Page 2 of Elven Prince
No way to know if the Blackmoon Elf was busy drumming up a dark scheme to finally twist Rebecca’s arm and turn her toward his side.
No way to know if he’d turned against her entirely after the epiphany that seemed to have hit him right after they’d worked together to save Maxwell’s life.
No matter how many intel reports she pored over or how many meetings she called with Shade’s council, Rebecca still couldn’t get his final words out of her mind, even weeks later.
“This whole time… I had it all wrong.”
Despite how much she’d thought she’d known him, Rowan had still been a costly wild card for Shade from the moment he’d first turned up. She’d thought she could predict him—or even control him—but he’d proven her wrong yet again.
And now that same unpredictability made her job vastly more difficult, even if Rowan had momentarily taken himself out of the picture.
He could be literally anywhere, doing literally anything, and she wouldn’t know about it until it was staring her in the face. Or kicking her ass.
Since taking command as Shade’s new Roth-Da’al, she’d striven to do things right with the task force. To be the opposite of the commander Aldous had proven himself to be. To run this organization the way Shade deserved. To make things better both for them and for the magicals in and around Chicago.
With Rowan in the wind, Rebecca couldn’t help feeling like she’d already failed.
The knock on her office door startled her out of all of it, but only for a moment.
“Come in,” she called, looking up from the desk.
The doorknob turned with a squeak before the door slowly whispered open. Then Maxwell slipped inside, each hand clamped around a to-go cup of coffee from Bor’s refreshments table downstairs.
“I figured you haven’t had a chance to get your own yet,” he said, closing the door behind him with an elbow.
“Lucky guess.” As she looked him up and down, Rebecca hated how suspicious and even standoffish she already sounded. But she couldn’t help it.
Not anymore.
Not since she’d found that damn elven rune tattooed on the shifter’s chest two minutes after thinking she might finally let herself start to open up to him in a real way.
Fat chance of that now. Not without the answers she needed from him.
Answers Maxwell was just as likely to freely give her as she was likely to reveal her own secrets right to his face.
Maxwell crossed the office toward her desk, his brows drawn together in wary curiosity, as if gauging her mood for the morning.
Before that kiss in Zida’s infirmary, she would have believed that Maxwellcouldgauge her mood at any time, no matter the situation, just like she’d been able to gauge his.
But now all that was covered up by multiple new layers of secrecy and discretion—of mysteries and unanswered connections that could prove to either be nothing, safe, and a massive relief, or that could end up pushing Rebecca over the edge and into the deepest chasm she’d faced since her decision to leave her old life with a Bloodshadow Court and Agn’a Tha’ros behind. Forever.
But unlike wars, apparently, forever did have an end. This one had come too soon.
Maxwell stopped in front of the desk and extended her coffee toward her.
“Did you—”
“Add more sugar in one cup of coffee than a person ought to logically consume in a week, just like every morning?” Maxwell dipped his head. “Of course I did.”
At least he was still making jokes. Or attempting to. That remained an important milestone in the path to loosening up her Head of Security enough to not feel constantly questioned and scrutinized by him, but they hadn’t fully gotten there yet.
Now Rebecca had returned to scrutinizinghisevery word and possible intention beneath the constantly dizzying haze of that tingling warmth connecting them—like a cord of hungrily rippling flame—every time they were in the same room.
That was also harder than ever to ignore now too, but she did her best.
“Thanks,” she said flatly, gazing up into the shifter’s silver eyes flickering and pulsing with their own internal glow beneath the overhead office lights.
Rebecca reached for the to-go cup in his hand, just like every other morning for the last several weeks.
