Elven Lies (Court of Rebellion #3)

12. Chapter 12

12

“ K nox, hold on a second!”

Rebecca stopped in the middle of the hallway, trying to ignore Rowan’s amused stare fixed on the side of her face while Whit hurried to catch up with her. “Everything okay?”

“As far as I know.” The warlock ran a hand through his hair and caught his breath. “I just heard from Hannigan. You’re calling another meeting?”

“If Hannigan told you that, he’s doing his job,” she said. “I’m on my way up now.”

“Huh.” Whit tilted his head and frowned before scratching the side of his face. “Okay.”

“Something wrong?” Rebecca asked. Sure, the last meeting had hit a few road bumps. It was the first of its kind, after all, but she didn’t think it had been that bad.

“No.” He blinked and shook his head. “No, I just wanted to make sure. Not that I don’t trust Hannigan or anything. That’s not what I’m saying. I just… I mean… I wanted to ask… It’s a little…off-putting.”

Rebecca raised her eyebrows, studying him for signs of something having gone terribly wrong in the last twenty minutes and she’d somehow missed it. “You’re concerned about a meeting? Can I ask why?”

“I don’t know if concerned is the right word, exactly. It’s just… Well, it’s odd. I mean, as far as I know, Aldous never called meetings for anything, really.”

And the warlock on Maxwell’s security team just didn’t like change, was that it?

He wasn’t wrong, though. Aldous had done a lot of things his own way. The only meeting she remembered him calling was the private one with her—and Maxwell standing sentry, of course—in which the changeling had unsuccessfully propositioned Rebecca before assigning her a solo mission guaranteed to get her killed.

She forced herself not to laugh it off.

Whit looked seriously concerned. Then again, that was the general mood inside the compound right now, and for good reason.

“I know Aldous never called meetings,” she said. “And that’s exactly why everyone else always got screwed. I’m doing things differently.”

He gaped at her. “Yeah. I know you are.”

“Listen, Whit. I want you in on this because you’re good at what you do, and you’re usually at the helm of running intel ops when you’re not in the field. This isn’t a punishment. It’s because I value your opinion. But if I need to find someone else to fill your seat…”

“No,” he said abruptly. “No, that’s not what I meant. I guess there’s…still a lot to get used to.”

“We will get used to it,” she told him. “I’ll see you up there.”

“I gotta grab a few things, first, but yeah. I’ll be there.”

“Good.” She spun away from him as he hurried off and slipped around the next corner to head for the back staircase at the very end.

Rowan watched Whit scurry away, then jumped to attention and raced after Rebecca again, his footsteps hardly making a sound across the tile floors.

“Alone at last,” he said with a forced sigh. “So listen. I heard a few things, and I—”

“Rowan, I’ve got a lot on my mind right now. So unless this is seriously urgent and not just for you, then please, save it for later.”

“I’d say it’s seriously important,” he replied as they finally reached the stairwell’s bottom landing. “Important enough to make you and your loyal wolf-boy shoot out of here like the place was on fire.”

“What happened?”

“No, nothing happened.” Rowan spread his arms and chuckled. “I mean, not that you don’t already know about. I just wanna make sure I’ve got this right. You guys are all still talking about Harkennr, right?”

“We both know how perceptive you are.” Rebecca headed up the stairs. “Whatever it is, I’m sure you got it right. Now if you don’t mind, I really need to—”

“Get to your meeting,” he finished for her. “Yeah, I heard, and that’s what this is about. As long as you are still talking about Harkennr, right? As in Kordus Harkennr ?”

Rebecca stopped on the stairs, which gave him plenty of time to catch up to her, and sighed. “Wow. I knew Leonard was pissed, but I didn’t think he’d go around spouting off about it that quickly.”

“What? Leonard didn’t say anything.”

She finally looked directly at him for the first time and raised an eyebrow, a new foreboding tightness settling in her gut. “Then how the hell did you hear about Harkennr?”

He broke into an idiot’s grin, his hazel eyes glinting. “Through the door. When you shut me out of your last meeting.”

“Rowan…”

“What? No one said I couldn’t listen through the door.”

“Well that stops now.” She continued up the stairs in more of a frustrated march than she wanted him to see, but that couldn’t be helped now. “For the record, you are not allowed to stand by the door during meetings. Especially when you weren’t asked to sit in on them.”

“Okay. Well now we’ve covered that ground. So let’s rewind a little to my actual question. That is the Harkennr you’re talking about, is it not?”

“I really don’t have time for this right now.”

“Not like there’s any other Harkennr I know of, per se. I mean, surely the guy had parents. He didn’t just spring up from the bowels of Ryngivát like some devil’s spawn. Although, now that I mention it, I wouldn’t put that entirely past him, if we’re talking about the Kordus Harkennr I’m thinking of…”

They reached the top of the stairs, and Rebecca booked it for her office door. “I have another meeting to start up here. Why don’t you go think on it, and you can bother me about it later.”

“Rebecca.”

He sounded particularly disappointed—a little hurt, even—and she stopped in the middle of the room with a massive sigh before turning to face him. “What?”

