The room was chilly, and Grace rubbed her arms to keep warm. She felt a little silly in Adare’s shirt and socks, but she was well covered. “Have you ever wondered if I’m really a Key?” Mercy was a powerful Fae, and it made sense she was one of the chosen. “I mean, what if my birthmark is just that? Just a mark? I’m not enhanced in any way.” Enhanced humans, ones who could mate with immortals, had special abilities and were usually empathic, clairvoyant, or psychic.

Adare turned then, trapping her gaze. “Are you nuts? How can you say you’re not enhanced?”

“Okay,” she acknowledged. “I know we mated when I was in a coma without sex, so that has to be different somehow. But still. I don’t have any special skills.”

He shook his head. “Unbelievable.”

Her face heated, and she shuffled her stockinged feet. “Fine. Let’s change the subject. What’s your plan?”

He pointed to the screen. “Go in there, get all the information we can on how close they are to pulling Ulric home, and then blow the place up.”

Sounded simple. Crazy but simple. Adare and Benny would be far outgunned. No wonder he considered it a suicide mission. “If you die, all of that information goes with you,” she said, her chest hurting for him.

“We’ll transmit any information we can before carrying out the assault.” He sounded so resigned to dying. “Plus, there’s a chance we’ll find a cache of kidnapped enhanced women, and we can save them before destroying the place. That kind of chance makes dying worthwhile.”

“Mercy said there might be a chance Ulric will never make it home.” Apparently, a zillion years ago, Ulric had made himself invincible, and the Seven had been created to stop him. They’d violated physics to build a prison world, far from Earth, and two of the Seven, Ronan and Quade, had sacrificed themselves to guard him. But when the worlds they inhabited were destroyed, they’d returned home, once again distorting the laws of physics, which was one of the reasons the existence of the Seven was a huge-assed secret. Supposedly, Ulric would soon find his own freedom and his way back home. At least, that was how she understood it all, although it was probably more complicated. “Maybe there’s nothing to worry about.”

Adare shook his head. “We screwed up physical laws by creating those bubble worlds, and we probably goofed them up even more by letting Quade and Ronan return home. Nobody can teleport any longer—at all.” He frowned on the last.

She tilted her head. “I’d forgotten many of you used to be able to teleport. What was it like?”