I realised that he might have a point. I reached for Hugo’s hand, needing his warm, reassuring touch. ‘If any of you get hurt…’
‘We know what we’re doing,’ Becky said. ‘And we don’t need you to make our choices for us.’
I pressed my lips together until I’d composed myself. ‘I love you guys,’ I whispered.
There was an array of warm smiles in response. ‘We love you too, Daisy,’ Becky responded.
The more logical part of my brain started to take over. Fight, not flight, I told myself. That was what I needed to do. Then I corrected myself: that was whatweneeded to do.
‘I doubt Athair sent Eloise here to snoop,’ I said shakily. ‘He didn’t need to do that. He sent her here to do what you said, to separate me from you and to sow dissent between us.’
I extended my hand towards the group, acknowledging what had just happened between us, then nodded at the brownies who had resolutely turned their backs on each other. ‘He also wanted to prove that he could get to us whenever he wants. Perhaps he was hedging his bets in case I cut dinner short last night. Everything Athair does is about power and control.’
There were several nods of agreement.
‘Whether she’s under his control unwillingly or not, that brownie will describe everything she saw here to him,’ Rizwan pointed out.
Becky twisted a length of her hair in her fingertips. ‘There was nothing lying around that Eloise had access to. She won’t have learned any state secrets.’ She pointed to the enlarged photographs on display around the room. ‘She won’t have seenany of these. The ward surrounding this room was in place long before Rizwan printed those out.’
‘But she can tell Athair that this room is warded,’ Hugo muttered. ‘He’ll assume we have something to hide.’
‘And that means he’ll try to get inside the castle again,’ Mark said. ‘Either with that damned brownie or with some other poor creature he’s enslaved.’
I cleared my throat. ‘So we let him.’
Everyone turned to me. Hugo raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘Let him?’
‘We don’t secure the castle – after all, the vampires will immediately report anything we do. Wasting time by creating a ward to cover the entire castle will only confirm Athair’s suspicion that we have something to hide.’ I was warming to my subject. ‘We get rid of the ward around this room as well. Once we’ve removed all evidence of Hugo’s visit to Culcreuch, of course.’
Hugo’s anger was diminishing. He winked and gave a self-congratulatory bow.
My smile widened. ‘If Athair wants to come here, we let him. We don’t allow him to feed off our fear, not even for a second. And we wrongfoot him whenever we can while working on ways to undermine his power.’
‘That’s easier said than done, my dear,’ Miriam said mildly.
I nodded, but I wasn’t finished. ‘The message,’ I said to Hugo. ‘You understood it, or at least part of it?’
‘I think so,’ he admitted. ‘Eloise said“They let the ground keep that ancestral treasure, gold under gravel, gone to earth, as useless to men now as it ever was”.It’s fromBeowulf.’
‘The old poem?’ I asked.
‘A modern-day translation of it,’ he said. ‘It was written over a thousand years ago.’
‘Okay. Does anyone know what treasure it refers to? That’s obviously what Athair wants us to focus on.’
Every single Prime nodded; clearly it was only Hester, Otis and me who didn’t know.
‘The Staffordshire Hoard,’ Hugo explained. ‘It was dug up around fifteen years ago. It’s the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metal work ever discovered. The items were mostly military with very little magic attached, but even so it was an incredibly significant find.’
There was a faint fizz in my veins. ‘Staffordshire?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
I glanced at the photo of the enlarged map. ‘Parts of Birmingham are in Staffordshire. Where exactly was this hoard found?’
‘In a small village near Lichfield,’ Slim said. His eyes also travelled to the map.
I pointed at the marker that had been labelled number one. ‘There?’
