Elven Prince (Court of Rebellion #4)

1. Chapter 1

1

“ T he war is never truly over.”

For the first time in her life, Rebecca Bloodshadow was starting to realize how true that worn adage from her old life in the Bloodshadow Court really was.

Especially now that it no longer applied only to her —on the run, making whatever moves she saw fit in order to protect herself.

No. Now it applied to Shade and every member of the task force so quickly and unexpectedly thrust into her care and under her command.

They might have won the last underhanded battle at Harkennr’s warehouse of abducted civilians meant to supply the bastards’ soulless experiments. Barely. But this was far from over.

Not just with the warlock Kordus Harkennr, either.

This morning, Rebecca sat at the desk in her second-story office at Shade Headquarters, poring over all the new intel reports Rick had delivered half an hour ago.

She’d asked him and his team to keep an eye out for anything—information that could either give Shade a one-up moving forward or come back to bite them in the ass. The printed reports scattered across the desk in front of her covered nearly every other threat currently in Shade’s sights.

Surveillance write-ups followed Eduardo and his griybreki army, though their movement had apparently all but come to a standstill over the last several weeks. For however addlebrained Eduardo was, he’d proven himself almost a match for Aldous, all things considered. The likelihood of the arms dealer lashing out at Rebecca and her task force for retribution grew by the day.

Then there was the new player on the board, so far known only as Big Boss—because Rowan had eliminated any possibility of quickly gaining more information the second he’d broken the orcs’ necks right outside the Level 5 Nexus vault the day they’d found Aldous’s stash.

No telling how long it would take this Big Boss to put the pieces together of what had happened, but he would find Rebecca eventually. And Shade.

Though Aldous had left Shade in tatters and with very little information or resources to prepare them, Rebecca was certain he’d amassed more than a sufficient paper trail for his “partners”, now left in the dark since his death.

It was only a matter of time before they followed that trail back to Shade. Back to the compound. Back to the elf who’d taken command after the changeling’s un-mourned, though admittedly untimely, death.

After Big Boss came reports of the sadistic mastermind behind the abduction of Shade’s transport convoy that had put Nyx out of commission for weeks, while Diego, Titus, and Burke had served as hostages and bait at the abandoned amusement park weeks ago.

So far, despite all the intel and Rick’s meticulous reports, Rebecca still couldn’t find a connection between any of these criminal groups in Chicago. Including Harkennr. It seemed impossible that so many gangs and crime lords and wannabe magical badasses had popped out of the woodworks all at once now that Rebecca commanded the task force.

Then again, that could have simply been the result of taking Aldous Corriger out of the picture for good.

He’d left one hell of a mess behind—whatever he’d done while in command—and now Rebecca was left to pick up in the pieces.

And Shade had to deal with the consequences in an entirely new way.

Who else had Aldous aligned with in his secrecy during his reign of error? The possibilities were endless.

The pressure of figuring it all out in time to protect her task force from the fallout of one epic mistake after another now bore down on her far more than she’d anticipated. Rebecca’s resilience had assisted her through countless difficulties over several centuries in this world, but never before had those difficulties stacked on top of each other quite like this.

The cherry on the nightmare sundae, though, was Rowan Blackmoon.

Go figure.

He’d disappeared after the battle at Harkennr’s warehouse after lending the use of his magic as the backup fuel Rebecca’s had needed to bring her Head of Security back from the brink of death. After that, Rowan still hadn’t returned to the compound.

He hadn’t attempted to contact Rebecca in any fashion. He hadn’t made an appearance anywhere in Chicago, as far as the Intel team could gather.

For all intents and purposes, Rowan had wiped himself off the map without a trace.

That should have come as a marvelous relief.

It wasn’t.

The more time passed since his disappearance, the more this particularly dangerous loose end worried Rebecca.

Rowan could have been anywhere now, doing anything. She couldn’t begin to guess where he’d gone, what he was up to now, who he’d spoken to, or with whom he’d planned to align himself.

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 Maxwell could gauge 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 scrutinizing his every 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.

And just like every other morning, as if they had a mind of their own, her fingers couldn’t help but brush against Maxwell’s in the process.

The jolting buzz of heat and energy and beckoning need zapped up Rebecca’s fingers at the contact. Shuddered up into her arm. Made her chest bloom with self-awareness and even more heat, like a furnace freshly relit and flaring back to life.

