Page 152 of Elven Shadow

“My memory’s just fine.”

“Well alrighty, then. While you’re here, though, tell me. How’s your—”

“I’m still alive, Zida. That’s as good as it’s gonna get right now.”

Then Rebecca stormed off toward her room before the old woman could say anything else.

When had everyone in this place gotten so damn literal?

Still without a viable means of escaping for the night, her only option now was to relent and try again tomorrow.

After she found out how to craft an emergency big enough to draw Maxwell away from the compound but small enough that he could handle it on his own.

When she finally reached her room, it seemed the only positive thing about her day was that she returned to all the holes in the walls mended, the crumbled ceiling restored, and her own bed so thoughtfully swiped clean of debris from Hector’s attack that she didn’t have to do anything but fall into bed and wait for the exhaustion to drag her down with it.

The next morning felt like an old-world hangover after far too much spiritwine, but she forced herself out of bed, into the shower, and finally into a fresh change of clothes.

A quick examination of the darkening gray handprint on her left wrist confirmed her wound was only worsening. She prodded it with an experimental finger and couldn’t feel anything from her left elbow to her left fingertips.

If she didn’t fix this soon, it was only too easy to imagine losing sensation in her entire arm, and there was no telling how quickly the issue would spread to other far more vital parts of her body.

Time to get out and do something about it.

But when she crossed her room to whisk open her bedroom door, she almost barreled into a solid wall dressed in gray cotton waiting on the other side. “Whatthe—”

Maxwell pulled his hands from the pockets of his jeans as he turned around to face her, his eyes widening in expectation. “That’s the kind of day you’re having already?”

Rebecca staggered back a step, refusing to shake her head clear of the fuzzy cobwebs that still came and went in waves, though the strength of her last energy dose had substantially waned overnight. “What are you doing here?”

“My job,” he said flatly. “It still hasn’t changed, in case you were wondering.”

“I wasn’t.” She looked over her shoulder after the strangest sensation of needing to keep the shifter out of her personal space overwhelmed her, but there was nothing in her room that even Maxwell Hannigan might have considered suspicious or cause for further investigation.

That was a good thing, probably. So why was he still here?

When she turned back toward the open doorway, Maxwell had spun away from her room to stand sentinel there, perfectly still with his hands clasped behind his back like he’d been tasked with twenty-four-hour guard-the-commander duty.

It could have been a matter of respecting her privacy, or it could have been literally anything else that kept him from looking inside. Who knew why he did anything that hadn’t been specifically commanded of him?

By the Blood, had he been standing there like that all night?

Somehow, that thought filled her stomach with a rush of trembling, fluttering butterflies that bashed around against each other until they were swallowed prematurely by a dangerously loud growl erupting in her stomach.

No, if Maxwell wanted to stand outside her room all night to protect her or keep a suspicious eye on her or anything else, that was his business. It hadn’t interfered with hers—yet—so for now, he could have his secrets and keep his silence. She wasn’t getting involved.

She just really would have appreciated the same courtesy on his part in return.

But no, it was too much to ask. The shifter had posted himself outside her bedroom and intended to stay there all day.

His whispering footsteps trailed after her as Rebecca pushed herself to the current limits of her speed without tempting her frail physical state into awkward stumbles or collapsing in the corridor.

Once again, that tingling weight settled on the back of her head before draping down the back of her neck, dripping between her shoulder blades, tumbling all the way down to her heels.

That undeniably pleasant sensation of Maxwell’s presence that had already become a major destruction had just graduated to seriously fucking annoying.

Rebecca couldn’t wait to get out of here, heal herself, and never have to open one of those stupid vials again. After that, she was sure the obnoxiously delicious tingling racing across her body every time Maxwell was within ten feet of her would disappear with the other symptoms.

She didn’t delude herself into thinking she could outpace him this morning, not with her weak limbs and awkwardly flopping feet that occasionally went numb for a few seconds at a time, only for the sensation to return with the painful, prickling sting of neurons and sensory receptors coming back online.

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