“You have Agrona’s Sword?” Lugh said, somewhat incredulously.

“Well, of course not,” Alinda said. “That thing was hidden eons ago, and with damn good reason. They don’t call it the Sword of Darkness for nothing, you know.”

“We’re aware it can give the user control over—”

“Night is the least of its abilities. It’s a beacon for all the evil that lives within darkness.”

“Does that mean it calls to the Annwfyn?” Lugh asked.

“They can sense its activation, yes, so be wary when you touch it.” Her voice was grim. “But it also calls to those who worship the darker gods. Why do you think it was hidden so completely?”

“Was it ever a part of the Tenebrous hoard? We’re aware the Myrkálfar had both the Crown of Shadows and the Ring of Ruin.”

“They did at one point unite the Claws, but an ancestor managed to relieve them of all three items and successfully re-hid each. There are few in this world that can wield the sword, let alone the Claws united.”

“Rostin De Clari managed to use the sword quite successfully, from everything we’ve read.”

“She was a mage of great power, and yet even she paid the ultimate price.”

Lugh frowned. “How? Didn’t she live to a grand old age?”

“To the extent anyone ever did back in those days, yes. But her soul had been stained by the long years of using the sword, and it was claimed on her death by the stygian.”

In human legend, the stygian was the river presided over by the boatman Charon, who’d ferry across the souls of the dead on their way to the underworld of Hades. In truth, there was no river, and the stygian were the souls of those charged to bring fresh fodder to whatever dark god they served.

“It is a fate that applies to all her bloodline,” Alinda continued, “and the reason I will never have children. This evil destiny ends with me.”

And she certainly didn’t want sympathy for a decision she’d willingly and knowingly made. Her expression made that very obvious.

“If you’re not holding the sword, do you know where it is?” Lugh asked.

“No, but I can gift you with the puzzle of its location—beyond the steps of the gods, in Tywyll’s temple, at the altar of darkness.”

“And here I was thinking it was only in Hollywood movies that important relics can only be found by solving a location puzzle.”

Lugh’s voice was dry, and her gaze shot to his. “If one does not want every power-hungry fae or mage imaginable to seek and claim dangerously powerful items, it’s only sensible to make finding them as difficult as possible. Which is why there’s an added caveat on the puzzle—only a pixie gifted with prescience can unlock the final door.”

“Meaning an Aodhán, because there’s no other pixie line gifted with that talent.”

She smiled, but there was something oddly unsettling about her gaze all of a sudden. It was almost as if the soul that now shone out of it was that of someone not of this world but the other. Someone who’d been dead for a very long time. I shivered and resisted the urge to move the chair a little farther away from the bed and the presence who now shared Alinda’s body.