Page 101 of Elven Throne

“Ilovethat game,” Maleine interjected, now leaning casually back against the wall with her arms folded. She looked alarmingly like her brother in that position, but of course Rowan wouldn’t be caught dead doinganythinghis sister did. Not side by side.

Then Maleine swung her gaze toward Maxwell and grinned. “You can be onmyteam, Hannigan. But only if youpromiseto bite.”

Holy fucking shit, did it ever stop with her?

This was Maleine’s way of disarming the enemy. Rebecca knew that, just as she knew the same behavior from Rowan held similar intentions.

That didn’t make it any less annoying, and if Maleine kept it up like this, Rebecca didn’t know if she could hold back until their mission here was complete.

It did help some, though, when Maxwell merely fixed a blank stare on the elf woman and grumbled, “Not likely.”

Maleine shrugged. “We’ll see.”

A stream of obscenities in ancient elven and old Xaharí burst from Rowan’s mouth too quickly for Rebecca to pick out a single word.

Maleine cracked up laughing, the ear-splitting sound of it jarringly loud in a place that didn’t seem like somewhere loud noises generally went over well. She’d probably keep laughing like that if they were chased out of here by Death itself.

“Finally!” With a flash of white-silver light blooming around him, Rowan leapt to his feet, brandishing a dark item in his hand. “Thisis what we need.”

Rebecca didn’t immediately recognize the object, but the aura of darkness and insanely powerful old-world magic pulsing off the thing in waves as he held it aloft was unmistakable.

What the hell was he doing?

“What is that?” she asked, unable to take her eyes off the object.

“Oh this?” Rowan’s mischievous grin returned before he shrugged. “It’s aPu’uzáhshell.”

Maleine let out an approving hum of interest as he pushed herself off the wall to inch closer. “Now how did you get your hands on something likethat?”

His grin instantly disappeared, though he didn’t look at her. “I snagged it out from under some Matahg bounty hunter in Portland. She thought there were only four. This is the fifth.”

“Getting friendly with Matahg now, are we?”

“Very funny.” He almost sent a scathing glare her way. “I was in and out before she even knew I was there.”

Maleine folded her arms again, her head bobbing in sinister sarcasm. “Yeah, I bet that’sexactlywhat she said.”

“Hey, no one asked foryourmeaningless opinion. If you’re not gonna offer anythinguseful, why the hell are you even—”

“Why do we need thathere?” Rebecca asked, cutting off his tirade aimed at his sister while also desperately wanting the answer.

If they were down here, in a chamber like this, where Rowan had secured them anappointmentand still felt he needed to bring a Pu’uzáh along? That gave her a particularly foreboding feeling about the whole thing.

“Price of admission,” Rowan said cheerily. “IknowI already mentioned that part.”

“For all of us?”

He gazed thoughtfully at the dark object in his hand, then cocked his head. “Yeah… Should be.”

For fuck’s sake…

He’d given them nothing but hearsay and ‘should be’ and ‘I think so’ and still expected them to follow his lead on this?

Literally anything else would have been a safer, more predictable, nowhere near potentially deadly first step in their hunt for the prophecy thanthis.

Her hopes hadn’t been set very high in the first place, but now this looked worse for them than she’d expected.

At the same time, Rebecca had a striking lack of other options. She’d come this far, and the only way forward was to take Rowan at his word that hewouldhelp her track down the prophecy. No matter how many hairbrained ideas he came up with and stupid decisions he made to get them there.

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