Page 70 of Elven Prince

But it wasn’t quite at its end. Not yet.

“Thank you, Hannigan,” Rebecca said.

He blinked in surprise but quickly covered it up beneath his perpetually scowling mask and stepped back along the line of her council members.

His stare on the side of her face as Rebecca prepared to deliver one final bombshell of a confession made her cheeks burn instantly hot.

Maxwell wouldn’t enjoy what she had to say next, either, but he would understand why she did it now, here, in front of everyone. The risks of not doing it were had simply become too great to ignore.

“There’s one more item I want to address,” she continued, sweeping her gaze across the sea of faces still gazing respectfully back at her, though now several of them showed far more surprise and curiosity for what came next than in anything she’d told them so far.

“This has been on my mind for weeks now, and I bring it up now because I have a feeling there won’t be many opportunities in the immediate future for everyone to hear it from me, together and all at once.”

She paused, maybe for added gravitas, maybe to give herself one more brief chance to collect her thoughts and her composure before she let it all out. Her gut curdled at the thought of making this public and official in the eyes of her task force, but it had to be done.

And it was going to hurt.

19

“Some of you are naturally not going to like this next announcement.” Rebecca’s voice echoed throughout the crowded common room amidst the silence normally reserved for the dead. “Hell, I don’t like it myself, but it has to be done.”

From the corner of her eye, she caught Maxwell peering at her with curiosity and surprise, his silver eyes wider than usual. When she shot him a quick sidelong glance, she found him looking abnormally guilty, like he’d just been caught with his paw in the treat jar and was about to get holy hell handed to him in an official Shade meeting.

Dammit, why did he have to look soguilty? This wasn’t about him.

But now that he seemed to think it was, Rebecca couldn’t stop wondering if there was something else he hadn’t told her yet. Something else he suspected she’d figured out all on her own.

Like the meaning behind that elven tattoo on his chest, perhaps? Or some other nefarious move he’d made against her because he was in league with her enemies and, until now, had thought he’d pulled the wool over her eyes enough to lure her into an inescapable trap?

Or did he expect her to suddenly reveal everything about herself to everyone without having trusted him explicitly to reveal those secrets to him first and in private?

Now was not the time to try picking that one apart. She’d already begun something here with her task force, and it had to be finished.

Rebecca had to keep going with this, despite how uncomfortable—no, how downrightpainful—it was going to be.

Because despite all that, she had to put Shade first. They deserved to know. This was where Rebecca belonged now. This was who she was.

She’d made up her mind, so she dove into the one topic she’d tried so hard to keep from broaching with any member of her task force until she’d realized she could no longer hold it off.

“I mentioned earlier the staged ambush on Blackmoon and myself when we found Aldous’s Nexus vault downtown, our attempts to question them, and Blackmoon’s deliberate defiance of my orders to send them back to Big Boss with a message from Shade’s new Roth-Da’al,” she said. “Blackmoon acted out of line and against direct orders, but it wasn’t this one defiant act of his that led me to my current position on this matter and why I’m bringing it up now.

“That same day, Blackmoon repeatedly endangered Shade’s anonymity and the necessary secrecy of magic within the human world. He openly used magic on humans at Millenium Park, with no other reason than for his own amusement, and he refused to take any accountability for his actions and poor decisions.

“Before this, during our tactical assault on Harkennr’s prisoner warehouse, Blackmoon also disobeyed direct orders, abandoned his post and duties during that operation, compromised the mission, and endangered not only the teams involved in that frontal assault but the magical civilians targeted during the rescue.

“Yes, we came out of that victorious in the end, but the combination of Blackmoon’s recklessness and insubordination, repeated over several weeks without any sign of remorse or an intention to correct his behavior, have and left me with no other choice.

“Because of this, I am forced to label the Blackmoon Elf as a traitor and, due to his continued absence, a defector.”

The words nearly stuck in her throat before she managed to spit them out. Once they were in the open, heard by the entire common room, she gave herself another moment to regain her train of thought and clarity while a ripple of whispered surprise and curiosity surged among Shade’s members.

Rebecca felt Maxwell’s surprise yet again, though she couldn’t bring herself to look at him. Somewhere to her left Bor, grunted and muttered something unintelligible.

She’d had no reason to discuss this with anyone else previously, but with the recent attacks on Shade’s individual members and their entire network of magical contractors and vendors in the city, she would have done them all a disservice not to broach the subject now.

She lifted a hand before continuing, caught off guard by the instant shush filling the room again when everyone realized their Roth-Da’al still had more to say.

“I realize this may come as something of a shock to hear, especially after no sign of Blackmoon’s whereabouts in the weeks following the assault on Harkennr’s warehouse. Personally, I hold no ill will against Blackmoon, nor would I expect any of you to do so simply because I have brought these things to your attention.”

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