Page 23 of Elven Shadow

Even harder than that was maintaining her deadpan expression when every part of her boiled over with the urge to throw her head back and cackle maniacally at the ridiculousness of this whole thing.

Almost everyone in Shade—including Hector, she was willing to bet—hadn’t seen a quarter of the shit she’d experienced in both worlds.

This right here? This was just a bunch of rebels running around, trying to take magical law into their own hands without a clue as to how bad shit could really get.

Without a clue as to how good they really had it in comparison—Aldous’s incompetence notwithstanding.

Somehow, she managed to hold off even the barest hint of a smirk and contented herself with letting this little drama play itself out.

Hector the nurúzhe, Shade’s most frequently absent member, the one guy the rest of this organization knew less about than they knew of Rebecca—and only becauseshedidn’t hide her face—was just stirring up the shit in a pot that had already started to boil over without him.

Interesting.

Whatever he was trying to get at, Rebecca decided she’d keep an eye on it. Curiosity was just another one of those inherent traits so many others in her past had tried to rip out of her by the root.

Used the right way, though, that curiosity wasn’t always a death sentence.

She’d learned that the hard way too.

She wasn’t the only one with their curiosity forcefully stoked right now, but none of the other magicals had the presence of mind to realize this wasn’t the time to completely lose control of themselves.

“Come on, Diego,” someone grumbled. “You gotta tell us what went down out there.”

“This talking rag doll sounds like he already knows what happened. The rest of us deserve an explanation too.”

“If Aldous is out of the game, it changes everything, man. We gotta figure out what comes next.”

“Who said he’s out of the game?”

“That’s what a fucking coma means, dipshit.”

“That’s why we haven’t heard shit about Edwardo and the weapon, right? Because Aldous is done for, and now we’re all—”

“Standard operating procedure.” The low, authoritative growl coming from the left-hand side of the common room—and the entrance to a particularly narrow hallway leading toward the building’s east end—cut everyone off instantly.

All eyes turned that way.

Maxwell stood at the mouth of that hallway, his arms folded, glaring out at the gathered magicals.

Rebecca wasn’t particularly amused to see the shifter hovering there like that, nor did she appreciate his habit of appearing out of nowhere just when things are starting to get good.

This time, though, she was willing to ignore it. More than anything else, a standoff between Maxwell and Hector seemed fairly imminent, and she honestly wanted to see what popped up between them without interference.

Hector chuckled. “Look who crawled out of his kennel to come join us. And howisour fearless leader?”

Maxwell stared at the nurúzhe for an uncomfortably long time before responding. “Ready to get back to the drawing board, actually.”

“How diligent of him,” Hector crooned. “And you know this how, exactly?”

“He told me. Simple as that.”

“Hmm.” Hector’s tone wasn’t nearly as casual-sounding as his one-word response. “I wouldn’t know personally, but I’ve heard it’s a bit hard to deliver orders from an infirmary bed. Especially whenunconscious.”

Someone else gasped before more whispers and sharply held breaths filled the room.

Rebecca drowned out the crosstalk noise as best she could to focus on the real issue at hand.

Part of her expected both of these guys with enormously oversized egos to whip it out and start measuring right here in front of everyone.

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