A small vestige of him came back in that moment. It was like fresh air moving through a sickroom. She smiled, close to tears. “No, Griffyn. You wouldn’t.”
He was brilliant to her. A bright, shining light. Excellent, without flaw, even amid his mistakes. Scarred face, sinful body, beautiful heart, he simply took her breath away.
And she had no right to it anymore.
“Is that what you needed, then?” she asked, keeping her voice carefully neutral. “To know what was underneath?”
The smile faded from his face. “Aye.”
He slid his thumb under the flipped-up edge. All three of them leaned forward. For no reason she could explain, Gwyn held her breath as he lifted the lid and revealed what was within.
“More documents,” he said hoarsely, and closed his eyes. “It’s not here.”
Alex flung himself backwards against the wall, cursing. His boots cracked small stones underfoot as he turned and paced the room. Gwyn looked between them in amazement. “What? What is the matter?”
“The third key.”
“A third key?”
“We need another key.”
Bleak conviction dulled his words, but Gwyn’s heart started beating faster. She leaned forward.
“I have a key. A little golden one.”
Griffyn’s grey eyes opened onto her, his gaze burning a path through the space between them like fire through a forest. She nodded, feeling giddy, and reached for the nondescript pouch sewn directly onto her skirts.
Every morning she performed this ritual, sewing the pouch to her skirts, ensuring the last thing her father had bequeathed to her stayed safe. Within its brown folds huddled the minuscule key her father placed in her hand on his deathbed. It was covered to both hide and protect its golden glow. For glow it did, as if burnished by the sun.
With trembling fingers, she ripped it from her skirts and dropped it into Griffyn’s calloused palm.
His eyes held hers a moment, then his fingers closed around it. He swept up the two keys already on the table, one black, one silver, and pushed them together. They joined with a satisfying click. He fitted her little gold one into the centre of them, so it created a tri-colour puzzle key. The silver key sat inside the dark exterior of gnarled iron, looking like a silver lining on the inside of a storm cloud. Her key, gold at the centre of it all, glowed like the end of a rainbow.
“God above,” Alex murmured.
“’Tis beautiful,” breathed Gwyn.
Griffyn let out a long breath.
“And now?” Gwyn asked, looking up. “What now?”
Griffyn shook his head. “I have no idea.”
She gestured to the chest, the scrolls still sitting in the hidden compartment. “What are those?”
Slowly they shifted their attention. Griffyn picked one up.
“Vellum,” he said. Expensive. But the next one he lifted shocked her into a gasp.
“Is that copper?” she murmured, her mouth going dry. “What are they?”
Griffyn’s face was a study in wonder. “Maps.”
“Maps?”
He held up a handful of vellum sheets and a few in metal that looked like bronze.
She looked at them blankly. “What kind of maps?”