29. Chapter 29

29

R ebecca scrambled desperately to push herself up off her back, at the very least.

By the time the owner of those footsteps came into what remained of her vision with one eye swollen shut and the other intermittently seeing colored sparks instead of shapes and movement, the pain of seeing almost made her cry out.

She bit back the scream and tried her best to make it look like she’d chosen this place to sit down and rest for a bit.

As if this hadn’t been the very same spot where she’d fallen and confirmed to Theodil and herself her own inexcusable failures.

When she recognized Rowan’s profile in the scant starlight as he navigated his way closer, part of her was relieved. If anyone in Agn’a Tha’ros were to see her like this without judging her and thinking the worst of her for it, it was Rowan Blackmoon.

The rest of her, however, still struggled to let down her defenses. She refused to look at him, pretending not to notice his approach.

He hadn’t even tried to be silent.

When he stopped a few feet away, she wished he would leave. She wished he would stay with her forever.

A heavy sigh escaped him, as if he’d been carrying some enormous load. “Oh, Kilda’ari ...”

“What’s wrong?” Rebecca muttered through her swollen lips, the words hardly recognizable. “You’ve never seen someone get beaten half to death before?”

“Not at all.” Rowan closed the few feet between them before slowly lowering himself to the earth, sitting at the bottom of the embankment with her. “I’ve seen it plenty of times, though I’d say this is a lot more than halfway to death. The problem I have is that I keep seeing it with the same elf, over and over again.”

Though she still couldn’t see, she tried to breathe evenly through the pain flooding her every cell. Rebecca could still feel him gazing at the side of her face. It was so easy to visualize his bright, illuminated hazel eyes, she didn’t have to see him at all to know what kind of look he fixed her with now.

She didn’t want his pity.

He wasn’t giving it.

She sighed and let herself relax until her head dipped toward her chest in exhaustion. “Pretty much every day now.”

“Look at you.” His voice was so tender, filled with so much compassion and concern, the last of Rebecca’s strength almost broke down.

Unable to see him through her swollen eye, she still felt Rowan reaching for her, his hands rising toward her face, as if simply touching her cheek might heal the crippling wounds she’d sustained.

She wanted to let him touch her. To know, maybe even for the first time, what it felt like to be held tenderly. To feel a gentleness in someone else instead of the simple brutality of her training.

No matter how badly she might have wanted it, she still shied away from his outstretched hand, her body reacting for her.

Rowan paused, his fingers inches from her face. Then he sighed again and lowered his hand into his lap. “They could have at least sent you a healer afterward.”

She had to turn her head abnormally far to look directly at him through her one good eye, frowning despite the pain pinching at her face. “You know that’s not the point.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it.”

Rebecca dropped her gaze to her mangled hand resting in her lap and recited the very same justifications drilled into her self-sufficiency. “They’re testing me and my magic to our limits. Moving beyond them. Once I manage that, I won’t need anyone ever again.”

He scoffed and shook his head, his gaze settling on the loose shale at their feet. “Some people have their priorities all wrong. They’ve got you, and their goal is to build you into this weapon that never needs anything from anyone. It shouldn’t be that way, Kilda’ari . That’s no life.”

“For everyone else, maybe,” she murmured.

Those words hung between them as they sat in silence. Rebecca was aware of how much it sounded like she agreed with her trainers and her family, her masters, the entire Bloodshadow Court.

But it was all she knew, and she’d given up trying to escape this life that was no life at all.

For the Bloodshadow Heir, it was everything. This was all she knew.

Rowan didn’t have to like it, but that wouldn’t change her reality, and they both knew it.

“I should get on this.” Rebecca lifted her mangled hand in front of her and turned it beneath the dim starlight. The pain in her broken fingers and twisted knuckles made her grit her teeth. “The longer I wait, the worse it’ll be.”

“Right.” Rowan stared at her hand. “But let me help you.”

“If you brought me something for the pain, I won’t—”

“Of course you won’t take it,” he said. “I wouldn’t have offered it to you anyway, but you don’t have to go through this alone every time.”

It was an odd statement to ponder. She knew he meant well, but everything Rebecca did, she did on her own. Even when she sat next to Rowan. Even when training with Theodil and wondering if today was the day he would finally end her.

