Page 28

28

T he farther Rebecca descended this staircase beneath a ridiculous tourist attraction off the highway, the tighter the knot of apprehension clenched in her belly.

She had no idea what they were walking into. Even worse, she suspected Rowan didn’t have a clue, either.

It definitely didn’t help that she also felt the same thrumming wariness and burrowing distrust rising inside Maxwell too to match her own. He said nothing at first, but the strength of his discomfort and uncertainty made sharing them out loud a moot point.

Even if they hadn’t had their deeply shared mistrust of Rowan peppering these new unknowns, there would have been nothing remotely reassuring about what they did now.

“I do not like this,” Maxwell finally said, the rumbling growl beneath his words echoing around them despite how softly he’d spoken. “Especially without having first been told exactly where we are going. And why.”

“I’m right there with you,” Rebecca replied, carefully choosing her footing and fighting the urge to blindly reach toward the stairwell walls on either side of her so she wouldn’t feel like she was about to walk off the edge and into the abyss at any second. “Full disclosure, this is all new territory for me. I’ve spent so long running from this fucking prophecy, I never thought I’d be intentionally looking for it. I promise you I know just as much as you do.”

“I know.”

He meant it.

By the Blood, it felt good to say something and not have it scrutinized and studied and picked apart by the shifter’s constant suspicion at every turn.

If they hadn’t already gotten to that point together, this little venture with Rowan would have turned out very differently. It might not even have been possible at all.

Rebecca’s shoes whispered across the surface of the next few steps. “So whatever happens down here, we need to be careful facing it for the first time. And if there’s an opening, I’ll try to get what I can out of Blackmoon.”

Maxwell grunted. “I won’t hold my breath for that, either.”

The soft laugh shuddering out of her felt outrageously out of place here, but she couldn’t help it.

She’d been about to say the same thing.

When she looked up at the shifter beside her—the semi-darkness lit predominantly by his glowing eyes—Maxwell stared at her, obviously startled by her amusement.

“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’t this just 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 to me , 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 and this was the time to bring it out.

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

Rebecca didn’t even look at her. “Not in any Qishwaani tavern or Faleniiz pleasure house I’d find you in, 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.

True, this was a completely different version of Rowan now, though a version still incredibly familiar to Rebecca. She’d seen this dynamic between him and his sister countless times before, though she had to admit she was also a little surprised to see it in full effect now. Hundreds of years later. After they were all supposed to have grown and matured.

Apparently, not all of them had.

Then Maxwell continued his pacing along the circular wall of the small domed chamber in which they’d found themselves, eyeing the stone ceiling lined with dangerously thick cracks, bits of broken furniture scattered about like the place had once been inhabited but had long since been abandoned.

“Time’s up,” Rebecca said as she approached Rowan. “What are we doing here?”

He snorted and kept rummaging through thin air, pulling at invisible threads she couldn’t see. “When in doubt, find a Peddler.”

“I’m surprised you don’t carry one of those around with you in your pocket at all times,” Maleine quipped.

He tensed in his crouch, as if he’d had enough and was finally about to lash out at her. But then he scrunched up his face, let out a slow exhale, and muttered something under his breath before doing his best to continue ignoring her.

Rebecca raised an eyebrow. “A Peddler? How’s that gonna help us?”

Rowan offered a flourishing wave of his hand, as if the answer were obvious. “This one deals in trade.”

“Yeah, and every other magical snake-oil salesman in existence.”

“For information ,” he clarified. “This one, I’ve been told, has the exact kind of information we need.”

“You’ve been told? By whom?”

Gritting his teeth, he shook his head and funneled all his attention into whatever spell or weave he still hadn’t gotten right. “Listen, you have your sources, and I have mine.”

“Not anymore, I don’t.” She took one step toward him until the toe of her shoe rested perfectly in his line of sight. “You killed them all.”

Sister whirled toward them, the chamber echoing with her sharp, laughably fake gasp. “Well I’ve obviously missed quite a bit of fun…”

Rowan paused again, though when he glanced up at Rebecca, there was an unexpected glimmer of guilt and remorse behind his hazel eyes. “That wasn’t entirely my fault, okay? Not directly. And I already apologized.”

“Oh good. Well then that makes everything better and brings dozens of innocent civilians back to life. Thank you .”

With a scoff, he went back to his astoundingly inefficient search.

Maleine let out a surprised chuckle. “ Rowan …”

This time, hearing his sister admonish him by name, however playful it sounded, made him cringe.

“We see the Peddler,” he said, speaking slowly and deliberately to avoid an outburst, “we pay the price of admission, and then we get what we need and move on. It’s that simple.”

“What are you looking for?” Maleine asked.

“ Múrg dah’lás , would you just—”

“Rebecca,” Maxwell growled from the other side of the chamber.

She turned toward him to find the shifter pointing at something on the floor against the chamber’s curved stone wall, eyeing her with a knowing look.

Two skeletons, flesh and hair decomposed to nothing amidst ragged strips of cloth, both of them sitting up against the wall.

