“Was it in this room?” I glanced around. Between the poisonous vines and the ward, it seemed impossible that someone could have slipped in here without warning the fae.

“No,” he said. “I brought you here to show you that I have many weapons in here that are much more powerful than Hrunting. If whoever had stolen the sword had targeted me specifically, they should have found a way to get in here.”

This was torture. My mind was immediately on the ancient weapons behind him. Which ones were the most powerful, and why? I opened my mouth to ask, and a feather tickled my cheek again.

Right. I needed to stay on task.

“So where was Hrunting when it was stolen?”

Aubrey led us out of the weapons room and to a large office a few doors down. A white vine curled toward me as I stepped through the doorway, and I froze.

“She’s not poisonous. Just curious.” He gave the vine a hard stare and it slowly curled back along the top of the doorway.

He gestured to the desk which took up half the room. More plants and flowers dotted the desk, the scent heady and Vas sneezed again behind us.

“The blade was on my desk,” Aubrey said.

I closed my eyes briefly and he let out a humorless laugh. “Yes, I know, it was stupid. However, I had just removed the blade from my personal collection because my king had asked for it to be brought back to him.”

There was only one reason why the seelie king would want this sword. “He’s going after the sword that killed Grendel’s mother.”

Aubrey shrugged. “I had arranged for a friend to take Hrunting to our realm. He was due to arrive that day.” For the first time, Aubrey’s perfect face turned cold. Lavender eyes burned with retribution. “Someone had either been watching for that exact moment, or it was a crime of opportunity.”

“Who has access to this office?”

He shrugged. “Myself and my staff.”

“I’ll need the names of your staff.”

“My staff are above reproach. We are a family.”

Uh-huh. “Any humans in that family?”

He frowned. “I’m unsure what you’re asking.”

“You’ve heard about the other missing artifacts,” Vas said. He sneezed again and I had a feeling he was attempting to hurry this along so he could get out into the fresh air.

“I have. You believe they’re connected?”

I shrugged. “Mariam does. It seems a little too convenient that three artifacts— that we know of— have gone missing within the same couple of weeks.”

“That is too convenient. Mariam didn’t tell me her suspicions when we spoke.”

She was likely covering her ass. Whoops, sorry, Mariam. “When I asked for a list of people who had access to her office, she left the human cleaning company off the list.”