She slipped the metal orb into her jacket pocket, and Corian stepped toward her. “If a day’s all you need, take it. We’ll wipe out the machines on this side, and that frees us up for the rest.”
“What about the new portals? If we’re going back to the other side, the Crown’s gonna send more shipments across, and we won’t be here to stop them.”
Corian nodded. “That’s something General Hi’et and I have been working on—a temporary freeze of as many of the portal ridges as we can get our hands on. Once L’zar finishes the spell he’s been working on to keep the Crown from seeing him on the other side, we’ll have a short window, and we should use it.”
“I thought you were helping him with that.”
The nightstalker’s eyebrows flicked together, and they glanced at the office in the back of the warehouse when L’zar pulled the door closed behind him and disappeared. “What he’s trying to do has to be done all on his own. I’m just facilitating, more or less.”
“Huh.” Cheyenne studied the office door. “What kinda spell takes days for someone like L’zar to cast?”
Corian gave her a warning glance. “The kind that only someone like L’zar is mad enough to attempt.”
That means, don’t ask any more questions because he won’t answer.
“Okay. I’ll leave him to his madness, then.”
“Smart move.” Corian smiled at Ember. “Despite our little party being crashed, you both did well today. Things are gonna get a lot more interesting after the Nós Aní binding.”
“Really?” Ember raised her eyebrows and flashed him a fierce grin. “I hadn’t noticed.”
Shaking his head, Corian cast another portal from the warehouse into the girls’ apartment and stepped back. “Try to lay low, huh? Call me if anything happens, but I’m expecting you to pull through and have that machine figured out by tomorrow.”
Cheyenne patted her jacket pocket as Ember wheeled through the portal. “Come on. Hacking into things someone doesn’t want me to see is one of my skills.”
“Among many.” The nightstalker smiled and nodded at the portal. “So get to work.”
Snorting, Cheyenne stepped through the portal and disappeared. The oval of dark light closed with a pop, and Corian let out a heavy sigh. Byrd and Lumil stared after him and turned away to handle their own business when they realized he was headed for L’zar’s makeshift bedroom.
Corian knocked lightly on the door, and a flash of black light spilled through the crack above the floor before L’zar growled. “What?”
Slowly, the nightstalker opened the door and slipped inside. “Any progress?”
L’zar sat cross-legged on the floor facing the far wall, his hands resting in his lap. “It’s rather hard to tell when I have you breathing down my neck every time I try to work.”
Corian clasped his hands behind his back. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
The drow dropped his shoulders, and his unbound white hair spilled around his face. “Progress, sure. But I have no idea if this will be ready tomorrow or a month from now.”
“We don’t have a month.”
L’zar hissed and spun to face his friend. “I know what we don’t have, Corian. We almost lost her at that damn ceremony.”
“No one forced you to stand back while we fought.”
“No.” The drow pushed himself across the floor until he pressed his back against the wall. His head followed with a thud. “Just my own shortcomings. I wasted too much time in that prison.”
“Hmm. Maybe you should just tell her.”
“Absolutely not.” L’zar shook his head, propping his forearms on his bent knees. “She’d never agree to do this if she knew.”
“You think Cheyenne will agree to keep going when she finds out on her own instead of hearing it from you? Because she will find out, one way or another. When you two set foot in that chamber and she takes what’s hers to take, there’s no way to keep that secret anymore.”
L’zar closed his eyes and let out another long, slow exhale. “She’ll be fine. She’s strong.”
Corian tilted his head and studied the drow he’d called his friend for thousands of years. “She also knows when to admit she’s wrong and ask for help. She might not like it, but I wouldn’t expect her to.”
“I’m not wrong.”
“No. Not so far. Age and wisdom aren’t synonymous, brother. There’s a lot you could learn from her, probably even more because of who she is to you.”
L’zar waved a dismissive hand and sagged in exhaustion against the wall where no one but Corian could see. “You know how it goes. Can’t teach an old drow new tricks and all that bullshit.”
Folding his arms, Corian frowned above a small, barely discernible smile. “Are you sure about that?”
The drow’s golden eyes flew open. He stared at the nightstalker and shook his head a fraction of an inch. “Not at all.”
“Good.” Corian pulled the door open again.
With a snort, L’zar watched his friend step out of the room. “That’s a shitty way of trying to make me feel better.”
“No, that was for me.The day you tell me you know everything is the day I’ll know you’ve lost your mind for good.” Without waiting for a response, the nightstalker stepped back into the main room of the warehouse and pulled the door shut behind him.
L’zar’s laughter followed him.
Chapter Sixty-Five
Cheyenne Summerlin sat in the black leather recliner in her living room with the thin silver coil of the O’gúl activator attached behind her ear and studied the broken piece of the old-school war machine straight from the other side of the portal. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say this thing is still active.”
“But you know better, don’t you?” Ember Gaderow sat in her wheelchair between the coffee table and the couch, scanning the loose pieces of paper she’d laid out on every surface she could reach.
“Well, yeah. Of course I do.” Cheyenne turned the dead-looking orb of O’gúl metal over and over in her hands. “I brought most of these down, plus the tank.”
“While the
