Page 5 of Elven Prince
They’dstartedto talk about it, anyway, and probably would have had other conversations later with more comfort and ease, bit by bit.
If she hadn’t seen that fucking tattoo first.
Maxwell cleared his throat. “It isn’t just new reports and intel.”
With a good three feet between them, it still sounded like he’d spoken directly into her ear. Rebecca forced back another shiver, unable to respond.
What the hell was she supposed to say to that? Of course it wasn’t just intel reports. She could hardly focus on those as it was.
But now, a new level of suspicion colored every word between them, every shared glance, every tiny movement and breath, and she couldn’t very well talk aboutthat.
When she didn’t give in and immediately jump on his offer to share more, the shifter kept pushing. “There’s something else on your mind. Whatever it is, I hope you know it can still—”
An explosion of voices erupted down in the common room below, echoing up through her second-story office and cutting him off.
Rebecca couldn’t have been more grateful for the distraction, even as her heart skittered in her chest and another knot of growing apprehension tightened deep in her gut.
She wasn’t on the hook for addressing Maxwell’s concerns or answering his personal questions, but the roaring chorus of Shade members’ voices rising from below sounded like yet another top-priority emergency needing to be dealt with.
It sounded like the perfect distraction.
While the uproar continued without any change in intensity, Rebecca glanced over her shoulder at her Head of Security to find him staring at the far wall of windows behind her desk.
His silver gaze dropped to meet hers, and the same wordless thought passed between them:‘Better see what the hell that’s about before it grows too big to contain.’
In one swift movement, Rebecca surged out of her chair and to her feet before taking off for the far wall, feeling Maxwell close behind as his long, silent stride covered the same distance.
This was either a minor issue that could be dealt with quickly and easily, with no real threat or harm done…
Or some hazardous new threat had reached them and now demanded their immediate attention and swift, decisive action.
At this point, she really didn’t know which one was worse.
2
When Rebecca reached the wall of glass overlooking the compound’s common room and saw the surge of bodies moving as one in a partially scattered crowd all bustling toward a single focal point in the corner, her thoughts immediately turned to the worst-case scenario.
Very few things justified a turnout of the entire task force in the common room all at once, the majority of which hadn’t turned out very well for them in the past.
Was this another attack? A repeat of Hector’s assault on Shade’s headquarters complex with his homunculi? Had someone else managed to infiltrate the compound when they least expected it to carry out as much damage as possible while catching Shade unawares?
The knot in her gut solidified into a heavily sinking stone, heralding nausea and the likelihood of growing rage, when the next possibility hit her.
Had Rowan returned to Shade after his unexplained absence to continue on as if nothing had happened?
The questions and their multitude of possibilities raced through Rebecca’s mind in half a second. Then her awareness caught up to her, and she finally identified what was actually taking place down below as she Maxwell looked down over all of it.
The steadily parting wave she’d first noticed among the gathered operatives, the focal point of so much excitement, revealed itself a second later when the magicals both converged on and respectfully distanced themselves from a single individual at the center.
The chorus of shouting voices rose not in alarm or protest but in joy and proud relief across beaming smiles and attentive gazes at the individual who’d caused such an uproar.
It was Nyx.
The katari was easy enough to spot, even if she hadn’t been standing apart from most of the others—her darker-purple hair and luminous violet eyes a shade brighter than her naturally violet-hued skin unmistakable among the crowd. Though she still looked tired, a deeper purple flush darkened her cheeks as she grinned at every celebratory face gathered around her.
Even if Nyx had had the opportunity to say anything to the crowd, Rebecca and Maxwell certainly wouldn’t have heard it. But the underlying sentiment was perfectly clear.
After the katari’s harrowing experiences—being attacked in her transport convoy, barely making it back to Headquarters alive, and somehow surviving an abduction from the infirmary by Kordus Harkennr himself, or one of his agents—Nyx had spent weeks recovering in Zida’s infirmary. Now, she had now apparently been cleared to return to normal life.
