Page 24 of Elven Prince

“If you’re into that kinda thing,” she replied absently before moving on to the next door.

“Bet it cost a fortune to get one of these here rooms.”

Rebecca grinned when her key and the next door in front of her both glowed the same bright, electric blue. Then she stepped forward to slide the key into the lock. “No one’s sending me a bill…”

Titus let out a rumbling guffaw as he turned toward her. “You mean like monthly rent?”

“Something tells me having a vault in this place exempts us from the normal rules.”

“Yeah, no kidding. I’d love to know how the hellAldouspaid for this.”

“Well, he definitely wasn’t short on funds,” she said. “We just didn’t know it.”

The door swung easily open in her hand, and she held it open for a moment, waiting for Titus to join her so he could get a good look at what existed on the other side.

Shade’s infinite wellspring.

When he stopped just inside the open doorway, his jaw dropped. Titus’s already enormous eyes bulged in his bald, scarred face. “Well chop me up and roll me in the mud…”

Rebecca snorted as she walked past him into the storage vault. “Couldn’t have said it better myself. Hey, close the door behind you, yeah?”

A jingle of loose gold coins and other semi-spelled treasure clanged and clinked around when he shuffled inside. Then the vault door whispered shut. “Why? You afraid some of this stuff’s gonna get up and walk out?”

“No,” she said, navigating her way through the scattered piles of random treasure Aldous had been storing away in here on his own since far before her time. “It’s who might be outtherethat I’m more worried about.”

“Oh, yeah?” Titus looked over his shoulder at the door before seemingly remembering he’d already shut it. “You see anyone? Oh, wait.That’sright. The whole orc attack on you and Blackmoon. I remember now.”

“Yeah, that,” she muttered and crouched in front of a stack of plastic totes with lockable lids on hinges to peer into the one on top. “Though I don’t specifically remember calling it the orc attack.”

“You didn’t.” A pile of something else heavy and metallic in multiple pieces clattered to the floor in a cascade of tinkling chimes nearly every time Titus took another step through the vault. “That’s just what we started calling it after you told everyone. You know how it goes. If it ain’t already got an op name, we gotta call itsomething.”

“Butthe orc attack?” Rebecca smirked when the glitter of a few dozen gold chains strung through pristine settings around priceless gemstones greeted her in that first crate. “That makes it sound like some kinda epic battle Blackmoon and I were lucky to survive, and that just wasn’t the case.”

“Fine. What wouldyoucall it?”

“More like the orcslaughter,” she said. “I mean, if we’re going for historical accuracy.”

“Nah… A slaughter is way more than just two. Wait, that’s all there was, right? I didn’t screw up all the details?”

The jewelry-filled tote thumped down onto the floor at her feet, and Rebecca turned back to look at the giant vuulbor as she unlatched the lid of the next tote on the stack. “No, you had it right. Just two. Though if you added their brain cells together, they probably wouldn’t have even equaled one… What are you doing?”

Titus looked up across the vault, then grinned before turning sideways to bat his lashes at her over one shoulder.

The shoulder he’d covered in thick, dark-brown fur. “What d’ya think, boss? You like it? I think it kinda goes with my eyes.”

Rebecca barked out a laugh before her gaze settled on an obviously bare patch of the otherwise randomly decorated wall space beside him. “Did you just take that bear pelt off the wall?”

“Oh, my bad.” Titus stroked the pelt covering his enormous shoulder. “Did you have your eye on this one?”

With another laugh, she shook her head and returned her attention to the next tote and its hidden contents she was about to discover. “Here I was, picking the scariest guy around, thinking that was the best way to get Hannigan off my back. But now I’m pretty sure if we got attacked, anyone who saw you like that would just take you in your pretty fur coat as a reason to keep going.”

“Don’t judge a book by its cover, boss. I can crack skullsandlook fucking beautiful doing it.” The next eruption of his thunderous laughter felt far too big for the vault despite its otherwise sufficient space.

Rebecca crouched beside the stack of lockable totes and wiggled a finger around in her ear, which did nothing to stop the ringing.

“Hannigan was busy,” Titus began, “so you askedmeto come with you instead? Is that for real?”

“Yep.” Rebecca opened the second tote and frowned.

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