She shook her head, lancing his heart, which was already feeling like a pincushion for a legion of spear-wielding gladiators. “No. I won’t let her go, Derek. I won’t.”

He had to swallow down more arguments like jagged glass, because she broke into those painful sobs again. Her tense body sparked with energy, ready to fight to the death in a battle she knew she’d lose, because she thought she had nothing but the fight left to her.

Damn it. He pulled her back into him, struggled with her, then firmly mashed her against his chest until she went limp, cried there. Suppressing a sigh, he stroked her hair, kept stroking until she hiccupped a few times, settled down.

The plain truth of it was she was brilliant. And young, so very young. Ruby was a twenty-six-year-old woman who’d been treated like worthless chattel by her insidious mother all her life. All that intelligence and baggage rolled together, the trauma of losing a child all by herself…. He knew she had strength— Lord and Lady, in some ways, she had more endurance and adaptability than anyone he knew. But he also knew just how fragile certain parts of her were. He honestly wasn’t sure how to go about fixing this without shattering her like blown glass.

Firming his jaw, he lifted his head at last, cupping her chin so she had to turn her head, look up and back at him. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I promise I will not take any action about this yet. Not until you and I can talk this through. A lot. Okay? You have my word. But I want to see her.”

She studied him a long, long moment. It hurt, that she doubted him, but he waited her out. “You promise. Swear to me.”

“I swear it, on my love for you and my oath as a Guardian. The two most serious commitments of my life.”

Ruby bit her lip. He recognized her struggle, had to keep silent not to reassure her further. It wasn’t just about protecting the baby. She was realizing that if he betrayed her, she wouldn’t survive that blow to her heart.

“All right. We need to go to the basement.”

THE DOOR FROM THE SHOP TO THE BASEMENT STAIRWELL was heavy steel and double dead-bolted, but that was nothing next to the magical protections on it. He had to marvel at Ruby’s skill again, because while they were multilayered, complex, they were barely noticeable until she started to unwind them, sketching symbols in the air, shimmers of heat energy collecting around her fingers she dispelled with a quick snap of her wrists.

The protections had been designed not only to distract the attention of mundane thieves, but to evade notice by magic users, no matter their level. On top of that, the protection had the strength needed to slow them down or keep them out if they did notice. Usually it was a trade-off. A magic user could cast a spell that made something of value invisible, or could pile protections on it like Fort Knox— impregnable, but highly visible. She’d managed to do both.

Throughout this world and others, Light as well as Dark Guardians had access to hidden arcane libraries, repositories of organic as well as literary sources of great knowledge, skills, how-to manuals for all the most unlikely things. When opened, those books possessed illuminated, fiery script that allowed the tomes to be read in places where no other light was allowed. And that fire would consume the reader, if he or she wasn’t worthy to be holding it.

Whether she realized it or not, Ruby was well on her way to being added to that resource list. On top of that, he imagined what she could accomplish if she was given access to those repositories. He was sure she’d be found more than worthy. There was no telling how much more she could expand the archives. She could become an invaluable aid to Guardians like himself, who were always facing new challenges to their magic.

As long as she didn’t lose her soul to Darkness and turn that knowledge on them to destroy the world. Other than that, it was a great idea.

She was quiet, tense. Though it was tempting to reach out to steady her, intuition told him to stay silent, keep his hands to himself. The truce between them was so fragile, one wrong word or sudden movement could shatter it. That sharp tongue and smart-assed attitude she used to parry with him, that could arouse, frustrate or amuse him by turns, wasn’t in evidence now. She was a strained-looking waif in the shadows, gray-green eyes luminous and intent.

As they descended, he saw the typical basement of every horror movie. Narrow, unfinished stairs, open slats for ankle grabbing by the monsters. A furnace hummed. The area was illuminated by the single bare bulb. She’d put their daughter here? Cell-like cinder-block walls and dim light, the dank smell of past floodings.

She’d preceded him down the steps after pulling the chain on the bulb. He wondered if it had ever gone out while she was down here, leaving her in utter darkness so she had to feel her way back up the stairs. At the lower level, she answered his unspoken question by pulling another chain, lighting a second dismal bulb. “This way,” she said in a monotone.

