Page 172 of Elven Crown

By the Blood, his stubbornness made him insufferable.

At the same time, it was weirdly, uncomfortably endearing how much he thought he was protecting her by getting in her way.

With a frustrated grunt, Rebecca returned her attention to the casting circle and now could only pretend to investigate it, because she already knew what needed to be done.

She’d wanted to try turning her Bloodshadow magic against the traps themselves, targeting the life force of the magical energy binding Diego, Titus, and Burke to that magitek explosive on the stage. That way, maybe she could drain dry the residual magic of the casting circles and all the other traps around the theater hall until there was nothing left to activate.

She was almost entirely certain that would have done the trick. It was absolutely worth attempting, but if Maxwell refused to give her even a few minutes of privacy beside the stage, or anywhere else within the building, it was no longer an option.

If he saw her, he’d ask how she’d done it. He wouldn’t stop asking until Rebecca gave him an answer, and she didn’t think she could come up with anything convincing enough to explain what he would have watched her do without telling him the truth.

Also not an option.

So instead, she spent another sixty seconds bending toward the casting circle and reaching for it from different angles with her fingers and her magic, hoping a shifter’s lack of inherent control over any other magic but his own would prevent him from realizing she wasn’t actually doing shit.

Then she withdrew her hand, stood, and shook her head. “Fuck.”

“Care to elaborate?” he asked, looming behind her with his arms still folded.

“There’s a locking switch on this thing,” she said. “Whoever cast these was smart enough to mold them directly to their own magical signature. The caster’s the only one who can touch this without setting it off. I can’t get rid of it.”

That part was all true, at least, and she was glad for not having to directly lie to him about it.

Maxwell searched her face, as if he were waiting for her to share some other crucial bit of necessary information. When she didn’t, he gruffly stroked his chin once and nodded. “Then we’ll find another way. Let’s regroup and come up with a better plan now that we know more about what we’re dealing with.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

When she nodded, Maxwell turned to head back across the auditorium toward center stage, and she almost thought she would have enough time to try one more little maneuver with his back turned.

It wasn’t turned for very long.

The second she eyed the casting circle again, deciding how she could activate her more powerful abilities to weaken the ward’s proximity sensors, if not deactivate them entirely, the shifter stopped to look at her over his shoulder.

“You coming?” he asked.

Blue Hells! She just couldn’t catch a break.

“Yeah,” she said and gave up trying to sneak in a few tricks while he wasn’t looking.

All things considered, she should have known any other attempts would be useless. Maxwell was always looking.

Though she kept it locked away beneath her own mask of certainty and confidence, she was starting to worry now. If Maxwell refused to let her work on her own and she couldn’t come up with a viable excuse to make him, she didn’t know how the hell their team was going to finish this.

They weren’t equipped to handle this level of complicated warding keeping their captive operatives bound to that augmented bomb and permanently beyond their reach. That was a major issue.

As she and Maxwell returned to the center of the sloped auditorium floor, Shell, Whit, Jay, Corey, Murray, and even Rowan returned from their quick but thorough search of the building.

Whit shook his head. “There’s no sign of anyone else here. As far as we can tell, the place is empty.”

“Then we might have enough time to work this out before company arrives,” Maxwell said.

“Oh yeah. Sure,” Diego called from the stage with a snort. “You guys go ahead and take your time. However much you need. This is actually the closest thing I’ve had to a vacation in a while.”

Shell shot the Cruorcian a tight smirk, but no one said a thing.

They couldn’t take their time here, and everyone knew it.

They couldn’t have predicted just how little time they would actually have, because there was no warning at all before the magitek bomb strapped at the center of their captured and bound operatives on the stage flared up with another power surge.

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