The moment seemed to last forever, both of their hands closed around the Styrofoam cup. Maxwell’s eyes glued to the sight of the contact between their fingers and Rebecca staring, unblinking, up at him.

She sucked in a stuttering breath, still audible no matter how much effort she put into stifling it.

Maxwell blinked furiously, pulled his hand away from the cup, and shook his head. He sighed, long and heavy through his nose, as if it were the only way to keep himself tethered to the present moment and the important work they still had ahead of them.

Including keeping everyone alive.

Rebecca hardly tasted that first sip of scaldingly hot, rich, deviously strong coffee with the requisite alarmingly high levels of sugar to perfect it. She was too busy forcing her gaze to remain on Maxwell’s face while he took a single step backward away from the desk and settled his empty hand behind his back while holding his own coffee cup with the other.

She kept wanting to look at his chest, at the top of his right pectoral muscle—the place where, beneath his light-gray long-sleeve button-down shirt she now knew was a tattoo no shifter had a right to ink into his own flesh.

The same rune she’d seen hundreds of times before in Agn’a Tha’ros. The rune that had been etched, among many others, onto the ancient bone tile Rowan Blackmoon had given her weeks ago—as a reminder of their combined vow neither of them had willingly taken on their own.

The half-circle swirl with the delicate ribbon to the right. Two meticulously formed dots with the tiniest smudge of a tail at the end, one bigger than the other. And the two slashing lines across the whole thing, which—now that she thought about it—did in fact look like claw marks.

Something told her her elven ancestors just hadn’t had shifters in mind when they’d created the first written Bloodshadow language.

With her second sip of coffee, physical sensation finally returned. The burn on her tongue made Rebecca suck in a gurgling breath through pursed lips, but it failed to efficiently cool it. Her throat burned almost as much when she swallowed, and she cleared it to pretend everything was fine.

“Definitely got the sugar pour just right,” she said. “Though Bor could maybe turn down the heat on his brewing.”

Maxwell looked down at his own cup, one hand still resting against the small of his back, and tilted his head.

“I had the same thought…” he murmured before blowing across the top of his drink and taking an obviously smaller sip.

Well, congratulations to the shifter who thought to try cooling his coffee beforehand.

Rebecca’s mind was elsewhere. Even with the silence somewhat broken between them, the task of keeping her gaze away from the shifter’s chest remained equally difficult.

“Have I spilled something?” Maxwell asked, his voice somehow still gruff despite the genuine concern for his own physical appearance. “Or are you seeing something I’m not?”

Damn. Another failure to tuck under her belt.

How long has she been staring at that same spot on his shirt? This time, envisioning the inked symbol underneath…

“No spills.” Rebecca cleared her throat again before forcing herself to look away. If she had to stare at something, it might as well be the mess of dossiers and intel reports scattered across her desk. “I’ve got my mind on a lot of different things right now. Zoning out now and then just comes with the territory.”

Maxwell gestured toward the papers with his coffee cup. “Is that what all this is?”

Before she could answer, he stepped around the side of her desk and stopped at the corner behind it—not close enough to call it hovering but definitely close enough to reinvigorate the intensity of that enticingly tingling link between them that just wouldn’t go away.

In lieu of moving away from him or tugging at the collar of her beige t-shirt, as if that could relieve the cloying heat burning its way through her at his presence, Rebecca swiveled her office chair to the side, moving slightly away from him despite the utter ineffectiveness of dampening the sensation.

It was easier this way—with her back more toward him while she pretended to focus on these recent reports—not to keep staring at his chest.

Which she couldn’t question him about anyway until she’d confirmed what that tattoo truly meant.

Specifically, whether Maxwell Hannigan was still with her as part of her team, on her side, or whether he was against her, sent by someone else to get into her head and under her skin.

He’d already accomplished the latter, but that could still mean anything before she understood the truth behind that tattoo and therefore behind the shifter’s real intentions.

“Yeah.” The word eked out of her in a breathless sigh before she reminded herself to breathe and at least act put-together and in control. “That’s what all this is. Rick just brought me a bunch of new reports this morning, so at least I’ve got plenty of reading material for the foreseeable future.”

“Anything good?”

