Gareth was still sitting at the table, staring broodingly at his third cup of coffee, when the French doors were flung open and Bryce strode in, dumping an armful of rolled-up charts and mysterious equipment on the table.

Niall lurked behind him, hovering in the doorway, head down. Gareth averted his gaze, staring at the coffee cup again.

“Nice shiner,” Bryce said.

“Thanks. Sorry you weren’t the one to give it to me?”

Bryce shrugged. “We’re past that now.”

Niall gave a low-voiced curse and crowded past Bryce’s shoulder. “What happened to you?”

Gareth regarded him, forcing his face to remain impassive. “I ran into a door.”

“Gareth—”

“It’s none of your business, Niall.”

Niall backed off, frowning, to stand in the corner of the dining room, as if he were waiting for the best opportunity to bolt. He’s so good at choosing his entrances and exits. He’s the one who should have been a performer. Oh wait. He was one. The best Gareth had ever seen.

He fooled me completely.

David bustled in from the other room, pulling on a gray blazer over a fresh dress shirt, one of his signature bow ties already in place. “Bryce? Is something the matter?”

Bryce took a giant breath, and Gareth tensed, waiting for the bad news. But although Bryce didn’t smile, he didn’t look overly grim either. “No. We’re not sure, but we think we may know how to get into Faerie.”

David’s eyes widened. “Truly?” He flung himself at Bryce, hugging him around the waist. Bryce patted David awkwardly on the back. While David was as impulsively affectionate as a kitten, Gareth had noticed that Bryce seemed uncomfortable with physical contact with anyone—other than Mal presumably. And I don’t want to think about the kind of contact they get up to. David stepped back, swiping a hand under his eyes. “I’m so— Wait. You said we might have a way? Not for certain?”

“Frankly, it’s kind of a long shot.” Bryce nodded at Niall. “He’ll fill you in while I get the gear together.”

“Gear?” David blinked. “We need gear?”

Niall stepped forward. “Gear and a good couple of hours of travel, according to Bryce.”

“But . . . but I can’t go. I have a session with the vampire council and if I miss it—”

This time, Bryce initiated contact, gripping David’s shoulder. “It’s okay. You need to stay here anyway. In case—” He swallowed. “In case they come back. Besides . . .” He let go and stepped back. “I’m just the driver. I can’t make the trip any more than you could. It’s a fae-only thing.”

“Oh. Okay. I guess. But—”

“We need to move quickly,” Niall said. “I’ll tell you what I know while Bryce gets ready.”

After sharing an odd glance with Niall, Bryce left.

“So,” Gareth drawled. “Leaving again? Seems to be a specialty of yours.” He doesn’t need my help after all. Gareth wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed.

“Make up your mind, boyo. You either hate him or you don’t. We vote for hate—not like he doesn’t deserve it.”

For once, the Voices might have a point. Unfortunately, two centuries of emotional commitment wasn’t that easy to slough off.

Niall’s lips quirked in an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Gareth had intended to keep his voice modulated, but that came out as a near shout. “If that’s all you—”

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice gentle, “because you have to come too.”

Gareth sucked in a breath. Go back to Faerie? Face his mistakes? Face his brothers? Let them know how bloody wrong he’d been all this time? Face the Queen?

Worse, spend an unspecified amount of time with Niall? Everything else would be child’s play compared to that.

“No.”

Niall straightened his shoulders. “This isn’t about you and me anymore, Gareth. This is about Faerie. About my brother and yours. About all Celtic fae, greater and lesser. If you’re the man I’ve always believed you to be, you don’t have a choice.”

The anger shrieked through Gareth like a banshee wind. What of the man I’ve always believed you to be? Where is he? Gareth knew the answer: nowhere, because he’d never existed. But, Goddess, I want him back.

David tugged at Niall’s sleeve. “So where are you going?”

“It’s a place near what Bryce says is the Deschutes National Forest.”

“Near Bend?” David’s eyebrows bunched in confusion. “But I thought we’d determined that all the gateways are shut down.”

“It’s not a gateway. Precisely.”

“But it leads to Faerie, right?”

“More or less.”

David squinted at Niall. “More more or more less?”

Niall shrugged. “We won’t know until we get there. But what other choice do we have?”

David sighed and dropped into the chair next to Gareth. “You’re right. I just wish things were a little more concrete.”

Gareth placed his hand over his brother-in-law’s. “Concrete? Weren’t you the one who was urging more flexibility just now?”

David scowled. “Yes, and I’m not sorry for it. But this . . . What is it exactly, Niall?”

Niall rubbed the back of his neck, not meeting their eyes. “Well . . . It’s what you might call a cave. A cavern. An underground . . . thing.”

Gareth sat back, arms crossed, trying very hard to keep his vow not to speak to Niall. He needn’t have worried, not with David around.

“An underground thing?” David snorted. “Well, that’s comforting. Could you be a little more specific? And maybe a little more optimistic? Lie to me, for goodness’ sake. I need something to get me through the next few hours.”

Niall sank into the chair across from David. Still not brave enough to face me. Which was good. Which was spectacular, because Gareth’s emotions were seesawing like a bad soprano. “It’s a path. To the underworld.”

David goggled. “The underworld? You mean like . . . like hell?”

