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He guided us out of the vault, and I reinforced the protection spells as we passed through them.
We went back to the main office, but Flint wasn’t there.
“Go find Flint,” I said to one of the enforcers who stood watch outside of our office.
The enforcer left, and we sat at our respective desks. I had a thick book about prophecies on mine.
“All this information, and not a single hint as to what the fuck we should do,” I said, thumbing through it.
“Did any of those prophecies say anything about a nymph shifter?” Lex put his feet up on his desk. “Doubtful. We’d have to look into an old book of legends for that.”
“I know.” I pulled at my beard, looking out the window. “We need to keep her here. Not as a prisoner, but as a…I don’t know, a guest? She’s too valuable to let go while we figure out what’s going on.”
And she was too valuable to me, and probably to Lex, too. She hadn’t been here long, but she had taken up space in my world, and I didn’t want her to leave it.
The office doors opened moments later, and Flint and Arden came through. Arden had changed into leggings and a thin black tank top that hugged her long, lean body perfectly. My cock ached. It hadn’t been that long since we’d had sex, but I craved her touch. I wanted to feel her soft skin against mine.
“You’re up?” Lex blew a chair across the room and another to push Arden toward it. “You need to sit.”
“Hey!” She nearly tripped, but she righted herself before plopping into the chair. “I can walk, you know. I walked this whole way.”
“I know, but you’ve been through a lot. That much magic coursing through your veins all of a sudden will take the energy out of you,” Lex said.
Flint sat down at his desk. The usual tension he carried around had dissipated, like he’d also slept. Or slept with Arden. I raised an eyebrow at him, and he ignored me.
“We need to talk about what to do next,” he said instead. “We have the artifact, but now we have more questions than before. Like how Arden fits into all of this and whether she’s a part of the prophecy.”
“Right.” Lex rubbed the back of his neck.
“I’d say she is—it didn’t do that when any of us touched it before. And we exhausted most of our leads, so if we look into Arden’s family, we might find something,” Flint said. He exchanged a knowing look with her, and she nodded.
“The book I tried to grab had my mother’s last name on it. It’s the only thing I know about her,” Arden said. “Maybe finding out about her will help us understand the artifact.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” I said. “So, you’ll quit your job and stay here. We’ll set up an account for you with money, and we will get you everything you need.”
“Stay here? As a prisoner? And quit my job? You can’t just order me around like that! I don’t want your money. I don’t want to depend on you for my survival.” Arden tensed like she was about to flee, but Lex held up a hand.
“You wouldn’t be a prisoner. It’s just for your safety. We could have an enforcer with you at all times, but the security here is better than your apartment.”
“We killed everyone who saw you shift, but that doesn’t mean they won’t pick up on what happened to you later. Whatever you did to the artifact, it unleashed a ton of magic that’s probably still lingering.” Flint crossed an ankle over his knee, leaning back in his chair. “The Moon Oracle might know what you are. You’re so rare that someone like her would exploit your abilities the second they got a chance to. You need protection.”
“And you have no obligation to pay us back,” I added. “It’s not like it’s a burden.”
“It’s not about paying you back,” Arden sighed. “It’s about my independence. I understand that it’s much safer here with you and that you could burn a whole room of money and have enough to spare. But I want to have some normalcy and know that I can take care of myself.”
I sighed through my nose, the air hot from my annoyance.
“You’re a very stubborn female, you know that?” I said.
“If I were a male, would you say the same thing?” she shot back. None of us responded. “See?”
“The point is that you don’t need to work. You can spend all your time working on finding out more about your parents, get training for your new abilities, and be safe.” Lex stood, walking behind her and resting his hands on her shoulders. “You can leave whenever you want.”
She shook her head. “Fine, you’re right. I’ll stay here for now. But I’m still going to work and make my own money. I don’t want to be tied down.”
She met my gaze. Yeah, she wasn’t going to budge, was she? I looked away, crossing my arms over my chest. The thought of her leaving was like a knife through the deepest parts of me. Did the fact that we had a connection not mean anything? It was so meaningless that she still wanted the freedom to walk right out of my life whenever she wanted?
I didn’t like being abandoned. I’d dealt with that enough in my life.