Rowan had already leaned casually against the office wall beside the door, his arms folded, with that mischievous smirk on his lips. His hazel eyes blazed with amusement. “Just give me a little morsel. I’m right, aren’t I? Because if I’m right, that means a whole lot of different things for a whole lot of different people, and I thought—”

“Rowan, please.” She stopped at the sound of approaching footsteps. “I really don’t wanna talk about this right now.”

“You don’t, huh? Interesting. Because I heard you just called a whole meeting on it.”

“Yeah. A closed meeting reserved for specific individuals. Who will be here any minute now.”

He spread his arms. “So put me on the list.”

“I don’t think that would go over very well with the select few individuals already on that list.”

Like Maxwell.

“Well then just look the other way, and I’ll hear everything I wanna know anyway.”

“No,” she said. “I mean it. That’s not an option for you anymore.”

Mostly because if Rowan heard anything in any meeting that sparked his interest, he’d involve himself in it anyway. So far, he’d proven how dangerous he could be if he hadn’t reined himself in at the last second every time. She still didn’t want to take those chances.

He was still pouting against the wall when the footsteps stopped in front of her open office door and the person they belonged to came into view.

“Rick!” she shouted a little too enthusiastically. “Right on time.”

“Really?” The blackhorn checked his watch, frowned, and murmured, “I thought I was early.”

“We won’t start for a few more minutes,” Rebecca said. “But I’m glad you stopped by now. Please escort Blackmoon out of here and find a way to keep him busy. Maybe have him help out with security and intel until we’re finished. Make sure whoever’s overseeing things in the meantime knows not to let him out of their sight.”

With a curt nod, Rick looked only too pleased to help. He stepped through the door, found Rowan standing against the wall, and beckoned him closer. “You heard her, Blackmoon. Let’s go. Carl’s testing out a new update to the surveillance system. I know he’d love to tell you all about it.”

Rowan shot Rebecca a curious look, and she responded with a wiggle of her fingers to send him on his way.

Then he finally pushed away from the wall and stepped out with Rick, laughing.

“If I’m not back in time,” Rick called over his shoulder, “please start without me.”

“We’ll wait.” Rebecca couldn’t help smiling despite the ever-present frustration Rowan posed at what felt like all the worst times. She would have loved to experience less of it.

But now he was gone, and maybe if he took the opportunity to pay attention, he might even learn a thing or two about how Shade’s systems worked.

That, or she’d just given him authorized access to understanding in more detail how Shade’s systems worked. As in handing him the keys to breaking into all sorts of things, again, instead of just the compound’s security like on his first night here.

She’d just needed to get him out of here before this next meeting. Discussing any number of things with Rowan inside Shade headquarters was dangerous enough. Rebecca didn’t want to discuss Harkennr with him too. Though she didn’t think he knew much about the time she’d spent with the warlock in Ryngivát, there was no telling with Rowan.

Right now, figuring out Shade’s next steps took top priority. No one was in any immediate danger now, fortunately, but a lot had happened in the last forty-eight hours they couldn’t afford to ignore.

Plus, her conscience wouldn’t let her sit around and do nothing about all the magicals imprisoned in Harkennr’s facility, forced to endure unimaginable horrors for the sake of his “technological advancements”.

As she headed for her desk with a sigh, it occurred to her how much she’d changed since the last time she’d seen the warlock. Back then, once she’d discovered he was trying to do, she’d left him behind and moved on, removing herself from the situation entirely. This time, the mad genius had succeeded, and Rebecca couldn’t stop thinking about how to help all his victims and get them out of there.

Somehow, this mess with Harkennr felt so much more personal than any number of other horrible things she’d seen during her centuries on Earth. That was probably how Harkennr wanted her to feel about it too—why he’d pulled her into this all over again.

Now she was here. This was her responsibility, and she meant to do something about it. Someone had to.

Just as she settled into the office chair behind her desk, multiple pairs of footsteps echoed up the rear staircase toward her, joined by a murmured drone of hushed conversation.

Yes, she’d called another council meeting—if that was what they wanted to name it—and hopefully, they could come to a decision together that didn’t make this feel entirely hopeless.

Luckily for her, Rick had showed up at just the right time so she could send Rowan away with him. She really didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with his games right now, even if everything was still all in good fun for him.

What Shade faced was so much more important and so much more potentially deadly. It needed her full attention. Still, Rebecca fiercely hoped Rowan came to his senses and started treating this like real life instead of another bit of personal entertainment, or Shade would have even more problems, from without and within.

Maybe the pressures of command as Roth-Da’al were finally getting to her. And in such a short time, too. That was what the council was for, right? Because she knew she couldn’t balance everything at the same time on her own, especially not when Kordus Harkennr was now part of the picture.

When he’d said he wanted her to think about his offer, she knew he’d also meant he expected a response.

She planned to give him one. She planned to make it a surprise.

And she hoped this council could brainstorm a way to do it that wouldn’t instantly get them all killed.

Or worse, force them into Harkennr’s facility not as guests but as prime specimens for his next experiment.