Rowan snorted. “Oh, it’s Rebecca now, is it?”

Not a question worth answering.

“Care to explain why this special Peddler still has long-term visitors?” she asked instead.

The Blackmoon Elf paused, looked up at her, then spun around in his crouch to eye Maxwell before his gaze fell on the skeletons. His eyes widened, and he cleared his throat. The next second, any discomfort he’d shown disappeared behind another staggering display of cockiness. “Tell you what. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

“I love that 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 doing anything his sister did. Not side by side.

Then Maleine swung her gaze toward Maxwell and grinned. “You can be on my team, Hannigan. But only if you promise to 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. “ This is 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 a Pu’uzáh shell.”

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 like that ?”

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’s exactly what she said.”

“Hey, no one asked for your meaningless opinion. If you’re not gonna offer anything useful , why the hell are you even—”

“Why do we need that here ?” 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 an appointment and 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. “I know I 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 than this .

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 he would help her track down the prophecy. No matter how many hairbrained ideas he came up with and stupid decisions he made to get them there.

“Fine,” she said. “Then let’s hurry this up and get it over with.”

Rowan glowered at her, holding the Pu’uzáh against his chest. “Getting a little pushy all of a sudden, aren’t we?”

“That’s what happens when you don’t share a single detail of what we’re doing and can’t seem to figure the rest out with any certainty,” she quipped.

“Well stop it. I know what I’m doing.” Turning his nose up at her, he fixed her with that same disgruntled glare until he’d passed her and could no longer look her in the eye. Then he headed toward the far end of the chamber, where a massive metal door was nestled in the bedrock.

It looked sturdy enough, but the stone wall around it had clearly spent a long time bearing down on that door with increasing pressure over the years. Or decades. If the thick metal door buckled and gave out, Rebecca didn’t want to be anywhere near it.

But the Blackmoon Elf approached as if he’d been here countless times before. He stopped in front of the door, looked it over from top to bottom, then nodded. “All right. Now we just knock and wait to be let in.”

Cradling the Pu’uzáh against his chest in one hand, he raised his other fist for what would have been a loud, heavy, dramatic knock.

Before he had the chance, Maleine slipped in front of him at the last second and rapped her knuckles on the thick metal instead.

The tinny echo of that knock reverberated all around them like a warning siren.

Rowan glared at his sister, eyes wide and face reddening by the second, looking like he wanted to fucking murder her.

At first, nothing happened. Everyone waited for a response, silently gazing around the chamber in case some other clue that had nothing to do with the door showed itself.

Then, with an ear-splitting creak, the metal door finally shuddered on its hinges built into the stone wall. The wall shivered. Dust rained down everywhere, billowing toward the four visitors in the chamber.

When the door finally swung outward, scraping heavily across the stone floor as it opened into the next room beyond, even more dust tumbled from the ceiling to billow into the next room like an ancient herald.

An even thicker silence returned when it was over.

Maleine chuckled. “I never thought I’d say this, but now that I’m here, I’ve actually missed your little games.”

As she gazed through the door and stepped forward, the woman reached out to vigorous muss her brother’s hair beneath her hand.

Rowan slapped her hand away with a snarl and glared after her.

Maleine’s endless laughter echoed behind her as she strode confidently through the open door, her long shadow growing shorter as she approached the soft, not-quite-inviting glow emanating from the other side of the long hallway beyond.

After a moment of scrambling to straighten his hair, Rowan glanced and Rebecca and Maxwell and hissed, “You can’t stand out here forever.”

Then he marched through the door.

They stared after him, equally shocked by and wary of the sibling-rivalry display merging dangerously into warfare territory.

Rebecca couldn’t see much of anything past the threshold, beyond the gentle glow somewhere at the far end.

Maxwell cleared his throat, opened his mouth to say something, then sighed. “I never thought I would say this, but she’s worse than he is.”

She shot the shifter a sideways glance and cocked her head. “Where do you think he got it from?”

“Almost makes you envy the final misfortune that befell our friends back there,” he murmured, nodding back toward the skeletons against the wall.

Stifling a laugh, Rebecca took another step toward the open door, hoping that might improve visibility. It didn’t. “Another joke. You’re really getting the hang of that.”

“A new skill that unfortunately will be of no use to us in there.”

“You never know. At this rate, you might make one of them die with laughter.”

A dark rumble vibrated through his chest. “Or both of them.”

“Baby steps, Hannigan.”

When they exchanged another knowing look, they also shared a small, wary smile before stepping forward through that open door together. Side by side.

Because they could.

But smiles and levity did nothing to settle either of their suspicion or wary caution as they followed Rowan and Maleine into the room beyond and every unknown it contained.

Because clearly, even Rowan didn’t actually know what he’d led them into down here, no matter how confident he might have been that this was the necessary first step toward finding the prophecy, and therefore their only step.

And Maleine was clearly just along for the ride, like always.

Which meant literally anything could happen now.

One wrong move, and those skeletons behind them might just get a few more eternal companions.