Even when surrounded by the Bloodshadow Court, by all the dignitaries of the elven clans, by her own flesh and blood.

Rebecca was always alone.

When Rowan unstrung his belt, folded the thick strip of tanned hide, and handed it to her, she didn’t refuse him. Rebecca bit down on the belt, holding it in place between her teeth, and gave herself three seconds of mental preparation for what came next.

After a night like tonight with Theodil, the worst of it was still ahead of her. She still had to do it all on her own.

There was nothing Rowan could do beyond sitting with her at the base of the loose embankment while Rebecca summoned the power of her Bloodshadow magic. Not to attack or destroy or consume but to heal.

Any bit of creation, however, was by necessity preceded by destruction and pain. An ending to give way to a new beginning.

Rebecca had put herself through more endings than she could count.

She started with the crunched and twisted fingers of her right hand, hovering her left hand over them until a deep golden- orange light bloomed within the center of her palm, focusing her Bloodshadow healing on the first of many targets.

In seconds, her broken hand burned with healing fire, the cleanse of her Bloodshadow legacy accepting the sacrifice of her own flesh to fuel the healing process. Her skin blackened into charred flakes. Her mangled fingers twisted even more into an agonizing cluster with little similarity to a hand at all.

Her magic wormed its way deep into her bones, disintegrating them, burning the weakness away, taking what it was owed for her failure tonight.

Rebecca bit down on Rowan’s belt so hard, her jaw muscles burst with the tingling cold of fatigue before going numb. Still, she focused on her task. The pain was blistering, though she had stopped making herself pass out before she could finish years ago. Now she bore it all in duty and obligation.

Every wound Theodil had inflicted on her tonight received the same attention from her Bloodshadow healing. Bones broke apart and re-knit beneath flesh that burned and charred and sloughed away to be replaced by a brand-new version of itself. Every time she destroyed and created somewhere on her own body, the pain was almost enough to make her stop.

Almost, but not quite.

She couldn’t let it stop her, because Rebecca was alone in this too. No one else was going to heal her the way it needed to be done. No one could.

Rowan remained by her side through all of it, watching her move through the agony of torture she was both forced and expected to perform on herself. He said nothing and didn’t try to stop her.

Though she couldn’t see through the pain, even after healing her swollen eye, she still felt his gaze on her, his attention focused on her face and watching her reactions. Not once did Rowan focus on her magic instead.

He had no investment in what made her so different from everyone else, what made her special, what made this hell that had become her life so necessary. Rowan Blackmoon was the only one who cared more about Rebecca—about how she felt and what she thought—than about what her Bloodshadow magic could do or how valuable she was or how she could be used.

It felt like hours passed while she bit down on Rowan’s belt and healed her grievous injuries, but the pain negated all concept of time. When she finally finished, the exhaustion flooded in, filling all the holes left behind once the pain was gone.

Rebecca could hardly open her mouth to release Rowan’s belt from between her teeth. She had to pry it out after almost having bitten straight through both folded layers of hide. Nor did she have the strength to hand it to him before the belt clattered onto the piles of chipped stone and loose shale beside her.

Then she heaved a massive sigh, closed her eyes, and lay on her back. All she wanted now was to breathe, nothing more. To just lie here in the cool night air and forget what had been done to her and what she’d done to herself. To breathe …

She’d almost forgotten Rowan was still there beside her until she heard him rummaging around in his pack.

“Take this,” he said.

She opened one eye to look at the black cloth lying open in his hand. Resting in the center was a portion dry biscuit.

She closed her eye again. “They would hang you upside down by meat hooks if anyone caught you doing this. You know that, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. That’s what makes it fun.”

The amusement in his voice matched the grin he fixed on her when she opened both eyes to study him.

With a snort, she snatched the food from his hand and forced herself to eat as much of it as she could stomach.

After the third bite, the warmth, energy, and renewed strength of both body and mind made her more grateful for Rowan than ever. He’d broken all the rules to be with her here, to support her and comfort her, to feed her something that helped her recovery in ways her Bloodshadow magic still didn’t quite reach.

If he were caught, his punishment would be severe.

Rebecca’s only punishment would be the knowledge of what the Bloodshadow Court was doing to him.

There was nothing else they could do to hurt her personally. They’d already been doing it every single day and had been hurting her all her life. But they could still use Rowan against her.

