2. Chapter 2

2

R ebecca swallowed hard, setting her jaw and lifting her chin as she faced the elven prisoner on the table. Inside, her gut twisted, and an unwelcome plea pulsed through her mind.

Don’t fuck this up for me, Rowan.

“Well then,” Rowan mused, tapping his chin with a finger before spreading his arms. “I assume that means you want to talk about me .”

She didn’t want to talk to him at all, but she had to keep this up until she could figure out what to do with him.

“You still haven’t answered my first question,” Rebecca said, acutely aware of the room’s single security camera mounted high in the corner. From the corner of her eye, she calculated her angle to it and how much of her body the security feed currently picked up.

She didn’t dare look directly at that camera. That would only make this entire encounter more suspicious, not to mention Maxwell would have one more thing to toss onto his growing pile of reasons not to let Rebecca handle complicated situations on her own.

But if Rebecca could get a message to Rowan, undetected by video or audio feed, she might still have a chance of clearing this whole thing up before it got too big for her to handle.

“I asked you why you’re here,” she repeated, raising her eyebrows at Rowan.

He scoffed and resumed swinging his legs back and forth beneath the table. “Oh come on. Elf to elf, right? You know exactly why I’m here.”

The way he said it and his sharpening grin as the words spilled from his mouth made her want to punch him in the face again.

Here he was, in holding, in the custody of an underground magical task force who took their business incredibly seriously, especially now that Aldous had been removed from the equation, having a face-to-face chat with the organization’s commander. And still , he continued to act like everything was one big joke, one infinite amusement, the rules of which didn’t apply to him simply because he considered himself too smart to acknowledge them.

And he still refused to answer her questions.

“Well?” He chuckled again and tilted his head, watching her every move.

Rebecca took several slow steps forward, as if she were moving in with the sole intention of interrogating the elf man using whatever personalized tactics and techniques she might have hidden up her sleeve.

“I’m thinking you have an issue with upfront honesty,” she said. “Not to mention giving direct answers.”

“Oh, you’re just thinking that, huh?”

She stopped two feet in front of the table, having specifically placed herself directly between the prisoner and the security camera. Now, the only thing the recorded shot would pick up was a clear view of Rowan and nothing but Rebecca’s back.

What she was about to do, no one else could see, but it was the only viable solution at the moment—the only one that wouldn’t make things infinitely worse for both of them.

“So you bypassed this compound’s security,” she said, spreading her arms, “and immediately let yourself get caught. I think you did all this on purpose.”

Then she folded her arms, keeping her right hand free and centered in front of her chest.

Rowan laughed again and gripped the edge of the table on either side of him before leaning forward. “Of course I did it on purpose. And then I spent the whole time asking for you . Took you long enough to show up, by the way. It’s not exactly a warm welcome.”

“What do you want with Shade?”

The casual carelessness in his shrug infuriated her more than she’d expected before he rolled his eyes. “Didn’t realize there was anything to want. Honestly, I was just going down the list of leads, and the next one in line led me here. I wasn’t sure this was the place, but here you are…”

“And it didn’t occur to announce yourself first?” she asked. “Or even to knock?”

Rowan snorted. “It rarely does. But tell me, what are you doing? Roth-Da’al ? In a place like this? I’m surprised, Kilda’ari .”

Kilda’ari .

The intimate nickname whisked Rebecca back to her old life, days spent within the Bloodshadow Court, fighting, training, strengthening her magic, being used and honed and tortured…

It all came back in an overwhelming rush, which would have disgusted her and sent her storming out of the room if she also hadn’t been staring Rowan in the eyes at that moment.

Looking at him now, hearing that name for her on his lips, sent a wave of heartbreaking familiarity and bitter nostalgia rushing through her at the same time. That combination battled the disgust and rage brought up by the memory of her past life.

And still, somehow, he’d turned the topic of conversation back to her.

By the Blood, it had been so long since they’d seen each other, since she’d even thought of Rowan. Now here he was, right in front of her.

In centuries, he hadn’t changed one bit.

Neither had she. Not where it was visible on the outside, anyway.

Then it occurred to her that if Rowan used that pet name for her here and now, he intended to take their conversation into deeply serious waters any second now. He didn’t give two shits if anyone was watching them or listening in on their conversation.

He didn’t care about anything in this world, because he hadn’t lifted a finger to make it his own.

He had nothing at stake.

Rebecca did.

“At least you’re curious,” she told him. “You want to know about Shade?”

At the same time, she finally lifted her right hand slightly above her folded arms and sent up another silent prayer to any and all gods of both the old world and the new that Rowan Blackmoon’s knowledge of their silent war-party signaling hadn’t shriveled into non-existence over the centuries.

She stared intently into those hazel eyes of his and mapped out with a quick series of hand signals and gestures the secret message she wanted him to receive beneath the cadence of her words: “Don’t say anything. We’re being watched.”

Another infuriating chuckle escaped him before he glanced at her signaling hand for half a second.

