Page 74 of Anchor

My legs gave and I fell against the reception desk on my side.

He was there, right there, and I saw him; I saw his dark eyes sparkling with mischief, the dimples that decorated his smooth cheeks, those lips that were a perfect heart at the top, now stretched into a smile that was one hundred percenthim.Exactly like I’d seen him in the Iris Roe. Exactly like my memories, my dreams of him insisted that he was.

Taland was here, inside the IDD Vault.

No—Taland was out of the Vault, in front of me, hands on the sides of my waist, steadying me so I didn’t fall to the floor.

Taland wasn’t smiling so big anymore and his eyes were just a tiny bit darker now.

Taland is in front of me.

“Steady, baby. Steady,” he said, and my brain fucking malfunctioned.

Two things crossed my mind, two instincts that were equally powerful and they divided me, tore me apart. One part of me wanted to scream and shout and drag him out of there with my own hands until he was away from Headquarters, from the city, from the entire fucking country. The other part wanted me to jump him, wrap my arms around his neck and breathe in his scent and kiss his lips and never ever-ever-ever let go, to hell with the IDD and the city and the country. To hell with everything and everyone, to life that was so damn exhausting when he wasn’t near me—to hell with it all.

All that mattered was him.

Except my body was unable to move, and the best I could do was stay on my feet, not fall on my face in front of him—or on his chest. And Taland took his hands off me, which was a shame.

“What-what…what?”That’s all I was able to say, that one word—what. That’s all I had.

“We’re going to have to talk later, sweetness. I’m in a bit of a hurry. Be a good girl and wait for me a moment, will you?”

He said all those words together and I envied him because he could. Because his brain worked well enough to speak and his jaws weren’t stuck and his body had no trouble moving at all while I was paralyzed in place, worse than I had been when Whitefire magic had taken control of me in Night City.

But Taland was perfectly capable of bringing his hand to my face and touching the tip of my nose, then walking backward to the doors of the Vault again and disappearing behind them.

Taland is here.

Suddenly, it clicked.

Suddenly, my memories of the Greenfire challenge were perfectly vivid in my head, and I remembered what we’d talked about, how he’d offered his help in exchange for mine when the Iris Roe was over. My help to get into the IDD Vault.ThisVault.

Taland was here to steal the veler.

The thought shocked me, and I felt that shock vibrating down to the tips of my toes. After it, my body came alive and my blood rushed again and my jaws moved and my legs moved, and before I knew it, I was in the Vault, too, ready to scream my guts out for him to get the hell out of here—now,before somebody came and shot him and then I’d have to set the whole fucking building on fire.

But when I pulled the door open and stepped inside, my voice refused to come out. It was dark in the Vault—darklike it had never been before. I could hardly see the glass surrounding me, and the only reason I could even make out the walls wasbecause of the Led lights around the pillar in the middle, and the glass boxes and the marble reflected it everywhere. That’s where Taland was, and if I really screamed for him now, who would hear us?

And if Ididn’tscream but dragged him out of here, what if there really was a chance that nobody would see or know because this place was so dark and the cameras would hopefully be off somehow?

Yes, yes, there was a chance. Because if Taland could shut down the blinding lights of the Vault, he would have surely turned the cameras off as well, and heobviouslyhad found his way through the wards because he was already here.

Heart in my throat, I put my gun away and went deeper into the Vault, toward that smaller source of light on the side of the wide pillar, this one coming from a light-ball the size of my fist, hovering over Taland. I saw his silhouette kneeling on the floor, crouched over something—what could have been a glass box, and I thought,I can’t let him take that thing, I can’t let him take the veler—too dangerous, too obvious, too dangerous!

It didn’t occur to me that he was on therightside of the room, not the left, where the veler was. Where I’d seen the veler with my own eyes twice now.

No, it didn’t occur to me at all until I was close and Taland saw me and stood up. The ball of light hovered in the air near his head, and he had something in his hands that I barely saw before he put it away underneath his jacket—this square piece of what could have been marble, as thick as two fingers together, with a smooth white surface and engravings on either side, the entire thing no bigger than fifteen inches. I knew perfectly well what it was—a script, one of the old ones they used to cast wards and shields and spells—and cursesover a big number of people or an entire place, an entire town. The fact that it was here in theVault, confiscated from who knew what place, said that it was a very dangerous thing, but…it wasnotthe veler.

And that threw me off completely.

“What…what the hell, Taland?” I finally choked. “What the hell—what are you doing?!”

Taland was still smiling, the light from his shrinking ball of light dancing in his eyes. I still saw him with perfect clarity because the pillar with all the Led lights was right to our side.

“Just taking a stroll through this room. It’s quite big,” he said, waving a hand around, but at least he was whispering, too.

And my body was not paralyzed anymore at the sight of him—yes, it was definitely him—and my blood was rushing so I was perfectly capable of going closer until I could touch him, until I could see more of him, more of the box that was on the floor near the wall, the spot where it had been now empty.

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