“Thank you,” she muttered before offering him the rest.

“Keep it,” he said. “You need it more than I ever do.”

After one more bite, she wrapped the biscuit in the black cloth and tucked it all into the side pocket of her leather vest.

“It hurts seeing you like this,” Rowan whispered.

“Perfectly avoidable if you just stay away from the temple ruins,” she replied.

“I never will. You’re here.” He let out another tired-sounding sigh. “It’s not just seeing it, though. I hate what they’re doing to you. That they think they have to.”

“I know.” She wanted to, but she just couldn’t look at him. “Be grateful you’re not the one running the gauntlet.”

“We’re not talking about me, Kilda’ari . This is bad. It has been for a long time, but now it’s getting worse. Every day. I can’t help this feeling that one day, they’re going to take it too far—”

“They won’t kill me,” she interrupted. “And they won’t let me die. That would ruin everything.”

“There are worse things than dying, Kilda’ari .”

That made her look at him, because she’d thought the same thing herself, countless times, after the more horrific nights with Theodil. Nights like tonight.

They were all horrific.

Hearing the same sentiment from Rowan’s lips, however, framed it in a slightly different perspective. He saw her, all of her, not just the Bloodshadow Heir, who had to be trained and honed and molded into everything the prophecies declared she would be.

Of course there were worse things than dying.

“I know there are,” she whispered, gazing into his hazel eyes. “I’m living it.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Oh? I didn’t realize I had any other option. What am I supposed to do?”

He raised his eyebrows, his gaze flickering back and forth across her face, and his voice dipped again into an overwhelming, almost painful gentleness. Painful because it was just too hard to believe that gentleness was truly meant for her .

“You could run away,” he said. “With me.”

She gaped at him, her mind drawing a blank before she realized he was joking.

He had to be joking. Of course he was.

She burst out laughing. The gruff sound of it echoed against the stone and rubble and the temple walls behind them. “I can’t run away. There’s nowhere to go.”

Rowan gestured toward the valley in front of them with a sweeping wave of his hand. “There’s an entire world. We could go anywhere we wanted.”

Her smile disappeared. He just didn’t get it.

“Rowan, there’s nowhere to go where they won’t find me.”

He stared at her for a long moment, as if searching for any viable way to prove her wrong, just so he wouldn’t have to back down. Then he shrugged and grabbed a handful of pebbles at his side. “True. Not in this world, anyway. But there are others.”

His allusion to the Gateway and a separate world beyond it wasn’t subtle, but it didn’t have to be. He wasn’t the first to consider such a thing, and he wouldn’t be the last.

Still, Rebecca could never join him in something so heinous, so risky.

“If I didn’t know you,” she said, “I’d call you mad for even suggesting that.”

“Who says I’m not?” he asked with a wink.

His joking nature wasn’t as infectious anymore.

“It would never work anyway,” she added. “We’d be caught immediately, and then what happens? Whatever they did to me then would make my training look like a luxury getaway. And you? They might kill you.”

Rowan shrugged. “For me, it’s worth the risk.”

How could he say something like that? How could he tell her in all confidence that he would risk agonizing death, dishonor against his clan, every facet of his life turned upside down and destroyed, just because he’d attempted to help her run away?

That wasn’t worth the cost. She wasn’t worth the cost.

She had to make him stop thinking like this. It was going to get him killed. Then Rebecca would be completely alone, forever, without even a modicum of escape from her destiny and her duty.

The kind of escape Rowan had always given her.

“I have to keep doing this,” she told him firmly. “For now. There isn’t any other way. I have to find my limits, all of them, and there’s no one better than Theodil to help me find them before I can move on.”

“No one better to break you beyond recognition, you mean.”

“He won’t break me. None of them will.”

“Rebecca…”

“They will keep pushing me,” she continued, “and every time they do, I’ll get that much stronger. I’ll keep improving. They’ll create something so strong and so unstoppable, I’ll become everything they’ve expected me to become and more. By the time they realize they took it too far, there will be nothing they can do anymore to stop me.”

Rowan studied her, looking a little shocked by her words until his knowing smirk returned and he tilted his head. “I get it. This is a long game you’re playing, isn’t it?”

“It’s all a long game,” she told me through a sliver of a smile. “If there’s any knowledge for you to gain by watching me, it’s that.”

