Page 97 of Elven Crown

Knowing this broke Rebecca’s indecision and immobility, and she could finally think again.

“Okay,” she told him with a nod and stepped back. “Good. That’s cleared up, then. Good night, Hannigan.”

She started to turn toward the hall and her private room a few doors down from the infirmary, but then she paused to make one more addition, pointing toward her room. “I’m going to walk down this hall by myself. But if you still need to play lookout, feel free to do it from here.”

If she had to order him to stay, she would, but she wanted to give him a chance to listen on his own.

Right now, she needed to put more distance between them so she couldkeepthinking clearly.

If Maxwell decided to keep following her all the way to her room, she couldn’t predict what would happen.

She didn’t trust the intensifying tension of this thing growing between them, whatever it was, that sent tingling chills racing across her shoulders whenever he was near, or across the room, or within her general vicinity.

She didn’t know what it was, and she didn’t trust it, which meant she had to cut it off now before she did something stupid.

The muscles of Maxwell’s jaw worked slowly, his frown deepening as he studied her, but he finally nodded before his voice dipped low enough to almost be a growl. “Good night.”

Rebecca spun around and booked it down the hall, moving just short of breaking into a dead run, silently begging him not to follow her.

She’d just come way too close to losing control of herself and losing sight of her goals.

His footsteps never followed her, and he had nothing more to say.

She reached her room, unlocked the door with a quick bolt of yellow light and a simple unlocking spell, and stepped inside.

But as she turned to close the door behind her, she poked her head out for one more quick glance down the hall.

Maxwell stood where she’d left him, unmoving, unyielding, his eyes pulsing with a soft glow under the hallway’s dim lighting.

Under different circumstances, she might have thought it creepy. Somehow, it wasn’t.

At least he’d stayed put.

That felt more like a truce between them than any previous agreement they’d made or unspoken understanding they’d come to so far.

As she swung the door shut and locked it from the inside, Rebecca smiled to herself. While a little confusing and completely unexpected, she was grateful for her Head of Security, for everything they’d already achieved in her short stint so far as Shade’s commander.

It briefly occurred to her that she could invite him into her room and find out for good whether his interested in her extended beyond their roles within Shade, but then her bedroom door was shut and locked, and she tossed the notion out of her mind.

No, Maxwell’s interest in her was only an extension of his interest in Shade. He’d made that clear. And Rebecca wasn’t even looking for someone to invite into her room.

Nor could she afford to let any of her relationships go there, because they were all sure to end the same way.

With Rebecca moving on, eventually, because she had to if she wanted to keep her past from catching up to her.

But it already had in a way, hadn’t it?

Rowan hadn’t explicitly declared anything on the Bloodshadow Court’s behalf. He could have come to Earth independently, to find her on his own because no one else could. His presence here meant nothing beyond the obvious—that somehow, he’d tracked her down.

Did that mean it was already time for Rebecca to move on from Shade and find something else? Or did she still have time here?

That thought worried her most of all, because shewantedmore time here, at Shade, with the magicals she thought of more and more as family every day. With Maxwell, even.

She was starting to feel things about this place and this life she’d never felt for any other, not in all her decades of living on the run as one reinvention of herself after another.

She’d never felt anything like what she felt now with Maxwell, either, even without knowing what that feeling was or able to give it a name.

Even with other elves, it had never been like this. Including with elves she was supposed to have felt something else for, but that missing piece had never fit. It simply hadn’t been there.

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