Rebecca didn’t have to look at him to hear the tiniest smirk in his words. Or maybe she merely felt his amusement, the way she’d been feeling his general moods almost as if they were her own for weeks now.

“Depends on how you define good ,” she said. “Mostly, since the warehouse, our surveillance lines have centered on everything else we know about Harkennr’s forces. Incoming and outgoing from the Old Joliet Prison, plus a few other supply routes that don’t seem to include abducted civilians among the cargo. No one’s touched the warehouse since we burned it to the ground.”

“That could mean any number of different things on its own.”

“Tell me about it.” She shuffled the reports around and pointed to a different messy pile. “Still keeping tabs on Eduardo through everything too. His griybreki aren’t nearly as busy as they used to be, though who knows how long that’ll last?”

“You think that’s a product of intercepting his weapons shipment?”

“Maybe. Probably. Eduardo’s not exactly the sharpest crime boss in the arsenal, though. If he decides to move when we’re otherwise engaged with anyone else, he could definitely pose more of a problem for us.”

Though he moved without a sound, Rebecca still felt every twitch of muscle and rustle of air as Maxwell took a single step toward her behind the desk. As if all he wanted was a better view of the morning’s newest reports.

At this point, she wouldn’t have been surprised to discover Maxwell Hannigan could read intel reports upside down from ten feet away.

The flare of all-consuming energy—the beckoning tug on her core, the need to be ever closer to him like a physical hunger within her entire being—surged through her with even greater force, as it no doubt did through Maxwell too.

Was he doing this on purpose?

If that gods-be-damned rune on his chest meant what Rebecca feared it meant, he could definitely have been doing this on purpose. Toying with her. Using their still-unexplained and overpowering connection to manipulate her like a puppet on its fucking strings.

Even then, there were still some things underhanded manipulation couldn’t fake.

Like Maxwell’s sharp inhale when the flaring sensation hit him too. Or the way the heat of his body and the scent of moonlight and dew-studded grass and deliciously obnoxious sandalwood pulsed off him in waves like a brewing storm cloud surrounding her right here in her office.

Or the way she knew she would find him staring at her, watching her, scrutinizing her every reaction and the minutest change in her expression, if she only turned around to look at him.

She didn’t. She couldn’t let herself give in to the irresistible call of his presence beckoning her ever closer since the day she’d fought Hector’s homunculi, poisoned herself, and killed Aldous Corriger in self-defense after Maxwell had shoved his hand through Hector’s guts.

The memory was surprisingly sobering.

Just not enough to take her mind off his closeness behind her.

“Those aren’t the only two targets on our surveillance list, are they?” he asked.

“No,” she replied, achingly aware of how stiffly she sat in the office chair and how stilted and distractedly compromised she sounded. “We’re still combing the city for anything remotely related to our little stint with unknown enemy number three who staged that super-fun night at the amusement park.”

Maxwell sighed. “Still unidentified.”

“Still. I’d love to change that, but so far, leads in that department have been a little hard to come by.”

“If Rick’s on it, he’ll get us what we need eventually. It’s just a matter of time.”

Rebecca snorted. “Sure. Because we have all the time in the world before the next emergency or surprise attack comes crashing down on our heads.”

That was a stupid thing to say, the sarcasm particularly unnecessary.

Maxwell understood nearly as well as Rebecca did the potential issues Shade currently faced. So many looming threats and still unknown players had affixed themselves to Shade’s story, either in response to decisions Rebecca had made since taking command or as the unavoidable product of Aldous having entered into various distasteful arrangements—his end of which he never would have legitimately fulfilled anyway.

Now, those partners—like Kordus Harkennr and even Big Boss, whoever the hell that was—wanted their pound of flesh from the changeling who’d disappeared off the playing field without warning or explanation.

Rebecca wasn’t obligated to offer either, though it would have been nice to have a little heads-up as to exactly what kind of messes her predecessor had left behind in his unfathomable stupidity.

A tense and coiling silence descended upon her office as she sat in her chair and Maxwell stood so devastatingly close behind her, both of them pretending to focus on something else while also feeling even the subtlest shifts in the other.

Blue Hells, how long were they going to keep this up without ever really talking about it for real?

They’d discussed it once, in the infirmary, after one kiss that had become something else entirely. Something Rebecca still didn’t trust or understand. Something that had almost scared her.

They’d started to 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 about that .

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.