Page 80 of Elven Lies

Maxwell had given this to her to ensure her own physical safety. Or, at least, he’d implied as much. But summoning him here under the pretense of an emergency just because she didn’t want to lose her cool on the Blackmoon Elf out in the open? That wasn’t a good enough reason.

She couldn’t afford to piss Maxwell off with a stunt like that, either.

Instead, she quickened her pace down the sidewalk and focused only on getting back to the compound and moving forward.

Rowan’s laughter catching up to her set her teeth on edge. Then he’d reached her side again, squeezing a string of water from a teenager’s stolen water bottle into his open mouth. “I just don’t see the point in pretending it’s anything else.”

“And I don’t see the point in harping on it forever,” she muttered. “It’s not the Darkspawn.”

“How about we take an objective inventory of the facts then, huh?” He tossed the water bottle back onto the grass, then counted on each of his slender fingers. “First, there’s the legend of the Darkspawn. A uniquely powerful weapon of old-world destruction that confronts each target with a manifestation of their own worst fear. If left unchecked by its master, the Darkspawn doesn’t let up until it destroys its target. Highlycoveted, lost to Xahar’áhsh for centuries, with tales of it popping up in various forms all over places known and unknown.”

“Those are the legends,” Rebecca muttered.

“Hey, I get it. The point where legend meets reality is often a revelatory disappointment. But everything I’ve just said definitely applies tothatlittle doohickey in your pocket. How,Kilda’ari, you could use it onHarkennrand—”

“I don’t wanna use it onanyone!” Rebecca’s shout echoed up the street, making several unknowing pedestrians slow and look her way to watch the train wreck, but no one bothered to ask if she needed any help. Of course not.

She jerked her hand out of her jacket pocket, zipped it up for good measure, and clenched her fists at her side to keep from throwing them at Rowan’s face.

“If this is really what you say it is,” she said, lowering her voice, “do you haveanyidea how many people are looking for it?”

“That’s what makes it sofun,” he exclaimed. “So who’d you take it from?”

“I said I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Yeah, sure. I heard you. But you know what your options are here at this point, right?”

Her options. Either tell him as much as she could afford, or suffer through the remaining hour of their walk to Shade headquarters, losing her mind while Rowan poked and prodded her with questions, trying to break her with his own outlandish conclusions.

Then his focus would shift from wanting answers to doing everything in his power to piss her off and get another rise out of her.

They were already having this conversation, so she couldn’t hold it off any longer. It made more sense for her sanity, if nothing else, to give himsomething.

24

With a sigh, she stared straight ahead down the street, and flatly replied, “I took it off some wannabe criminal badass in a back alley a few weeks ago.”

“What?” He threw his head back and roared with laughter. “Don’t tell me there isn’t more tothatstory.”

She couldn’t, and she knew he wouldn’t stop asking.

So she took the plunge and told him about that night in the alley, when she’d slipped out of the compound to blow off a little steam and found herself thwarting the potential mugging of the human woman she’d rescued, only for that same woman to fall right into the hands of an amateur gang of magical jackasses in the back parking lock.

She explained how she’d seen it work when the Cruorcian Boyd had used the hex doll on the woman. The glowing green runes in a conjured casting circle floating in the air. The blue-silver mist in the shape of a clown that had terrified the woman while she hovered four feet in the air and nearly choked to death.

But that was it.

Rebecca purposefully didn’t mention what had happened to that little gang afterward. Or that Maxwell had followed her and might have seen everything. Nor did she tell Rowan she’d already used the hex doll once before in the prison yard at Harkennr’s facility. Or the fact that it seemed not to have any effect on shifters—or maybe just specifically Maxwell Hannigan.

“And that’s the story,” she finished.

“Fantastic.” Rowan leered at her, vigorously rubbing his hands together. “And how didthoseguys get their mitts on it? I mean, if they were really as pathetic as you made them sound…”

“Honestly, I have no idea. I’m just glad I took it off them before Azyyt Ra’al ever caught wind of it.”

Rowan’s amused chuckle cut off abruptly. “Azyyt Ra’al?”

Shit. That had slipped into her story as easily as Rebecca had slipped back into the ease of sharing everything with him like she once had. She hadn’t meant to bring Azyyt Ra’al into this at all.

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