Once I’d made the second scarf into a sling and secured it around the back of his neck, I rose and offered him a hand. He gripped it with his good hand and allowed me to pull him carefully to his feet. Fresh droplets of sweat trickled down his cheeks, but he didn’t say anything, despite the pain I could see in his eyes.

“Onward and upward, sister dearest,” he said. “And this time, you and your knives had better lead.”

I drew them both, then turned and carefully moved back up the hill. When I neared the area where the explosion had happened, I paused and scanned the area. Tiny threads of fractured magic still played about on the breeze, but I had no sense of further threat, and the knives weren’t reacting.

I walked on, carefully picking my way through the wild undergrowth. The further up the hill we went, the deeper the developing fog became and the thicker the brambles grew. They alone seemed to thrive in the foulness of this place, and I suspected that was deliberate. Thick patches of brambles certainly provided a barrier few people would venture into, and it meant the spellcasters wouldn’t need to leave as many traps.

There was a path through the brambles, but the higher we climbed, the narrower it got. Thankfully, the knives were razor sharp, and I could hack away the worst of the thorny tentacles before they snagged us too badly.

Then life began to pulse down the knives’ fullers, the color a deep, threatening purple.

Dark magic lay ahead.

I stopped and once again scanned the area. It was hard to see anything thanks to the blanket of fog, but I had a weird feeling we were close to the hill’s top even if we couldn’t see it.

I glanced back at Lugh. “There’s magic ahead. You’d better stay here.”

He hesitated and then nodded—something I could see only thanks to the knives’ eerie glow. “Try not to get yourself blown up.”

“You just don’t want the odious task of picking up your new coworker at the airport,” I said lightly.

He half laughed. “I’d rather pick him up than pieces of you, so be careful.”

“I have a dinner date and the promise of hot sex waiting for me tonight. I’m not going to let any kind of spell get in the way of that, trust me.”

And I crossed all things that I hadn’t just tempted fate. Like all the old goddesses, she really did enjoy fouling expectations and plans.

I continued on cautiously, feeling more than a little exposed without my brother’s looming presence behind me. The steady pulse of light down the blades echoed through their hilts, giving me an odd sort of feel for the spell’s location. The closer we got, the more the blade’s purplish glow spread, pushing the fog back and allowing me to see a little of what lay ahead.

It wasn’t brambles. It was a barrier. A magical barrier. One that pulsed with foulness. I stopped and said, “I might have found the source for the poisoning of this wood.”