movements. But surely if that were the case, someone would have contacted me about it. Or had she simply been forgotten in the rush to restrain and punish my aunt?

The waiter reappeared with our drinks. I smiled my thanks and then said, “I take it Mathididfind something about the village, then?”

Lugh nodded. “Annihilation.”

“Annwfyn?” Cynwrig asked.

Lugh took a sip of his coffee, then winced and reached for the sugar. “Much of the report he managed to access was redacted, so we may never know with absolute certainty, but apparently there were only three survivors—a seven-year-old who had gone down into a cellar, a cop who was out hunting for a lost hiker, and a teenager who was found unconscious in an underground cold store.”

“And how much are we betting one of them now leads the Looisearch charge to destroy the Annwfyn?” I said.

“I would think the odds onthatwould be extremely short,” Lugh said. “Their names were amongst the stuff that’s been redacted, but Mathi’s put in a request for further information.”

“If he sends me the file number, I’ll chase it further up the line,” Cynwrig said. “I know he’s accessing his father’s computer, but my father will have more pull when it comes to classified government files.”

A suggestion Mathi was unlikely to appreciate simply because of who was making it. I poured my tea then added some milk. “Why was a media embargo placed on the attack though? It’s not like entire villages haven’t been destroyed by Annwfyn before.”

In fact, before electric lighting became a reality inallcities, towns, and villages, they were a somewhat regular occurrence.

“From what Mathi could glean, it happened the same day they were testing something called Awbrey’s Key on a gate that had been inactive for centuries.”

My eyebrows rose. “What the hell is Awbrey’s Key?”

“It was supposedly a means of permanently locking the dark gates,” Cynwrig said, voice heavy. “Keelan Awbrey—who touted himself as the world’s greatest auditory mage—came up with the idea.”

“Supposedly?”

“The man was a scamster and his proposal dangerous. It was rejected by both the House of Lordsandparliament.”

“So why do you know about Awbrey and the key, but can’t remember the annihilation?”

“Because after the rejection of his proposal, my father tracked Awbrey down and threatened to personally shove him through the nearest dark gate if he ever made and used his key.”

“And yet he obviouslydidget approval from someone in government to do just that,” I said.

“Obviously,” Cynwrig said. “But it was never officially sanctioned, as it would have gone to the House for review. It never did.”

“So why was your father against the key?” Lugh asked. “Given the toll monitoring and closing the gates continues to have on your people, why was your father so reluctant to take a chance on the project?”

“Because Awbrey believed that to permanently close the gates we simply had to choose the correct sequence of sounds and vibrations. He was convinced this is how the Annwfyn open them, so it was therefore reasonable for us to close them in the same manner.”

“How do you know he wasn’t right?”

His gaze sliced to mine. There was anger in those smokey depths. Old anger, and older frustration. “You mean aside from the fact his theory was tested in Pynwffynnon, to the detriment of that entire village?”