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I nodded, walked over, and lightly pressed a hand against his shoulder. “You will answer all our questions, obey whatever orders given to you by Franklyn, the paramedic, and you will not attempt to escape once I release you. Understood?”

He couldn’t nod, but his expression spoke volumes.

I released him, and he pushed into a sitting position before Franklyn could say anything. If the metal in his leg was causing any distress, it wasn’t obvious.

“They never told me there was a fucking pixie in the building. Might have asked for a higher payment if they had.”

Not knowing a pixie was involved when accepting a contract had become a theme lately. Either felons these days were dumb, or the money was so good they just shut their mouths and took the job.

As Franklyn checked our captive’s condition and began healing, Cynwrig said, “What is the name of the man who offered you the contract? How did he interact with you, and what exactly did the job involve?”

“His name is Keelakm. Don’t know his surname, and the contact number I have is for a burner phone that will have been dumped by now. He hired us to run interference while his partner destroyed the building.”

“Did he say why they wanted the building destroyed?”

“Only that a man inside killed people he cared about.”

“Did he say who inside he might have been hunting?” I asked. “Or give you the names of the people he was avenging?”

It was unlikely, but better to ask than not.

“No, though he did say the target was an elf. Light elf, I gathered, not dark.” He shrugged. “He referenced a lover at one point, and a father at another, but I didn’t ask too many questions, did I, because it’s generally better not to know the minutiae.”

“Spoken like a true thug for hire,” I muttered.

His gaze flashed to mine. “We can’t all be playthings for rich lords, you know. Some of us have to work.”

“Speak like that to her again,” Cynwrig said, in a deceptively mild tone, “and you’ll be paying a visit to the dentist to replace missing teeth.”

The stranger didn’t reply, but his face went decidedly paler. Not getting on the wrong side of a dark elf was generally a good motto to live by.

If you wanted to live for a good long time, anyway.

“Do you know anything about the stone Keelakm’s partner was using?” I asked.

“I think it was a relic of some kind. Had this weird vibe.”

“What kind of relic?”

He shrugged. “A ruby, from the look of it.”

I stared at him for a long second and then swallowed heavily. “This weird vibe it had—was it coming from a fire burning deep in the jewel’s heart?”

“Yeah, it did.”

I raised my gaze to Cynwrig’s. “It’s one of the rubies from the Shield of Hephaestus. It has to be.”

And if that were true, then we were damn lucky to be alive.

Because the Shield of Hephaestus—which was part of the Éadrom Hoard, a cache of deadly relics stolen from under the noses of the Ljósálfar elves—belonged to the Greek god of smiths, fire, and volcanoes, and his rubies gave the user the ability to control the elements of fire and earth.

That red-haired elf might have had only one ruby, but he could have destroyed the whole damn town if he’d wanted to.

Chapter

Three

“There’s been no whispers of the shield or its rubies on the black market,” Cynwrig said. “If that’s what we are dealing with, then our wielder must be linked to Gilda.”