Page 77 of Elven Throne

“It will draw less attention,” he replied sternly.

“Sure. Until it breaks down in the middle of nowhere and we have to flag down help.”

“I imagine car troubles will be the least of our concerns during this venture.” Maxwell opened the Honda’s driver-side door and disappeared behind the wheel.

The muffled click of that door shutting again behind him made Rebecca relent.

He wasn’t wrong. Clearly, this wasn’t a decision on which her Head of Security was willing to compromise.

So she joined him in the Honda, pulled the passenger-side door shut as he started the engine, then turned to face him with a deadpan stare. “With the wayyoudrive, if it breaks down on us on our way back to Chicago, don’t get upset with me when I say I told you so.”

Maxwell shifted into drive. “There should be no need for you to say it.”

“You’re that confident in this thing?”

“Not at all. But now that you’ve gotten it out of your system, you’ll have no need to say it again.”

With a snort, she strapped on her seatbelt and leaned back in the seat as he pulled their least-reliable vehicle out of the abandoned lot and onto the road.

From the corner of her eye, she thought she a little smirk.

“Do you have a destination in mind?” Maxwell asked.

Rebecca stared through the passenger-side window at the trees rushing past with increasing speed, their shadows shrinking and lengthening again beneath the passing headlights as the only light in the dark along the road. “A few, actually. Let’s start with the Nexus vault downtown.”

Maxwell watched the road with a deepening scowl. “Do you expect Blackmoon to meet usthere?”

“I certainly hope he doesn’t,” she said. “But we’re gonna need more than a vehicle on its last leg and the clothes on our back.” She looked down at her inefficient ensemble. “Or Titus’s, at any rate.”

He shot her a quick look, then nodded. “The vault, then.”

That was as far as they could plan, for now. Because until Rowan did find Rebecca to rejoin her, wherever that happened to be, she had no idea where to go, no idea where to start looking for this prophecy, and was forced to wait for the Blackmoon Elf’s help.

Not her preferred way to start this little side mission of theirs, but it was the only option.

Being prepared with fresh clothes and a few extra tools if they could find them in the city, not to mention a bit of spending money from the vault, certainly wouldn’t hurt.

That was as prepared as they were going to get.

While the shifter drove them through the darkness, past sprawling farmland and small pockets of even smaller houses along the frontage road, his growing ease and confidence the farther they left the Sparta pack behind them washed over Rebeca as well.

She appreciated the change of emotional scenery, as it were, but she still harbored her own misgivings about this new venture of theirs.

If Rowan really had been working on his plan for helping Rebecca search for the Bloodshadow prophecy, Earthside money of any kind would likely be of no value to anyone involved in protecting the hidden Agn’a Tha’ros archives.

But she might be able to collect a few other valuable items from Aldous’s old Nexus vault that were inherently of more value to whoever they dealt with next.

After the vault, she and Maxwell would just have to play it by ear until Rowan showed up when and where he felt like it.

Hopefully, no one else accosted them along the way to put even more dangerous obstacles in their path than they already faced.

23

Theflimsydoorcreakedloudly behind them as Rebecca and Maxwell stepped into the lobby.

The shifter’s nostrils flared with his darkening scowl, and a low growl emanated from deep in his chest. “I do not like this.”

“Well, if staying low-key and off the radar is still a priority,” she told him, “this is what we get.”

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