Page 16 of Elven Lies

All she knew was that it cost him more than she could understand to maintain his composure through this haggardly silent tour.

If they were to continue this mission together without losing themselves in the process, she had to keep a handle on herself so her Head of Security had something solid to anchor himself, should it come to that.

It felt like it might come to that at any second, which made the entire ordeal that much more unbearable.

“It really is remarkable what we’ve managed to accomplish here in such a short amount of time.”

The dwarf’s words echoed back toward them, lending this nightmare an even eerier tour-like feel. At first, Rebecca thought she was imagining it.

She tried not to stare daggers into the dwarf’s back, made especially difficult when a low, furious growl rumbled deep in Maxwell’s chest. Then she realized they were hearing the same thing.

“We have isolated a unique spectrum of magitek enhancements within a variety of mechanical implements for any number of effective purposes and practical applications,” the dwarf continued proudly. “As much as I would love to go into the details here with you now, I will leave that to your host. No doubt he’s eager to reveal these exciting new developments to you himself, and I certainly wouldn’t want to spoil the fun.”

A sudden and unfamiliar urge surged through Rebecca the next second—to leap at the smug little bastard from behind and clamp her teeth down around the back of his neck until she felt his spine crunch between her jaws.

As soon as the image filled her mind, another terrorized scream erupted from behind the closed door on her left, followed by a surging buzz of magitek energy and strobing blasts of blue and yellow light seeping out from beneath the door.

The startling jolt of it ripped her from that unfamiliar urge before she realized what had happened.

Her mind didn’t even contain herowndark fantasies anymore, either.

Bite down around the dwarf’s neck to feel his spine crunch between her jaws? That wasn’therthought. It never had been and never would be. It was Maxwell’s.

Was it the tension of keeping a cool head in a place like this that let his daydreams spill over into her too? Or was this thing between them they still hadn’t named simply evolving to the next stage on its own?

No way to tell now, and this wasn’t the time to ask him about it. So she tried to push the mental image out of her mind and hoped to hell she still looked unaffected and disinterested on the outside. That was the most she could manage.

“These advances in our hybrid technology and techniques,” the dwarf continued, his booming voice bouncing wildly off the walls and somehow still rising over the tortured screams, “have all come at great cost, as I’m sure you may have surmised. But those of us who’ve been involved in this great work from the beginning have seen the massive strides these efforts have undertaken. With vast improvements. It’s all very exciting, don’t you think?”

Rebecca couldn’t have been more grateful for such an obviously rhetorical question. The dwarf neither slowed nor turned toward them, nor did he offer any indication that he expected an answer.

She didn’t think she could have refrained from strangling him in the hallway, otherwise.

Or, judging by the speed with which Maxwell’s glowing silver eyes strobed in the darkened hallways as he stared straight ahead, someone might later find the dwarf in a shredded, bloody pile on the floor, with his spine crushed and head ripped from his shoulders.

She could have sworn she heard Maxwell’s teeth grinding together just as loudly as if they were in her own head.

The dwarf shuffled down the hall without missing a beat, clicking his tongue and shaking his head. “His Lordship really is a genius of our epoch. This is history in the making here, on an unimaginable scale. And we all have him to thank for it.”

HisLordship?

By the Blood, Harkennr was running an experimental torture chamber in this prison, while also trying to grow a new fucking social empire from scratch. With himself in the emperor’s seat.

Rebecca couldn’t listen to much more of this, and she knew Maxwell couldn’t, either. Theyhadto be close now to wherever Harkennr planned on meeting them.

As soon as they turned yet another corridor, the tortured cries and buzzing, crackling hum of augmented machinery doubled in volume. The awful sound echoed down the hall, crashing around and into Rebecca’s mind, and she couldn’t tell where it came from.

All she knew was that she wanted it to stop.

Judging by his darkening scowl and the quickened clip of his footsteps beside her, Maxwell felt very much the same.

The dwarf led them forward, his self-important shuffle unchanged. Only when they’d made it within twenty paces of the only open door she’d seen since entering did she recognize it for what it was.

With the open door, the awful sounds intensified with the thickening tingle of concentrated magic in the air like sharpening ozone.

Not to mention the red and blue streaks of light sputtering at intervals across the corridor.

Then she and Maxwell reached the open door and slowed together. The nightmare on the other side of that open door was too terrible to ignore.

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