“I would love to know about Shade,” he said, cocking his head as if this were still all part of one giant inside joke of theirs. “Though I have to admit I’m more interested in knowing about you . Specifically how you ended up in a place like—”

“If you want answers,” she interrupted, widening her eyes at him in warning, “if you want access to the information and knowledge this place holds, you have to give something of yourself first. That’s how it works here.”

The constant, irreverent amusement in his expression disappeared, his gaze softening as he stopped swinging his legs and stilled.

Rebecca thought she saw him nod, but it was impossible to tell with him most of the time.

“Anything for you,” he said gently. “You know that.”

Why did he have to be like this?

The tenderness in his voice and the way he gazed at her now made Rebecca want to throw herself toward the table and wrap him up in the tightest hug possible. To feel him in her arms, breathe in his scent of sunshine and leather, tighten her hold around him and confess how much she’d missed him, even when the decision to leave had always been hers.

But she couldn’t act on it. Absolutely not.

Instead, she forced herself to ignore how impossibly hard he was making this right now and focused on getting them both out of this room.

“I’ll make you this offer,” she told him with more command over the levelness of her voice than she would have thought possible. “But I’m only going to make it once. We’ll have our conversation about whatever you want, and I’ll answer all your questions, after you complete The Striving. Successfully.

“But if you fail, you’ll no longer be welcome here. Shade’s doors will close to you. You’ll leave, no questions asked, and you and I won’t be talking at all. About anything.”

The way his eyes lit up at that with a flash of their own mischievous excitement made the surge of doubt and trepidation instantly flare again deep in her belly and behind her eyes.

He looked way too excited by this prospect. Not what she’d been going for.

“I do love a challenge,” he crooned. “Can I ask what exactly this Striving entails?”

“You can ask all you want,” she replied. “But until you successfully complete The Striving, none of your questions will be answered. You have to accept, and then you have to succeed. That’s the only way I can tell you anything, and it’s the only way the two of us will be saying anything else to each other after I walk out of this room.”

Rowan lifted a hand to stroke his hairless chin, putting on a show for the sake of the security camera and anyone who might be watching them now, pretending to consider it.

“Well of course I accept,” he said with another chuckle. “This will be fun.”

Before she could do anything else, he hopped off the edge of the table and stepped toward her with a look in his hazel eyes Rebecca recognized only too well—his tenderness toward her, his compassion when he truly cared about something or someone, the hope springing into his brilliant grin. Then that too softened, and he took one more step forward to close the distance between them.

She could see it all right there, written out within the softening lines of his face.

He’d missed her too. Probably just as much as she’d missed him, if not more.

She almost let herself willingly fall right into that trap until Rowan spread his arms and leaned in, looking an awful lot like he meant to pull her into an embrace.

So she spun on her heel and marched across the holding room toward the door, leaving the Blackmoon Elf standing there with his arms open and nothing to show for it.

His surprised laugh followed her out of the room and cut off the second the door clicked shut behind her.

Rowan could laugh all he wanted, though that didn’t mean he didn’t still expect something of her now that he’d found her here.

Fortunately, Rebecca hadn’t lost her ability to remain acutely aware of her own surroundings, no matter what thoughts and emotions swirled through her in the presence of someone like Rowan.

It hurt to walk away from him like that, just so Maxwell and his security team and anyone else watching wouldn’t see something she couldn’t let any of them see.

Rowan would get over it, though, she knew.

So would she.

Now that Shade’s elven prisoner had just accepted the Thon-Da’al’s offer to enter The Striving in exchange for all the answers he could ever possibly want—and some he might even wish he never had, she was sure—Rowan had also accepted the chance to prove himself.

At the very least, it bought Rebecca longer than five minutes to come up with a much better plan for getting Rowan Blackmoon out of this building, away from her task force, and hopefully out of Chicago altogether, if she played her cards right.

Rowan had taken the bait, given her an opportunity to spin this entire situation to her advantage. That was a hell of a lot more than she’d had when she’d stepped into that room tonight.

She had to get rid of him. He should never have been able to find her in the first place, and any amount of talking in private with that elf would only further jeopardize her anonymity within Shade. It would make it that much easier for Rebecca’s true enemies to track her down here too, and she couldn’t let that happen.

The second she paused in the long hallway lining the rows of holding-room doors, however, a new trap revealed itself in her plan.

Rowan had agreed to The Striving without knowing anything about it, which was part of how Shade did things here, sure.

But what if he passed anyway?

What if he was successful, and he stayed, and Rebecca had to have that private conversation with him under both the old laws and the rules of this world?

Well, Rebecca would just have to add a little personal touch to Shade’s initiation ceremony. A little something extra worthy of a Blackmoon Elf and his inherent abilities.

Rebecca would rig the whole thing against this elf from Xahar’áhsh she had known so well and for so long. She would ensure he failed and deliver on her promise to kick him out of the compound, no questions asked.

She just needed to add the right twist to The Striving—something potent enough to ensure Rowan’s failure without outright destroying him.

If she miscalculated?

Rebecca might be the one left picking up the pieces when it all came crashing down.