Page 99 of Elven Throne

“It was not intended to be funny,” he grumbled.

“Oh, I know. Doesn’t change the fact that it is. I’m just glad we’re on the same page with more than tactical operations and standard procedure.”

Maxwell blinked, his eyebrows flickered together as he processed what she’d meant by that, then the corner of his mouth twitched into a smile that probably would have grown all by itself. If they’d been anywhere else.

Watching the metamorphosis across his face from confusion to realization and amusement was one of the more satisfying images to which Rebecca would cling for a very long time after this.

Even when he immediately tried to cover up that smile with another stern glower of focus and determination on their journey down the stairs into…who knew?

He couldn’t, however, cover up the swelling pleasure her words had invoked inside him, all of it pouring into her through their connection, as if the shifter’s body on its own simply wasn’t large enough to contain it all.

And Rebecca pretended not to have seem him smile or to have felt what she’d felt from him.

Before they reached the bottom of the stairs, a dim, bluish-gray glow rose up toward them from the partially illuminated chamber below. It helped navigate their way safely down, of course.

It also gave Rowan and Maleine a much better view of Rebecca and Maxwell when they arrived.

“Ooh, isn’tthisjust the cutest thing?” Maleine called out, her singsong voice echoing around the chamber. “Any time you two are finished whispering sweet little secrets to each other, we can finally get this thing rolling.’”

The small, secret smile on Rebecca’s lips fled beneath the obnoxious grating of Maleine’s voice. Not that it was particularly unpleasant, but she’d almost forgotten the woman was still here with them. Again.

And she’d had plenty of past experience to convince her that when Maleine started to sound impressed, or amused, or that she held any level of approval for anyone but herself, that was when things really started to take a turn for the worse.

On the far side of the chamber, Rowan crouched low to the floor, muttering angrily to himself and shaking his head with a constant scowl as he fiddled with something Rebecca couldn’t see.

If his words had been remotely intelligible, she wouldn’t have been surprised to hear him muttering about how much he hated Maleine and wished she’d never found him.

Then she and Maxwell finally reached the bottom of the staircase that had felt so much longer and steeper than anything running beneath an Illinois highway had a right to be.

Maleine stood by the base of the stairs, grinning as they arrived, and leaned toward Maxwell as he passed her. “But any time you wanna whisper tome, handsome, I am all ears.”

He looked her over from head to do without comment and just kept walking.

The woman’s laugh echoed drastically around the small chamber as she turned her attention to Rebecca next. Conspiratorial and grinning. Like the two of them had some sort of girly connection andthiswas the time to bring it out.

“Isn’t thisfun?” Maleine stuck a thumb out toward Maxwell making his slow way across the chamber, investigating everything. “Where’d you findhim?”

Rebecca didn’t even look at her. “Not in any Qishwaani tavern or Faleniiz pleasure house I’d findyouin, I can tell you that much.”

“Aw,Kilda’ari…”

Rebecca couldn’t help but bristle at that.

She hated that old-world name on Rowan’s lips, and she hated it even more coming from his sister.

It made her pause, and Maleine leapt at the opportunity to sidle up close to her, almost whispering in her ear.

“If I didn’t know you better,” the woman cooed, “I’d say I’ve missed you.”

“That makes one of us,” Rebecca grumbled and kept walking.

Whatever Rowan had been searching for on the other side of the chamber, he still hadn’t found it. Nor had he risen from his crouch. In fact, his angry muttering had only intensified as he searched some invisible thing in the air, flicking his wrists back and forth and twirling his fingers at a whole lot of nothing.

She hadn’t seen him this upset and flustered in a very long time, and while she thought she would have enjoyed seeing him like this, knowing it was because of Maleine didn’t quite give it the same pizzaz of satisfaction.

“Can everybody just shut up for a second?” he hissed. “I’m trying to concentrate.”

Maxwell turned slowly from the dusty, crumbling wooden table lying on its side he’d been inspecting and widened his eyes at the Blackmoon Elf.

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