“Between a drow and a FRoE place. I get it.”
Cheyenne chuckled. “I knew you had it together the first time I met you.”
“I knew you weren’t really gonna kill my uncle. Guess we both have pretty good intuition.”
“Yeah. Maybe we do.” They exchanged smiles, then Cheyenne slapped her thighs and pushed to her feet. “Okay. Let’s get you home, huh? It sucks to be cooped up in this place for longer than ten minutes.”
The orc girl stood and smoothed down the front of the oversized t-shirt some FRoE agent had given her to replace the creepy black robes her kidnappers had dressed her in. “My name’s Aksu, by the way.”
The halfling’s smile widened, and she stuck out her hand. “Cheyenne.”
They shook, and Aksu frowned. “That’s not a very drow name, is it? Even for a halfling.”
“Yeah, well, I got the short end of the drow-role-model stick.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Cheyenne laughed again and headed toward the door. “I’m starting to think I’m better off the way things turned out.”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
When the door opened, Cheyenne found Rhynehart, Sheila, and Sir standing halfway down the hall. Sir scowled at her, and his eyes widened when Aksu stepped into the hall behind the halfling.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m taking her home.”
“I don’t remember giving you the go-ahead for that, halfling.”
Cheyenne kept walking toward the major. She stopped about a foot away and narrowed her eyes. “I got the go-ahead when you called me to do what you can’t. It took you two days to do that, and it took me about ten minutes to get her name and her story. Now I’m taking her home.”
Sir’s nostrils flared when he took a quick sniff, and he leaned down to meet the five-foot-four halfling’s challenge. “I don’t like the way you smell when you get cocky, Cheyenne.”
“The feeling’s mutual.”
“And I don’t like hearing that you know something we don’t.”
Cheyenne raised her eyebrows. “You can’t call me in to fix something you broke and expect me to let you read my diary afterward. I can do things you can’t, and I can know things you don’t, and you’ll just have to deal with it. Major.”
The man’s beady eyes locked on hers, his mustache bristling when his upper lip twitched. “If you keep cutting it close like this, you’re gonna end up a lot bloodier than you expect.”
The halfling grinned. “Are you threatening me, Sir?”
“Threats are for pencil-pushers and store clerks, Cheyenne. This is a professional courtesy. And don’t forget our little arrangement, huh? If you can’t figure out why that lunatic drow behind bars turned himself back in to keep playing prisoner just for fun, you’ll have to go through me every time you want to have a little chat. And believe me, halfling, I don’t like holding your short leash any more than you like being tied to it.”
Cheyenne lifted her chin and took a small step forward so Sir was looking straight down at her. “You know what a mantis shrimp can do when it starts punching the water?”
“What the hell does a goddamn shrimp have to do with any of this?”
“Look it up. You can tell me about it the next time you call.” With a curt nod, Cheyenne stepped around the major and brushed past him down the hall. She looked over her shoulder to nod at Aksu. “Come on.”
Without a word, the orc girl followed the drow halfling down the hall. Before they stepped out into the common room, Aksu leaned toward Cheyenne and muttered, “He really doesn’t like you.”
“You don’t have to like someone to need their help. I think it’s one or the other with him, though.”
The other agents sitting around at the tables in the common room looked up when Cheyenne and the last kidnapped magical minor entered. Someone started clapping, and a less than enthusiastic round of applause made its way toward them. The halfling smirked and kept walking. Aksu frowned at the agents, then looked at the halfling. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything. I’m pretty sure that’s for you.”
“What?” The orc girl stepped around Cheyenne to put the halfling between her and all the FRoE agents nodding at her and clapping like they’d just been forced to sit through the most boring speech of their lives. “I didn’t do anything, either.”
“You should give yourself more credit.”
“Hey, Goth drow,” Bhandi called. Aksu snorted at the nickname. “I’m free for a ride-along if you two want some company.”
“You’re not getting in my car, Bhandi.”
“Oh, come on. She gets to sit in there. I’ll just sit in the back and shut up. You won’t even know I’m there.”
Cheyenne shot the troll woman a little shrug before leading Aksu to the compound’s empty front lobby.
Behind her, Bhandi thumped a hand on the table and growled, “I show a drow halfling a good time with fellwine, and she won’t let me in her damn car.”
“You and fellwine in the same sentence, Bhandi?” another agent shouted. “Nobody’s having a good time but you.”
Laughter spilled down the hall as Cheyenne pushed open the front door and held it for Aksu. The orc girl frowned over her shoulder but didn’t stop. “Credit for what?”
“Huh?”
Aksu studied the parking lot and the line of black FRoE vehicles stretching from front to back. “You said I should give myself more credit. For what?”
Cheyenne shoved her hands into her pockets and smirked. “For being tough. I don’t know how hard Major Sir tried to interrogate you, but I know that after two days of watching spit fly from under that mustache, I would’ve tried to rip it off.”
The girl let out a low, surprisingly self-aware laugh.
The halfling studied her sidelong and smiled. “And because you kept it together after almost two days of being locked up with a bunch of other kids who didn’t belong in that mansion, either.”
“Like radan.”
“Like what?”
Aksu stuck her hands in the pockets of the baggy sweatpants the FRoE had loaned her and shrugged. “Livestock back home.”
“Oh, yeah. I