“No point in doing anything if you can’t get a little enjoyment out of it, right? In that case, let me join you in this game.”

Rebecca couldn’t hold back a wry laugh as she looked him up and down. “What are you talking about?”

“The game. The long game.”

“ Everything’s a game to you.”

A momentary frown flickered across his brow. “Not this one.”

He moved faster than she could decide what he was doing. The next second, Rowan was on one knee in front of her, gazing up at her from an even steeper angle with his back to the last few feet of the embankment’s descent, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“What are you doing?” Rebecca asked.

“Taking this seriously. Don’t ruin it for me.” He gently took her hand and held it in both of his.

Rebecca tried to pull it back, but he gave her a warning squeeze and wouldn’t let go.

She snorted and let him carry on with his foolishness. At the very least, it was a distraction from the terrible failure of a night she’d had and all the terrible failures yet to come. Until she mastered what she was meant to master.

“Rebecca Bloodshadow,” Rowan declared, holding her in his hazel gaze that now seemed to reflect more shimmering starlight than what existed in the night sky. “Bloodshadow Heir. Scion of the Court and future Thon-Da’al—”

“ Múrg dah’lás , don’t call me that.”

“Let me have my moment,” he said through clenched teeth before his serious and formal demeanor returned—something Rebecca had only seen at court and never when they were alone. “I, Rowan Blackmoon of my namesake clan, do solemnly swear myself into your eternal service for the expanse of my own life or of yours, whichever should end first.”

“What? That’s not—”

“It’s not a real oath if it doesn’t have an escape clause,” he said. “Don’t you read the fine print? Now shut up.”

She choked back a laugh but didn’t bother trying to hide her amusement. He could make the greatest tragedy into a joyous occasion if he had a mind to, which was apparently what he attempted now.

“With this, my solemn vow, I swear to be at your side forevermore. Circumstances allowing, of course.”

“Of course.”

“To offer aid and counsel wherever possible. Especially biscuits. Provided an appropriate supply in the larder to assist me in such endeavors—”

“All right, I get the point.” Rebecca tried to pull her hand away, but he held fast.

“I’m almost finished. To be your friend through all trials and tribulations, in whatever capacity necessary, whether you’re aware of it or not.”

Rebecca rolled her eyes, which earned her a stifled chuckle from Rowan. But when she looked back down at him, he was serious again, no hint of mischief in his eyes or constantly amused smirk gracing his lips.

In fact, he stared at her now as if he had just remembered something crucial, like he was about to deliver horrible news, or that something terrible was about to happen and he didn’t know how to warn her.

She almost asked him about it before he continued with a rare measure of authenticity. “I give you my word, my heart, and my life. For as long as you will have them.”

He might have taken this a bit too far, but his sincerity comforted her. The Rowan she knew was sincere about very few things, but she knew she was one of them.

The tension in the air thickened between them with a growing warmth of expectation. Rebecca couldn’t help thinking he wanted something from her, some oath in return, some promise.

Or maybe just for her to tell him to rise and put him out of his misery.

But then Rowan bowed his head and raised her hand toward his face to press his lips against the back of it.

It was only for a moment, nothing lingering about it in the slightest. More like a warm flutter of his lips against her skin before he released her hand and looked up to meet her gaze.

Rebecca gave him a gentle smile, which was all she could manage. Then she withdrew her hand from his grasp.

This time, he let her.

“Very convincing,” she said.

“Was it really? Excellent.” His grin returned as he pushed himself off one knee and turned to sit beside her again. “I was going for realistic.”

“Then you achieved it.”

“You think it would work on Lady Maleine?”

They both burst out laughing, and the serious moment between them was over, its purpose fulfilled. For now, Rebecca could forget about the nightmare of her life and her duty, because Rowan was here, and he was her friend.

That was all he ever would be, because there could be nothing more between them. If anything, he was more of a brother, a comfort, a safe shore where she could rest and find a moment’s peace amidst the maddening storm buffeting the ocean of her existence.

But at least she had him, for now. No matter what the Bloodshadow Court, the council, or even the clans did to her, she would always have Rowan. For years, that knowledge had kept her going, and for years, it was all she’d had. She couldn’t imagine a life without him.

That night, she couldn’t have possibly imagined what would happen to make a life without him the only choice she had left.