Gareth took David’s hand. “The underworld is just that—under the world. It’s another realm, like Faerie in a way, but it’s more . . . pervasive. And fluid.”

“Great. Now things are flexible. In hell.” David blinked. “Wait. Is that why you always swear by ‘hells’ instead of just ‘hell’? Because there’s more than one?”

Gareth nodded. “Every culture has their own.”

“Which one is true?”

Niall chuckled. “They all are.”

David slid down in his chair until his head rested on the top rung of its back. “Great.”

“Dafydd bach, the underworld—or underworlds, I suppose I should say—aren’t necessarily a place of torment or punishment.” Gareth caught Niall’s startled jerk out of the corner of his eye, but didn’t let it distract him. “They’re just another place. What happens there, who lives there, what’s located there, depends on the culture and mythology.”

“So what do you expect to find at the end of your path, Niall?”

Niall met David’s gaze somberly. “The Flaming Abyss, and the forge of Govannon. And beyond that, the stairway into the dungeons under the Unseelie Keep.”

David’s lips parted in a soundless O. “And the entrance to hell is in the Deschutes National Forest? Seriously? How do you know that?”

“I’ve been there once before, so I have an affinity for it. Bryce was able to cast a spell to pinpoint the precise spot. He’ll drive us, but he can’t go with us.”

“Why not?” David smacked the table with both hands. “I’d think the more people to help, the better. And Bryce is a druid.”

“Exactly. The problem is with the Convergence spell, and no non-fae can be inside—especially a druid.”

“Why druids especially?”

“Because they helped make Faerie from the outside. They can’t be inside when it’s remade or they risk—”

“The balance. Yeah yeah yeah. I get it.”

“That’s not all.” Niall shot Gareth a glance—apology? Shame? Sorrow? He couldn’t tell, but there was nothing in it of Niall’s old confidence. “Bryce believes that the spell hinges on me or Gareth, possibly both. And Gareth may be the only one with the power to fix it without killing us—and everyone else too.”

“That does it then.” David turned to Gareth and extended his palm. “Give me your hand.”

“Uh . . . okay.” Gareth laid his hand on David’s and immediately felt the warmth of achubydd healing surrounding his eye, soothing the throbbing flesh until it felt as good as new. Gareth touched his cheek with tentative fingers. “Thank you, bach, but you didn’t have to do that.”

“Yes I did. If you’re going to hell so you can rescue my husband, the least I can do is make sure you don’t feel worse before you go than after you get there.”

Gareth stared out the window as Bryce navigated the unpaved roads through the forest, still thinking about what Niall and Bryce had told him on the way. The conclusions they’d drawn about the spell were chilling enough that Gareth had managed to put aside his own personal issues. At least for now.

“Are you sure this is the place?” Bryce slowed the LEAF to a stop. “Not much around here.”

“I’m sure.” Niall pointed out the windshield. “I can feel it, now that we’re close enough.”

Bryce pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the car. “Are you sure you don’t want me to wait here for you?”

“No point.” From where Gareth was sitting in the back seat, he could see Niall pat the pockets of the tactical vest he’d borrowed from Bryce. “Assuming we can make it into the central cavern, where the path leads down to the forge, we won’t come back this way. With luck, we’ll be heading on into Faerie from there.”

“You’ve got the contact stones?”

Niall patted his chest pocket. “Right here.”

“Remember, the quartz is for when you make it into the cavern. The agate—”

“If we need a pickup. I’ve got it.”

“All right.”

They all climbed out of the car. Bryce opened the hatch and handed them their ridiculous helmets with the flashlights embedded on the front. Gareth didn’t want to admit that he was uneasy about the first part of the descent. The underworld—assuming they managed to get that far—wasn’t the issue. It couldn’t be worse than Caer Ochren after all.

But they’d be going somewhere that had never known sunlight, the weight of the earth pressing down on them. After his years in Caer Ochren, never seeing the sky, he’d developed claustrophobia.

His quarters, carelessly arranged by Arawn, had been more or less comfortable, but the damned place was constructed out of bones—the walls, the floors, the ceilings—and had no windows. No matter how many rugs he’d put down on the floor, how many hangings he’d draped on the walls, he’d still known they were there. And the Voices never let him forget.

The cave couldn’t be as bad as that, surely. And at least the Voices were still silent. He halfway wished Bryce were coming with him. Hells, he halfway wished for the Voices—because he still had no desire to speak to Niall.

He followed the two of them as they picked their way across a field dotted with scrub oak. Niall stopped in the middle.

“Here.”

Gareth looked around, bewildered. The field was flat, no cave in sight. “I don’t see—” Niall pointed down, at a hole in the ground barely wider than his shoulders, and the hair on Gareth’s neck rose along with the panic in his belly. “That?”

“It opens up once you get inside.”

Gareth swallowed. “Comforting.”

Bryce handed them several energy bars and a canteen each. “You have to be careful not to contaminate the ecosystems of these caves. Don’t leave anything behind. Don’t mar any surfaces. Don’t—”

Niall slung the canteen over his shoulder. “Believe me, Bryce, we know how to take care of the environment.” He lifted an eyebrow at Gareth. “After all, we’re both fae.”