Elven Lies (Court of Rebellion #3)

1. Chapter 1

1

R ebecca Bloodshadow couldn’t remember the last time she’d eagerly counted down the seconds for an official and desperately grave meeting to begin.

Sitting behind the desk in her second-story office at Shade headquarters this morning, however, counting down the seconds was all she could do. The worst part was, she had no idea how this was going to pan out.

Fiddling with the small carved figurine of cream-colored stone, twirling it between her clammy fingers between brief interludes of dropping it onto the surface of her desk with a startlingly loud clatter, she couldn’t help glancing at the clock on the wall above the door.

It had to be running five minutes late, right?

When her knee began its bouncing tempo beneath her desk, matching the rhythm of the figurine she anxiously twirled between her fingers, she doubted she would last another five seconds before the growing urgency compelled her to get up and do something.

The only thing keeping her in her seat was the knowledge of everything at stake for Shade—for its individual members; for her, its commander; and for the injured operative who’d been abducted from within Shade’s headquarters compound, right under all their noses.

Every cell in Rebecca’s body urged her to move, to leap into action the way she almost had last night. But if she wanted to continue her track record of being the kind of leader this privatized magical task force in Chicago needed, she couldn’t keep trying to do this on her own.

Everyone else would recognize the importance of a decision like this. At this point, Rebecca figured she had a fifty-fifty chance of rallying the others to see this situation for what it was, the way she did. Even with so much riding on the line.

The next two minutes felt like two decades until a physical compulsion to move overcame her hard-earned patience. With a hurried sigh, she pushed her office chair away from the desk, meaning to stand. But the knock on the office door made her reconsider.

Before she could respond, the door opened anyway, and Maxwell Hannigan took two steps into her office.

“Well,” Rebecca said with a wry smile as she settled back into her chair, hoping it made her look as calm and collected as she didn’t feel. “If no one else in this place prioritizes being on time, I can always count on my Head of Security.”

The shifter’s perpetual scowl remained unchanged as he studied her with those glowing silver eyes.

“They’re on their way,” he told her, his voice gruff and all business. Then he glanced over his shoulder. The stiffness of his composure softened before he met Rebecca’s gaze again and took two more hesitant steps inside. “I wanted to check on you first before we started.”

Then his silver eyes softened as well, pinning Rebecca to her seat with their intensity while the warm, ever-present weight of Maxwell’s presence and his gaze on her rippled through Rebecca’s limbs like the opposite of a cold shudder.

She forced herself to ignore the odd sensation, like an inexplicable chemical reaction between them. That was particularly difficult to do when they were alone.

Now just wasn’t the time to let herself get caught up in whatever this was this was developing between her and her Head of Security.

Rebecca nodded and tore her gaze away from his so she could focus. “I’m fine. As fine as I can be, given the circumstances.”

“Sure,” Maxwell replied with a shallow dip of his head, his voice gentled by their privacy. “Of course, whatever happens here this morning, I want you to know—”

Approaching footsteps echoing down the hall cut him off. Maxwell stepped aside and turned toward the open door just as the warlock from his personally assembled security team appeared in the doorway. He gritted the first to arrive with a nod. “Whit.”

Whit stepped hesitantly into Rebecca’s office, glanced around, then cleared his throat. “I’m not early, am I?”

“You’re late, actually,” Maxwell grumbled.

“Just like everyone else,” Rebecca added and gestured toward the table she’d had brought to her office an hour ago just for this. “Take a seat, Whit. As soon as everyone’s here, we’ll get started.”

“Sure.” Whit nodded, shot Maxwell another questioning glance, then approached the empty table before pulling out a chair for himself and taking a seat. “Roth-Da’al.”

Rebecca tried not to grimace at his use of the terribly formal old-world title she also held as Commander of Shade. She’d hoped the members of her task force would eventually discontinue its use, but apparently, Maxwell had set a trend by refusing to call her anything else since the position was thrust upon her only a few weeks ago.

Now, it seemed every magical in the building had decided to take a page out of the shifter’s book. Almost every magical.

With Whit now waiting patiently in his seat for the meeting to begin, her office fell tensely silent again.

Her and Maxwell’s privacy had been shattered, meaning whatever he’d intended to tell her before Whit’s arrival would have to wait.

The same did not apply, however, to the prickling tingle roaming across Rebecca’s face like a physical touch as Maxwell studied her. She knew he was studying her, because she could feel it.

She always felt it.

That made it even more difficult to act natural for the agonizingly long seconds remaining before the others Maxwell had had called up here on her behalf finally made an appearance.

Bor arrived next, his shuffling gait belying his surprising strength and virility for such an old giveldi. The expression on his wrinkled face, marred on one side by the enormous and impressively obvious scar stretching from one eyebrow down to the hard line of his opposite jaw, made him look even more disgruntled and imposing than usual.

Including when he stopped at the table in front of an empty chair and dumped an armload of plastic-wrapped packages onto the wooden surface. “Brought some snacks.”

“Nice.” Whit reached forward to grab one and received an echoing smack on the back of his hand from Shade’s resident cook and, in this case, valued elder.

“You wait till it’s time, just like everyone else,” Bor grumbled.

