10. Chapter 10

10

S itting here, helpless to stop what she’d set in motion, stoke a rage in Rebecca bordering on panic. She clenched her fists, desperate to ground herself in the only thing that made sense right now. Her anger.

With Maxwell, for always dredging up these… feelings inside her. She wasn’t supposed to feel them, whether she understood them or not.

At Rowan, for having foiled her attempts to remain forever disconnected from and unfound by her past.

At all of Shade, for having made her their new commander at the absolute wrong time, for trusting her and believing in her and needing her when so much of what they thought she’d given them was a lie.

She shouldn’t have had to deal with any of this, even one at a time, but now it all crowded in around her as if she were drowning.

None of this was part of the plan.

Now that they were all here in the same room, on the brink of becoming something else entirely, it felt like she was being forced to choose. To pick sides.

The shifter, who might have started to grow on her with their tentative new truce as they tried on for size their decision to work together…

Or the Blackmoon Elf moving through The Striving right now, who was probably the only person on Earth who knew Rebecca Bloodshadow inside and out.

The only person on two worlds, to be more precise.

She shouldn’t have to choose. She’d chosen something completely different by leaving the Bloodshadow Court in the first place. It shouldn’t have followed her all the way here.

The worst part was that she couldn’t even let herself truly feel any of it. Not in any real way. Her only option was to interact with Maxwell, with Rowan, with Shade in a way worthy of being Shade’s commander.

This wasn’t supposed to be her life, and already in less than a week, everything had changed.

She forced herself to look away from Maxwell too, because he was no help to her either. She didn’t look his way again for the duration of The Striving, though she didn’t know if it was because she wanted to maintain focus and control or because not looking at Maxwell somehow felt like punishing herself.

When Rowan finally got the puzzle box open, the spectators erupted in cheers, whistles, and roars of approval, stomping their feet and banging fists on the closest hard surfaces, sometimes even each other.

Rowan merely laughed as he set the puzzle box down within the circle and waited for his next challenge to begin.

Rebecca didn’t register his third trial. At this point, she could only focus on not looking at Maxwell, on not letting herself smile at the sound of Rowan’s laughter, on watching the clock ticking down the seconds without making it glaringly obvious that she watched the clock.

It served as a focal point for her eyes while the rest of her mind wandered. When Rebecca next consciously noted the time, however, another instant flush of aggravation surged through her.

Rowan had been taking his sweet time with this, hadn’t he?

He’d made it through two of the four trials, now working on the third, but the clock hanging on the wall above the gym’s double doors now read 11:29 p.m.

Thirty-one minutes for Rowan to finish the third and fourth challenges, and not an ounce of urgency had filtered into his actions. Even his casual amusement remained when he finally finished the third challenge and received another roar of approval from the crowd.

Dammit. He needed to hurry the hell up and get this done, or they’d reach midnight before he knew it. Then his time would be up.

Rebecca had no idea what would happen if The Striving reached midnight and he still hadn’t completed it—successfully or otherwise. Would it count as an automatic failure? Or would they offer him an opportunity to finish first?

She didn’t want to find out. After tonight, Rebecca didn’t think she could handle the answer.

The final item within the casting circle illuminated in front of Rowan, not with the eerie green light or even the yellow glow as before. This time, it was a bright, shimmering blue lighting up the center of the casting circle for everyone to see.

A blue that matched the exact shade of the glowing blue light from the potion waiting for him within the clear flask.

The second that flask illuminated brighter than anything else in the room, Shade’s applause and cheering encouragement hushed immediately, as if everyone had held their breath together.

Once Rowan noticed the flask, he took two slow steps toward it, smirking still, then turned in a slow circle to eye everything else inside the glowing ring on the floor.

The only sign of what he was meant to do next existed in that flask filled with the potion meant to force him into facing his truest self—the deepest, darkest parts of him.

And, of course, the deepest darkest parts of Rebecca, which might end up killing him now, if she’d taken it too far.

She held her breath too when Rowan stooped to delicately pluck the flask off the ground, like picking a flower from a field. He straightened and lifted the flask to eye level, studying its contents.

Rebecca didn’t want to watch this. She couldn’t look away.

Then she felt a new gaze settling on the side of her face—sharp, prickly, like someone brushing a thorny stem down her cheek instead of soft petals.

It was Bor. It had to be.

In her periphery, she saw his head turning slightly toward her, and she tried not to look at him. She couldn’t help it.

When she flicked her gaze toward the old giveldi on the stool in the corner, the knowing look he sent her with a raised eyebrow made her stomach flip on itself. Like he knew without a doubt that Rebecca had tampered with Rowan’s final task.