There was another door under the stairs, behind a tower of boxes, a bicycle and a stack of metal pipes impossible to move without setting up an obnoxious din. He helped her shift it all out of the way, a process that took five minutes. Five minutes of silence. As he straightened, she laid her hand on the door, closed her eyes. Her head bowed.

“You promise?” She whispered it.

“Yes.” And, Lord and Lady, please let me not regret that promise. Or worse, have to break it. Because Ruby would never forgive him. She’d trusted him once, more than she’d trusted anyone, but he wasn’t content to merely be on the top of that heap. He wanted to be the one she trusted wholly and fully at last, a treasure he could keep forever, like her heart.

She spoke a quick incantation in Greek, an interesting choice. The point usually wasn’t the words, but the focus they provided. Most times, it was possible to do the same magic in complete silence, but for a trained magic user the words provided a shortcut, a conduit. Like Harry Potter’s wand. He allowed himself a tight smile at the thought, because he was feeling the need for something to reduce the constricting pressure across his chest. It didn’t help.

A brief flash of green light under her hand, and the old-style skeleton-key lock disengaged. Tumblers whirred, and then she pulled the door open.

“Illumina,” she ordered. She deposited the tiny spout of flame from the palm of her hand onto a torch mounted in…. rock. It was a fissure, and as she led him on and downward, stopping periodically to light torches along treacherous steps rough-hewn into the stone, he smelled old Earth. Then he saw it, for the shape of the tunnel changed, the dividing point between what was carved out by man and what had been hollowed out by Nature. A place of the ancients, unaltered by human hands. A sacred space.

His brow creased. This place was not on a fault line, but he sensed the power and strength of fault-line power supporting it. “Ruby?”

She stopped, glancing up at him. She’d taken the last torch out of its sconce, was carrying it, because of course from here forward there were no brackets desecrating the walls. That paleness in her face was getting more pronounced, the farther they descended, and he knew it wasn’t just a trick of the shadows. “How is this place being powered?”

“I created veins leading from the closest fault lines, and feed their power here. A lot of small veins, so they weren’t easily noticed, and randomly scattered, so if they were noticed, it would look like their typical extensions over an area and not a targeted effect.”

She’d created a magical irrigation system, using a fault line as her water source. Though he still had no love in his heart for her mother, he was reminded again of how Fate often saw threads where others saw dead ends. She’d been neglected by her mother, an isolated child who desired her approval. Her mother had said study, become a good assistant, and to please, Ruby had thrown herself into it wholeheartedly. In driving her in that direction, Mary had helped Ruby discover her natural passion and talent, in a love of learning all things arcane. She was a fucking genius. A genius who’d thought she had no natural ability and doubted herself because her mother had taught her she wasn’t worth loving.

“How did you find this place?”

“The previous owner of the shop was elderly, and it had been in his family for several generations. He showed it to me. Said he and his cousins found it when they were little, would go down and play here, until their parents found out and padlocked the door, afraid that it wasn’t structurally sound. But it is.” She laid her hand on the wall, as if absorbing the vibrations there, a natural inclination for a magic user.

“I did a little history search about it. Though I could never find a direct reference, I think it’s been used for a variety of clandestine things. Meetings during the Revolutionary War, even a little bit of home witchcraft. A meditation group in the sixties.”

A vague smile crossed her face. “Took a lot of digging to find those references, and most of them were just implications, not really fixed to this place, but to the local area. This location has been protected, either subconsciously or intentionally. The owner himself…. When I came to look at the shop, he said he’d had very few who’d shown interest in buying. And he told me I was the first person he’d shown that door under the basement stairs, because he didn’t want word getting around that it was a feature of the place, attracting drug dealers and such. But he said he felt good things from me and if….” She paused, swallowing. “If I ever had children, he wanted me to know about it, so they wouldn’t find it first and get into trouble.”

She turned away, led him onward. They kept descending, until he was sure they were a good hundred feet belowground. When it leveled, there was a series of openings that went in different directions, some big enough for him to walk upright, some so tight his shoulders might not get through. Fortunately, she turned off toward one that allowed him to walk upright. When things crunched beneath his boots, he looked down. The glitter and scent told him, but he dropped to his heels, scooped up some of the white, grainy material. Salt. A bed of salt. Hearth magic to supplement the more complex protection renderings.