Page 25 of Elven Lies

With his meal half-served, the warlock paused and fixed his bright green eyes on Maxwell. “No. Not without guarantee. You have my word. If the Roth-Da’al finds that insufficient, then unfortunately, I would be forced to rescind my invitation so as not to waste any more of her valuable time. Or mine.”

The air crackled with tension and challenge and the unspoken threat of more heinous violence than Rebecca wanted to consider while Maxwell and Harkennr stared each other down.

Blue Hells, if she let this go on much longer, they’d be kicked out on their asses before they heard anything more about Nyx. Or worse, Harkennr would change his mind entirely, and then the chances were vastly higher that she and Maxwell would never leave at all.

Rebecca cleared her throat and offered Harkennr as gracious of a nod as she could muster. “The Roth-Da’al finds it more than sufficient.”

And Maxwell had better drop it, or the Roth-Da’al might not be doinganythingsoon.

A heavy sigh burst through Maxwell’s nose, but then he averted his gaze and dipped his head with a murmured, “Of course.”

It must have been one of the hardest things he’d ever done, especially for a rogue shifter who didn’t stand down from anything or take shit from anyone. When this was over, Rebecca would have to commend him for it and find an appropriate way to express her gratitude without focusing on how close he’d brought them to the edge of failure.

The consequences of which she refused to dwell on at the moment.

Once he was apparently satisfied with the shifter’s deference—and that he still held total control in his own domain—Harkennr’s warning seriousness flipped like a switch. He shot his guests a warm, hospitably endearing smile and summoned another platter toward him across the table to keep serving himself.

“I must ask you to forgive the rather crude tactics,” he continued cheerily. “They were, of course, a last resort. You understand. When my initial invitation seemed to have failed in bringing you here, I turned to employing…additional methods. Merely for the rare opportunity of speaking with you face-to-face. I simply couldn’t pass it up.”

Rebecca felt the warlock’s intention to look at her before he ever lifted his gaze in her direction. Not in the same way she’d been feeling it from Maxwell lately but as a response to already having learned the cadence to Harkennr’s words, plus all the minor gestures and inferences that came with them.

She plastered a smile onto her face and bit back the smart-ass retort she would have given in reply—ifshe’d been sitting here with anyone else. “Well, it certainly grabbed my attention.”

Harkennr chuckled. “I thought it might.”

Then he dove back into serving himself more heaping piles of the wastefully overlarge feast. “I was quite interested to receive news of your organization having undergone a change of leadership. And I instantly saw an opportunity to form new alliances. The balance of power does shift so quickly in this world, of which I’m sure you’re already well aware. It amazes me anyone truly learns how to keep up.”

As he babbled away in amicable small talk, Harkennr focused only on the platters in front of him and summoning new ones to pile additional servings onto his plate—as if this were the kind of social gathering he frequently hosted and his guests expectedthe surface babble before they got to the meat and bones of the thing.

Though he didn’t look at her again, Rebecca still struggled to maintain, if not a pleasant expression, then at least a neutral one.

Everything about this was so outrageously formal and ridiculously out of place. It made the hairs on the back of her neck and along her arms prickle with wary uncertainty, which went hand in hand with the constant vigilance of reading between every line of conversation and sometimes even every word.

The dangers of missing an important connotation or inference were very real, especially when Harkennr and Rebecca had known each other once, way back when.

There was no familiarity between them on her end, though. Her decision to leave him in Xahar’áhsh’s city of Ryngivát when she’d discovered the full extent of his ludicrous goals was as much for her own sanity and self-preservation as her decision to leave Agn’a Tha’ros and the Bloodshadow Court.

Yet here she was, over two hundred years later, a guest at Harkennr’s table and forced to endure all the same despicable facets of his surface decorum. It barely hid the monster beneath once it had already been seen.

The difference this time, though, was that where Harkennr was concerned, Rebecca now held her own position of power as Shade’s commander. The dynamic between them had changed, but the souring distaste curdling in her gut and the urge to leap from her chair and put as much distance between her and the warlock as possible were the same.

“On the other hand,” Harkennr continued, “innovation and change run rampant in this world. I assume it’s to keep pace with how quickly empires rise and fall here.

“You may be interested to know that once I left Xahar’áhsh and finally settled in this city to put down roots for myself, the discoveries and advancements I’ve made since have more than exceeded my expectations. Where I was once so frustrated by the stagnation in the old world I just couldn’t seem to shed, everything Earth has had to offer me so far is a breath of fresh air.”

Rebecca clenched a fist in her lap beneath the table, forcing herself not to react in any other visible way.

This topic of Harkennr’s past in “work on Xahar’áhsh” was a dangerous starting point. It was work in which Rebecca had assisted him for a time before she eventually learned the truth and had to leave.

Now, he alluded to it in riddles and vague references impossible for anyone else to fully grasp. Did he want her to ask more about hiswork, even when they both knew she’d already been intimately familiar with it in the old world?

Or was this just another part of his game?

What was he building toward? And what more would he say to hint at their shared past without outright mentioning it?

Rebecca honestly couldn’t predict how much more of this Maxwell could sit and listen to before he started asking questions. And if he did that, she had no doubt Harkennr would defer toherto provide the answers.

As far as Maxwell knew, they were all answers his Roth-Da’al didn’t and couldn’t possibly have.

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