Page 46 of Elven Lies

If she must?

Had he really just given in that easily?

Had she missed something?

Then he withdrew his hand and extended his fist toward her before unfurling his fingers. The long, oblong stone in his palm was perfectly smooth, its surface polished to a fine sheen. A complicated symbol carved in its center marked a similarly carved depression, like a thumbprint. The other symbols carved around the perimeter and pulsing with inner light in varying colors connected the magic of this old-world device to its twin.

These were rare enough on their own to begin with, but to see one in the hands of a shifter? How did Maxwell even know what this was, let alone how to get ahold of one?

She was about to ask him but stopped when he grabbed her other hand and lifted it to settle the Mindstone onto her palm.

“Take this with you.”

The electrifying jolt of his hand cupped around hers made Rebecca’s head spin. The contact felt like fire and ice. Like all the energy in the world and everything consumed by the void. It felt like such a simple touch would unravel her completely, and Rebecca was powerless to stop it.

She wasn’t, however, powerless to still voice her thoughts. Not yet.

She probably should have phrased it with a little more tact, but her focus for such a thing was obliterated by the warmth of Maxwell’s hand around the back of her own. “How did you get this? That’s impossible…”

The corner of his mouth twitched before he let out a heavy sigh and still didn’t release her hand. “I’ve had this job for a long time. I’ve met countless different people along the way. And I’ve learned a few things. All you have to do is press this bit here, and it’ll send a signal back to me wherever you—”

“I know how a Mindstone works,” she said. “But…thanks.”

He nodded, then closed her fingers around the Mindstone, his expression taking on a different level of seriousness than she thought the situation warranted. “If anything goes wrong, if you even suspect something mightstartto go wrong, activate it. I’ll know. No matter what, I will find you.”

Like she couldn’t handle this on her own. Like Maxwell expected her to need finding and protecting.

What could Rowan possibly do to her while they went after a key-maker that might justify summoning her Head of Security with a Mindstone?

But that was the point, wasn’t it? Maxwell had no idea what Rowan might attempt. The Blackmoon Elf would never hurt Rebecca. Not intentionally. But the shifter didn’t know that.

Which made this gift of a Mindstone and his urgency for her to accept it that much more protective. Possessive, even.

She might have gone as far as to say he was acting territorial about it, and what was she supposed to do? She couldn’t just hand it back and say no thank you. She didn’t want to.

Maxwell was overly concerned, maybe even a little too much. At the same time, she found it impossibly endearing.

This shifter—who’d started off as the biggest pain in her ass and deterrent to all Rebecca’s goals, back when they were so much smaller than they were now—was trying to keep her safe with a magical spell reagent a shifter didn’t have any cause to carry around with him in the first place. How long had he anticipated the need to give it to her?

“Everything will be fine,” she said, her words thin and blurring as if in a dream. “It’s just a chat with a key-maker. But it’s…always good to have backup. I guess.”

He leaned in even closer, holding her fingers down around the Mindstone with both hands now, his eyes wide and urgent. Like there was a deadly time limit on this thing. “You know how I feel about him. And I swear, if anything happens to you…”

“I’ll be fine, Hannigan,” she assured him. That was all she could do.

“Use it.” Maxwell glanced down at his hands holding hers closed around the Mindstone. “Promise me.”

“All right,” she murmured, on the verge of losing herself in the intensity of his gaze again. “I promise. If anything happens, I’ll use it, and you’ll know.”

Maxwell swallowed thickly, then took forever to pull his hands away from hers. “Then I suppose I have no choice but to let you go.”

Even as he said it, the act of removing his hands from around hers seemed to cause him physical pain.

At this point, maybe it was better to head out for this small side mission with Rowan and not Maxwell. Something told herthe more time she and the shifter spent together, the harder it would be for either of them to focus on anything else.

Rebecca couldn’t stop thinking about the tortured look in Maxwell’s eyes, even as she and Rowan walked across the compound’s underground parking garage together, finally on their way to go see a guy about a key.

Mostly, she just hoped Rowan wouldn’t give her any reason to regret this little outing. And that he wouldn’t do anything to prove Maxwell right.

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