Page 23 of Elven Throne

“Whatever we didn’t shut down on our own,” Zane reported, “that explosion took care of for us. Fried all the circuitry. Melted everything else like ice cream in a fucking sauna.”

“Dude.” Leonard stepped away from him and looked the Umbál up and down with a grimace of disgust. “Please tell me you don’t actually eat ice cream in the sauna.”

Zane snorted. “Of course not. HQ never even had one.”

A round of haggard, exhausted laughter rose among the task force, though it didn’t last long.

Still, Rebecca was glad to see they’d retained the ability to banter over useless details and find some humor after what they’d been through. However unrelated.

It meant Shade was still here. That they’d survived without being entirely broken by the new set of circumstances thrust upon them.

But that didn’t mean this was over.

After confirming a surprisingly low number of Shade casualties totaling at zero and only a few minor injuries, Rebecca ordered a small group back into the woods to salvage whatever remained of the jump-point portal technology that had almost overrun them.

By the time she got that squared away, Corey hurried toward her from around the side of the crumbling compound, his eyes wide.

“Knocks!”

Behind him came a smaller stream of stumbling Shade members, some supported along the way with their arms around others’ shoulders, some refusing any help at all as they rounded the corner and entered the parking lot.

All of them stopped in awe when they noticed the giant crater and the striking lack of griybreki corpses after the battle.

Corey took a minute to catch his breath when he reached her, then glanced over his shoulder at the last of the support staff who’d defended the compound joined everyone else out here. “Grabbed everyone we could find from inside. Took a little bit to get them all out before the giant bomb went off… But I’m pretty sure it’s everyone.”

His gaze landed on the edge of the crater behind her before his eyes widened, and he pointed at it. “How the hell didthatget there?”

“The giant bomb,” Rebecca muttered.

Corey choked, his jaw dropped, and he stared at the crater before turning around to eye those around them, as if wanting to make sure this wasn’t a fantastic prank.

Whether he got the confirmation he was looking for, Rebecca didn’t know.

Another surge of urgency and concern bordering on terror swept through her while the tingling warmth—now like the first stages of a shallow burn—swept across her flesh.

Maxwell was closer.

The sudden influx of his emotions and confusion, his insistent drive to move faster, nearly overwhelmed her.

She stumbled off balance, sharply righted herself, and shook her head.

“Boss?” Titus’s heavy hand settled on her shoulder before she realized he was even there again. “You good?”

Blinking against the receding surge of everything the shifter felt so strongly, Rebecca shot the big guy a brief glance and nodded. “I’m good. Got a little more taken out of me than I thought, I guess.”

Titus’s concerned frown remained, though he did release her shoulder.

She hadn’t expected to feel this drained, even after what she’d done tonight. A decent bit of healing after the fact generally tended to restore her enough that she didn’t wobble on her feet like this. But it hadn’t just been the healing, either.

All in the same night, she’d averted a deadly ambush by Rowan’sHakalini’ir, performed an even more dangerous spell with the Blackmoon Elf for a virtual spellcast meeting with the Bloodshadow Council—whom she had then shamelessly defied—had somehow kept her operatives from attacking theHakalini’irand probably killing themselves when they’d discovered what Rowan’s protective dome meant,andused the full scope of her Bloodshadow magic to fight off a smaller attacking force of the Azyyt Ra’al.

All before coming back home tothis.

Just so she could put herself at the very center of another battle, absorb a daraku’sShi’il Taaríthspell, and end another hopeless battle.

If a little dizziness struck her here and there, she couldn’t be too hard on herself.

Gathering her wits again, Rebecca muscled to the back of her mind the odd sensations coming from Maxwell and returned her focus to the here and now. The important decisions right in front of her waiting to be made.

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