She shivered and rubbed her arms, trying to soothe the goose bumps. To warm the chill she couldn’t quite shake—the chill she hadn’t been able to shake for weeks. She needed to do something. Change something. But she’d been caught in a holding pattern, some strange gray purgatory. As if something deep inside her had been waiting.
Waiting for him.
No. That was insane. She’d spent too long creating imaginary worlds, and now she’d started to believe her own fantasies. Ellie pushed the thought away and focused on Vic. “I’m much more productive down here without all the distractions of the office. Would you believe that I got over three thousand e-mails while I was in hospital?” She grimaced to herself, wishing she could quietly delete them all without anybody noticing. “I’m working through them in between speccing some of the later game dynamics for after Luke and Sienna find the fae lord’s mountain citadel.”
It was going to begorgeous. The citadel was a magnificent hybrid of Minas Tirith and the Goblin King’s labyrinth. “They have to work their way through the maze for hours before they find the entrance to the sky bridge. There are so many puzzles we can incorporate. And the shadows make it so much edgier. The mist is everywhere—corrupting the earth as it spreads—so the creatures they meet can be just that little bit twisted. The best kind of sexy, diabolical fae.” A moment of lightness bubbled through her; this was what she had always loved.
“You don’t need to do any of that,” Vic replied sharply, and Ellie’s bubbles of joy popped and faded. “Don’t you think maybe it would be better to take a break for a week or two and leave it to… ah, let yourself heal?”
Well. Clearly. Since now she was seeing people. She remembered his face so clearly, like it was etched into her brain. Those eyes, looking straight into hers. Except… he wasn’t real.No one had been in her house. Nissy had been asleep on the windowsill in the dining room the entire time. Ellie’s office was empty, her firewall untouched. All the windows were closed, just as she left them. Her front door was locked. She’d tried it four times. And she’d just checked it all again.
But… why was Vic suggesting a break? Hadn’t she just said she was too busy? Had Ellie misunderstood the question about London? It didn’t sound like Victoria was asking how soon she could come back—it sounded like Vic wanted her to stay away.
No, that didn’t make sense. Vic was looking out for her. “I can’t take a break,” Ellie said slowly. “Then you’d be even busier. And it’s not a good time to take my eye off development.”
She pressed her face into the glass of the wide folding doors that led from her living room to her deck and peered into the dark garden. Maybe she should get some security lights? Maybe some cameras? Having the forest nearby hadn’t bothered her before, but now it seemed menacingly dark. An ominous presence of deep purple and pitch black, creeping toward the house.
Nissy sauntered into the living room behind her. The darkness didn’t botherherat all. Ellie reached down and scratched gently behind her silky ears, letting Nissy’s gentle purr soothe her.
“Don’t you think?” Vic asked. And judging by the hint of impatience creeping into her tone, probably not for the first time. Damn. Ellie’d left her hanging. She wrinkled her nose, frustrated. Somehow conversations with Vic kept going wrong.
“Sorry, Vic, what did you say?”
“I said that if you’re determined to work, maybe you could leave the game dynamics to my team and focus on the marketing package. We need a brief for the agency that brings some storylines to life. You’ve always been the best at that.”
Best at briefing an ad agency? Better at a junior marketing role than the essential systems for her own game?
Ellie sank into the closest sofa. Victoria was her head of Development. It made sense that she wanted some autonomy, but that didn’t change Ellie’s ultimate responsibility.
When she’d launched the first game, there’d been plenty of people who mocked her. More than one nasty troll came crawling out from under their social media bridge. But she’d believed in her idea. She still did. A lot of people underestimated the number of female gamers, and adding a sexy storyline with a fulfilling HEA tapped into a severely underrepresented market. The fantasy world she’d created—underpinned by the romance between Luke and Sienna—was a thrilling, beautiful escape for her family of players. And she took that seriously.
“There’s no point in starting work on an advertising brief yet,” Ellie argued. “The people who lovedThe Shadowbound Riftare already desperate forPart 2: The Binding. We need to make sure it’s absolutely perfect before it goes out into the world. Once we know what we’re doing, we can start pulling together a teaser campaign and looking at advertising.”
Victoria huffed. “Having a clear premise now won’t hurt.”
“We already have a clear premise—Luke and Sienna battling more sexy fae—and we’re sharing it across all our social media. But spending money and time on advertising when we don’t have a finished game doesn’t make sense.”
“But if we want to sell?—”
“Idon’twant to sell.” Ellie cut Vic off more sharply than she intended. But she was tired of this discussion.
Vic was her family, she had been one of her earliest employees—she had the stock options to prove it—and she would take a hefty payday if Ellie sold… they both would. But Ellie wasn’t ready. She didn’t think she ever would be.
The whole idea of the sale had blindsided her. And with her accident only a week later, she hadn’t had a chance to deal with it before her world upended. And then when she’d come home, she’d put it off. Partly because she was hurting and tired. But mostly because Vic was so keen on it… and it was her father’s brainchild.
He had found the buyer and come to her with the deal. He’d been full of excitement and joy, talking about her game and the world she’d created with interest and respect for the first time ever.
The little girl in her had been looking for that approval—that acceptance and encouragement—for so long, she’d hardly known how to respond. And so, instead of shutting it down immediately, she’d promised to think about it. And then Vic had leaped at the idea, and suddenly she was stuck. Her father and her best friend stood on one side; what she wanted—what she knew was right—was on the other. She didn’t want to hurt them. Or lose them. And so she’d delayed.
Ellie softened her voice and tried to close the gap between them. “We don’t need to sell, Vic.The Shadowbound Riftmeans something to people. You know that.”
Ellie let her gaze travel away from the window, back to the framed character art spread over her living room walls. Some of it was from the game, but a lot of it had been sent in by fans. People so in love with the story that they wanted to build on it, wanted to add their own creativity and imagination… and a whole lot of spice. “Our players love Sienna and Luke. They want to take them through the next chapter in their story.” She paused for a second, looking for the right words. “I don’t want to put that in the hands of someone whose only focus is how much money they can make.”
Vic blew out a rough breath, but she was listening. She also loved Sienna and Luke. And Vic wanted what was best for her, Ellie knew it, just like she wanted the best for Vic.
She tried to find an olive branch. “Send me whatever you feel I can help with the most—whatever will take some of the load off your shoulders—and I’ll look at it tomorrow. And maybe you could come down and visit sometime. Let’s take that break together. It’s still a bit cold to swim in the sea, but we could eat fish-and-chips on the beach. What do you think?”
“Fine.” Vic didn’t sound especially excited about the idea. “But you are at least thinking about selling, aren’t you?”
