What kind of teacher has a rep like that?
Arjun canted his head toward the guards. “Are you afraid of an arrant, Gwon?”
“No.” Gwon sniffed. Stepping back, he gestured sharply with the end of his rifle toward the gate. “Move along.”
Vesta took her sweet time rolling the window back up. The gate lifted and she pulled forward slowly, as cool as a cucumber.
As they rolled down a long, guarded road toward Solbourne Tower, Arjun asked, “Did you bite someone?”
Cecilia coughed into her fist. “Might’ve.”
Not that it did much good,she silently added.You elvish motherfuckers have tough skin.
The elves currently helping her commit some sort of crime were quiet for a moment. She wondered what impression she made on two hardened soldiers who’d probably taken more lives than she’d ever met.
Did she seem foolish to them? Her face flushed at the thought. She was used to not being taken seriously, but it was a different sort of discomfort to know a bunch of predators saw her as little more than a buzzing gnat.
Sloane called her his doe because he saw her as soft and harmless, which was true. As hard as she fought to get back to him, it hadn’t made a damn difference. She would’ve had better luck fist-fighting a wall.
“Not many arrants would try to fight an elf,” Vesta noted.
Cecilia shrugged stiffly. “Yeah, well, if I can hit Sloane in the head with a lamp, I can bite the sonuvabitch who thinks he can drag me into the back of a van.”
Arjun swiveled in his seat to look at her. “You hit Fortuner with a lamp?”
Miming the whack she’d given her elf, she answered, “Cracked his helmet and everything.”
Arjun sat back in his seat. “Excellent.”
“Very impressive,” Vesta concurred.
The other elf replied, “I understand his disappearance better now. I didn’t know they made consorts like her.”
Cecilia looked down at her hands in her lap. It didn’t feel right to smile, but it was also… nice to feel accepted. She’d only ever gotten that kind of easy camaraderie from Dahlia and the students she’d taught during her courses. To be so readily accepted by these fearsome people was special in its own right not just because they were Sloane’s family but because they were hers now, too.
It was a warm shot of comfort she desperately needed as they pulled into an underground garage beneath the Tower.
Vesta drove past rows and rows of expensive vehicles, through another gate, and down a dark tunnel. Whatever normalcy was found in what could’ve been any other underground garage in a rich neighborhood vanished as they entered what could only be Patrol’s territory.
The hair rose on the back of her sweaty neck as they passed lines of parked Patrol and military-looking vehicles. Vesta parked in an empty spot near a heavily armored and brightly lit entrance in the concrete wall, and almost as soon as the engine cut, both elves were out of the SUV.
Arjun opened Cecilia’s door. Taking a deep breath of cool air, she prayed her legs would hold her weight as she slid out.
Dipping his head, he explained, “You don’t need to do anything. Just walk and do as we say.”
She swallowed hard. “Heard.”
Adrenaline pumped through her veins like liquid lightning with every step they took. A buzz filled her ears, and the world became a narrow pinprick focused on Vesta’s back as she escorted Cecilia through the armored doors and into a maze of underground tunnels.
She’d heard of the tunnels beneath Solbourne Tower. Everyone had. That was where Mad Thad took his enemies andhis political prisoners and anyone who happened to look at him wrong. Myths and harrowing true stories about what went on in those tunnels still traveled through the EVP.
It hadn’t occurred to her to be afraid before, but as she walked down those bare, white halls, a chill permeated her bones — like the shadow of a beast loomed over her, blocking out the sun.
Doesn’t matter,she thought, clenching her jaw.Sloane’s here. He busted through a window to get to me. I’ll walk through this nightmare fuel to get to him.
Every time they passed a group of officers or soldiers, she tensed. But no one stopped them. If anything, they gave Vesta and Arjun a wide berth.
It all felt too easy, but she didn’t dare question it. She barely breathed, afraid that any small noise or movement would ruin it. She was so focused that she was almost separate from herself, from the cool air on her skin and the sounds echoing off the bare walls.
