Page 83 of Elven Throne

“Did something happen?” he asked.

“What? No. It’s just… I don’t like waiting.”

“Clearly.” He could have gone to the bed, or if there’d been another chair, he might have sat in that instead. But Maxwell stood by the open bathroom door, as silent and emotionless as a shifter statue, and said nothing else.

If they kept going like this, it wouldn’t get any better, would it?

Or maybe they just needed more than a few stolen minutes of sleep at a time.

Rebecca closed her eyes again and hoped that was it. Just a little more sleep…

A loud, muffled buzzing ripped her out of the space just between full alertness and drifting off, and she forced her heavy eyelids open as Maxwell pulled his cell phone from his pocket to answer the incoming call.

“Hannigan.”

Rebecca closed her eyes again and had to start all over trying to relax.

“Yes. That is unknown at the moment. Unlikely. Hold on.”

The next thing she knew, he was clearing his throat right in front of her.

Rebecca grudgingly opened her eyes.

“It’s Nyx,” he said, holding his phone toward her.

Frowning, she took the phone and pressed it to her ear. “Nyx?”

“Hey, Knox. Sorry to bother you, but, uh… Well, Zida said you and Hannigan went out to handle some important stuff, which is cool and all. I get it. But Ireallythink we need to talk.”

Uh-oh.

This didnotsound like a break from constant emergency interruptions.

This sounded like it was about to get bad.

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“Well,now’sasgooda time as any.” Rebecca sat up straighter in the armchair, trying to draw her mind out of the sleep she didn’t get.

“Um…yeah.” Nyx’s voice squeaked, followed by a long pause. “I don’t know if it’s really something we should talk about over the phone, though. Do you know when you guys are coming back?”

“Not entirely sure, but the goal is to get this wrapped up before Shade’s week at the compound’s over. Did something happen there?”

“Oh! Uh…no,” Nyx said, followed by a rising shout of happy voices and laughter to conveniently verify her response. “No, we’re all fine here. But I…I think this is something really important, Knox. And we probably shouldn’t wait too long…”

“Okay.” Rebecca looked up at Maxwell to find him frowning as he hovered over the armchair. Of course he could hear both sides of the conversation from where he stood. “Well if we can’t talk about it over the phone, it’ll have to wait ‘til Hannigan and I get back.”

“Yeah. Right. Okay. Just, when you’re done… We just really need to talk, okay? Um…what are you guys trying to do?”

“That’s…classified,” Rebecca replied. Not technically a complete lie.

“Right. Anything we can do to help?”

“Not now, but if anything comes up, we’ll make sure you know about it.”

After another long pause, Nyx sighed. “Just be careful, Knox.”

Then the katari ended the call, and that was that.

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