Her insides squirmed. Another hot flush swallowed her up and threatened to pull her down into some dark despair hiding just beneath the surface. She had to look away again to keep from succumbing to the shame of what she didn’t even know had happened yet.

He’d seen right through her before The Striving began, and Bor saw right through her now. Like he expected her to intervene. Or maybe he’d merely been looking for a reaction from her, some way to gauge both Shade’s new commander and its potential new initiate.

Like whatever else might have existed between them that hadn’t yet revealed itself in the light of day.

She shifted uncomfortably in her chair and cleared her throat, dreading what she would find when she looked at Rowan again seconds later.

She had to look at him. She couldn’t indicate that she knew this elf in the center of the casting circle, or that she cared about what happened to him, or that she was in reality far more invested in this particular Striving than any Shade commander should have been.

So when she returned her attention to Rowan one final time, hiding everything behind a mask of control and resolve and detached certainty she’d perfected over centuries, she thought the horror of it all might yank her right out of her own body and toss her aside into the void to roam, forever lost.

Rowan lifted the mouth of the flask to his lips, tilted his head back, and downed the whole potion in one quick, fearless breath.

The gym fell into the eeriest silence of all, each member remembering his or her own experiences with The Striving and this particular piece of it.

Only Rebecca knew what that potion would do to him. She’d specifically designed it to not be simple or easy for Rowan. Now, at the sight of that empty flask in his hand and the cocky smirk that never left his lips, she was very much regretting it.

He gently returned the flask to the floor, straightened again as he smacked his lips, and gazed up at a corner of the room as if trying to remember the words to an old song.

“Cinnamon,” he muttered. “Didn’t expect that …”

Tentative chuckling filled the air as the spectators battled with their own uncertainty. Rowan’s casual ease and his clear lack of concern for what happened next unnerved more than a few magicals watching him.

Someone standing along the wall whispered to their neighbor, “Is this guy for real?”

Unfortunately, yes, Rowan Blackmoon was very real. This wasn’t an act. This was how he approached damn near everything, and Rebecca wished for his sake—not for the first time—that he could have learned to operate with a little more caution. But that just wasn’t him.

The waiting silence was unbearable. Rebecca flushed hot again but refused to wipe at her face despite the unnerving tickle of movement at her hairline. She could have been sweating beneath the tension, sure.

Or she was so uptight, she was imagining sensations now. Anything to distract her from what was happening.

Then Rowan met her gaze again, still as smug and self-confident as ever, and everything else in the room surrounding Rebecca in that moment ceased to exist.

All she saw was Rowan’s face. His casual, careless stance in the casting circle. The light in his eyes as he gazed up at her.

She could practically hear his voice as he applauded her for one hell of a show: “You’ve really gone above and beyond here with these people, haven’t you? Full points for impeccable acting.”

But it was all in her head.

The next second, a flicker of glowing blue appeared in Rowan’s eyes, radiated beyond his face and down into his skin. Then, almost as fast as blinking, the same bright, glowing blue light as the potion he’d just consumed surrounded the elf man from head to toe.

It began as little more than a glimmering aura around his body, but it grew steadily brighter, picking up speed.

In seconds, that light was almost blinding, intensifying like a new presence around him until it flashed and sputtered, strobing like a faulty electrical circuit.

The smirk and haughty confidence coating Rowan’s features morphed. First in the surprised widening of his eyes, then in a confused crease of his eyebrows drawing closer together as he pursed his lips.

He had no idea what this was, no idea what was happening. Of course he didn’t.

Then realization struck.

Rowan’s mouth fell open, as if he were about to comment on the unfairness of the experience, or the unexpectedness of such an underhanded change within the potion.

When a flash of glowing blue light streaked with ominous veins of dark gray and glistening black rushed across every inch of Rowan’s skin, making him look like a glowing blue statue instead of a living being of flesh and blood, Rebecca was certain he knew.

He recognized the difference. The personal touch she’d left just for him. He understood who had meddled with the potion, she was sure of it.

His eyes widened again, though they moved lazily now as he searched the gym, like he’d just woken from the deepest sleep.

Or like he’d been drugged and the effects were just now kicking in.

His glassy hazel eyes found Rebecca on the dais once more, and for the first time in centuries, since they were kids, the only thing Rebecca saw behind his eyes and flooding through his expression was fear.

Oh fuck…

What did she do ?

If she’d taken this too far, if her change to that potion was too much for him to handle before the night was over, she might have just marked herself as the highest-priority target on Earth.

The elven traitor who’d duped and murdered not only a scion of the Blackmoon Clan but her best friend.