Scowling at the old giveldi, Whit leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “I was here before you.”

“Your point?” Bor pulled out a chair from under the table and lowered himself into it with a grunt.

Rebecca could have sworn she heard the cook’s bones creaking at the movement.

Whit refused to look at him and shrugged. “I’m just saying…”

Then Rebecca made the unconscious mistake of glancing at Maxwell again, still standing beside the open office door.

Of course he was still watching her, and of course that tingling pressure of his gaze only intensified when their eyes locked and his widened a little with the unspoken message Rebecca instantly understood: We’ll get there eventually .

At least, that was what she imagined the shifter’s expression portrayed, though she had to remind herself she couldn’t read his mind. Even when it was starting to feel like she could…

The next Shade member to hurdle through the office door appeared as a disheveled mess of brown hair sticking up in all directions and wide, reddened eyes rimmed with the darkened shadows of sleeplessness.

This was one of the few times Rebecca had seen Leonard in a set of baggy, colorless gray sweats instead of his usual jeans and t-shirt, not to mention the absence of the thick brown leather trench coat he wore at all times like a grown mage’s security blanket.

She couldn’t judge him for the marginally camouflaged stains peppering his sweatshirt, either. If anyone had been personally affected by the most recent blow to Shade’s ranks and its security, it was Leonard.

He stumbled into her office, skittish and looking terribly confused even as he met Rebecca’s gaze and headed toward the table without being prompted. “Please tell me you have a plan, Knox. That you’re already doing something. Give me that much, at least.”

The desperate anguish behind the mage’s eyes tugged at her, but she couldn’t let his overflowing emotions affect her responsibilities or what she knew still needed to be done.

“That’s what this meeting is for,” she told him with another nod toward the table. “For now, just take a seat.”

Leonard’s chair scraped noisily across the wooden floor as he whisked it out from under the table, his gaze darting from one magical’s face around the room to the next. “Seriously. What else are we waiting for, exactly?”

At that moment, Rick stumbled through the door, catching his breath and righting himself as if he’d broken some unspoken rule by not entering as his best self.

Maxwell eyed him as the blackhorn entered the room, then replied, “Just one more.”

“Let me guess.” Zida’s coarse voice spilled into the office a second before the old healer appeared in the open doorway. Her beady black eyes scanned Rebecca’s office and narrowed with heightening scrutiny. “That would be me , huh? It’s one emergency after the other, here, there, and everywhere, and y’all still act like I can be in fifty places at once. Move it, shifter. You’re in my way.”

She slapped Maxwell’s arm with the back of one gnarled, claw-shaped hand before he stepped quickly aside to give her more room. Then Zida bustled across the office, glowering at everyone, including Rebecca. “I’m here, all right? You called, and I answered, yada yada… Just don’t come whining to me if someone needs a healer and I’m stuck up here with you when that happens.”

Once the daraku took her seat with the other four at the table, Maxwell pulled the office door shut and locked it with a soft click. “That’s everyone.”

“Fantastic,” Zida declared dryly. “The only thing we need now is an explanation. Do any of you sorry saps know what this is about? Because I have no idea what I’m even doing here. Unless our Roth-Da’al got herself into more trouble and now wants a quick fix and an emergency exit. Again .”

Her dark gaze flickered toward Rebecca.

Any other time, under any other circumstances, Rebecca would have laughed at the healer’s foul mood, however expected. But nothing about this meeting or its purpose was a laughing matter.

It was hard enough to conjure even a small, weak smile, so she gave up trying.

Whit frowned at the healer and leaned forward over the table toward her. “Emergency exit? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Rebecca cleared her throat. “This isn’t about me, anyway. So ignore the comment, and let’s move right past it.”

With a disgruntled huff, Zida slumped back in her chair and folded her arms.

That definitely looked like a haughty smirk on the healer’s wrinkled, puckered lips, but it was hard to tell with Zida.

Rebecca didn’t think describing her short stint of self-medicating with Zida’s vials of instant energy before being voted in as Shade’s new commander was an appropriate way to open this meeting.

She did, however, wait for Maxwell to take his seat at the table before she got started. Now that she had everyone here, gathered in one place and all of them staring expectantly at her, it was surprisingly easier to kick things off than she’d expected.

“There’s no right way to go about this,” she said, “so I’ll just dive in. As you already know, late last night, while Hannigan and I led an emergency rescue team to recover our captured operatives held at that abandoned theme park, someone managed to infiltrate this compound and our active security systems before abducting Nyx from the infirmary.”

Rebecca’s gaze drifted all on its own toward Maxwell again. She didn’t know why, and she wasn’t looking for anything from him. But when he looked up at her from a worn spot on the table and offered the barest hint of a nearly invisible nod, it felt like he approved of her decision to start the meeting this way. Like he was encouraging her to keep going.

She had to keep going, because whatever happened next as a result of this meeting, there would be no turning back for any of them.

She glanced around the table one more time, noting the range of expressions from apathetic boredom to concern bordering on panicked hysteria. No one would like this next part, but it had to be done first, before they got too far ahead of themselves.

Swallowing thickly, Rebecca found herself gazing at the cream-colored stone figurine she’d set on the corner of her desk, then instantly averted her gaze. “And I know who did it.”