“Always appreciated.” I plucked one of the hash browns from the bag and munched on it happily. “Did you have any success searching for the other two things Alinda mentioned in her vision after you dropped Darby home last night?”

“If that’s your roundabout way of asking if I was invited in to stay the night, then no, I was not.”

I’d have to commend Darby on her restraint the next time I saw her. “It actually wasn’t, you know.”

He cast me a wry glance. “Most people would believe the solemnity with which that was said, but I’ve spent my life listening to that very tone and know far better.”

I smiled and plucked the other hash brown free. I’d had enough time to make myself a bacon butty before Lugh had picked me up, but I was still as hungry as hell. A lingering aftereffect of calling down the lightning, I suspected.

“Your private life is your own business, brother. You don’t need to be telling me anything if you don’t want to.”

He snorted. “Since when has that been a working rule? Besides, you two are as thick as thieves, and there appears to be nothing you keep from each other. I couldn’t get away with lying in this situation even if I wanted to.”

“That is very true.”

He snorted again. “A sensible man would run far, far away—”

“You have been for years. Time to give in to the inevitable and just see if it works. It may not.”

“And if it doesn’t, where does that leave you and Darby?”

“As long as you don’t break her heart—”

“What if she breaks mine?”

“I doubt that’s going to happen.”

“No relationship in history is ever one hundred percent guaranteed to succeed, Bethany.”

“I know, but I’m thinking you’re in a far more secure position heart-wise than I am with Cynwrig.”

He glanced at me. “I’d have thought that, after Mathi, you’d know better than to fall for another elf.”

“I do, and I won’t. But shit happens, you know?”

He laughed. “Let’s get this conversation back on a sensible track—I googled Nercwys Forest this morning. It’s a thriving woodland through which hikers and cyclists roam.”

“I take it that means our standing stone is off the main tracks?”

“Yes.” He glanced at me. “What are you going to do if it is the right stone?”

“Alinda said we had to speak to it.”

“While there are as many theories about the purpose of standing stones as there are stars in the sky, none of them have ever mentioned the provision of wisdom or guidance.”

“But most theories center around the belief that they were religious or ceremonial meeting points, which does imply that priests or mages were involved. It’s more than possible that some of them were either communing with specific entities through them or simply using them as some kind of access point to the energy of the earth itself.”

“Manipulating the energy of the earth has never required the use of third-party devices such as stones.”