Page 144 of Elven Crown

She wanted to tell him about Harkennr’s base in Joliet, about what that soulless bastard was up to in her city.

She wanted to tell Rowan everything she had discovered here in the last few days, that her enemies were here, that they were already so close. Too close. He was the only one who knew in great and horrific detail what those enemies were truly capable of and how far they were willing to go to get their hands on what they wanted.

To get their hands onher.

Rebecca fought against that urge with every last reserve of her strength. But this thing she faced now—this thing she and Rowan shared—had become too powerful to ignore.

Had it always been this way? Or had she let herself go soft, believing it would never come to this? Just like she’d believed he would never find her.

It was an enormous risk to tell him anything, let alone to talk to him like this in her room, with who knew how many eyes and ears might be eavesdropping. But having Rowan’s support, even for five minutes, would be better than running around blindly in the dark forever.

Better to be prepared for trouble than trying to avoid what was already right there in front of her.

So she chose, just for now, just this once, to let herself trust what she’d thought had already died.

“Rowan, listen,” she said before taking a deep inhale and a pause to gather herself. “I have to tell you something. There’s—”

A piercing shriek erupted in the hall outside her room before she could get out another word. One long, low wail rising in pitch and drowning out all other noise before dipping again in warning and a call to action.

Rebecca spun around and saw the red light in the hall flashing through the crack beneath the door.

Right now? Seriously?

“What is that?” Rowan shouted, his words barely audible over the siren. “Is that a breach alarm?”

“No.” Rebecca glanced at him with a frown. “But the way things have been going lately, it’s probably something just as bad.”

A warning alarm for Shade’s entire task force to drop whatever they were doing and report immediately.

And one more horribly timed interruption.

38

The second Rebecca opened her bedroom door, the blaring alarm almost knocked her back with its strengthened intensity in the hallway.

No way in hell did this mean anything good.

Gritting her teeth against the sensory onslaught of the wailing siren and the flashing red light pulsing through the hall like the building’s heartbeat, Rebecca raced across the compound toward the common room.

It seemed the knot of apprehension in her belly and the hot waves urgency and harrowing expectation had become her new normal lately. Would she never get a break for longer than a few minutes at a time?

Things were supposed to have gotten easier after eliminating Aldous. Simpler, not more chaotic. But here they were.

She didn’t wait for Rowan, but she felt him just behind her, matching her pace through the red-lit halls while the last echoesof doors opening and shutting in the residential wing followed before other magicals joined them.

The common room filled with Shade members spilling in from all the intersecting corridors in all directions. The alarm’s deafening wail continuously drowned out the curious conversations and questions shouted across even short distances.

When Rebecca and Rowan slowed to a stop and she scanned the room for signs of what had set off the alarm, he snorted beside her and shook his head. “Is this just the catch-all room?”

“Just be grateful no one’s telling us to gather in the parking garage,” she replied, then turned to look at him with raised eyebrows. Rowan shot her a hesitant, baffled look, and she shrugged. “Never mind.”

The siren fell to its lowest pitch, started to rise again, then cut off mid-wail to fill the common room with a tense, ringing silence in its absence.

Rebecca read the room over and over, searching the gathered faces for someone who looked like they knew what the hell was going on. Most of them looked groggy and still half-asleep, which meant a significant portion of Shade members also looked pissed off for having been ripped from sleep and dragged back into the common room by emergency protocol.

Without the alarm, the multitude of whispered and muttered conversations mixed in a rush of indistinguishable voices. It looked like everyone was here. The entire task force.

Then her gaze fell on Zida, who stood a few yards away at the mouth of a different intersecting hallway, her bare feet visible beneath the hem of a nightgown that made her look more like she’d just escaped from overnight treatment at a human hospital.

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