31. Chapter 31

31

H e sat at a table with another group of operatives—apparently a different one every time—and had now turned toward her with an eager smile when he finished focusing on whoever had been talking. Of course he saw her instantly and raised a hand in a little wave she couldn’t ignore, no matter how much she wanted to turn away.

But she could still pretend she didn’t see him, which was the only strategy she had to fall back on.

Rebecca could practically feel all the unexpected lightheartedness seeping out of Maxwell when he also saw Rowan trying to get her attention. Then he fell right back into his usual defensive bodyguard mode.

She wasn’t sure she preferred that , either.

“Should I bring that coffee up to your office, then?” he grumbled.

“No, I got it. Thanks,” she said and took off across the common room.

She’d almost said yes, but that would’ve required her to go right up to her office to wait. The idea of leaving Maxwell and Rowan alone in the same room, without her there to intervene if necessary, felt a lot like playing with fire.

So far, she’d managed to keep that fire from spreading, but once it got out, something told her it would be especially difficult to get back under control.

She kept her gaze fixed firmly on the giant coffee carafe on Bor’s refreshments table and let that drive her forward while she forced herself not to look at Rowan’s table. As she fixed herself her normal cup of joe, finally alone for now, she got a better read on the room and at first couldn’t figure out why it felt so odd.

The task force had gathered here far earlier than usual. Bor had already opened his service window into the kitchen as well, whether to prepare for or response to an unexpected turnout this early.

As Rebecca took her first gloriously hot, overly sugared sip and gauged the room, the old giveldi’s head popped up in the service window beside her before he grumbled, “I won’t say good morning when it feels like it ain’t.”

Rebecca lifted her Styrofoam cup toward him in greeting, curious about the aimless, listless mood hanging in the air despite the common room being filled nearly to capacity. “What’s going on in here?”

“I just cook the food,” Bor grumbled. “But if I had to take a wild guess, I’d say what we’ve got here is a whole lot of go get ‘em and nothin’ to go get.”

When she looked questioningly at him, Bor shrugged, his gaze fixed on the stainless-steel counter in front of him, which he used to help him look busy by wiping it down with a rag. A dry rag. “But what do I know? I’m just the cook.”

Nothing to go get, huh?

It made sense. Shade had just celebrated a massive win last night, and apparently, that boost in morale had gotten everyone out of bed and ready to go first thing in the morning. But it wasn’t like she had scores of missions just screaming to be completed so she could keep everyone busy.

“Weird vibe,” Rowan said directly beside her.

Rebecca almost spilled her coffee all over herself before covering it up.

Dammit, he had to stop sneaking up on her like that.

Not as much as he needed to stop ignoring what she’d thought she’d already made perfectly clear here—that Rebecca Knox and Rowan Blackmoon were not friends.

“It’s a work in progress,” she muttered before taking another burbling sip of piping-hot coffee. “We’ve been going through a bit of transition.”

“You know, I was starting to pick up on that.” Rowan sidled closer, scanning the room before he leaned in and murmured, “Listen, whatever’s going on in here, that’s their business, I guess. But I still really need to talk to you.”

“Did you make your appointment yet?” The question just tumbled out of her mouth without forethought, but she definitely appreciated the scowl it produced from him, which she could now feel centering on the side of her face.

“Cut the formal shit. That doesn’t apply to me.”

He still didn’t think she was serious about any of this.

With almost the entire task force crowded into the common room now, as if this were a normal part of daily wake-up call, it would be impossible for Rebecca and Rowan to have any kind of meaningful conversation. Which was how she preferred it, especially when it meant she had to keep acting like she didn’t know him.

“It applies to everyone , Blackmoon,” she said without looking at him. “The rules exist for a reason. Trust me, you don’t wanna know what happens when those rules get fucked with. Just make an appointment, and then we’ll talk.”

A startled laugh escaped him as Rowan gaped at the side of her face. “Holy shit. You’re really enjoying all this, aren’t you?”

With a shrug, she lifted her cup to her lips again and murmured, “No point in doing anything if you can’t get a little enjoyment out of it.”

The second she said it, she realized too late where that little saying had come from.

She’d just pulled the words right out of her dream—Rowan’s words—and tossed them back at him this morning. Whether he remembered exactly where the sentiment had come from, she couldn’t tell, but he recognized enough of it.

“Huh.” He kept staring at her. “Isn’t that the truth? You sure I can’t get you to change your mind?”

“Unlikely.” She still wouldn’t look directly at him. She couldn’t. Not here in front of everyone, where any preferential treatment toward the Blackmoon Elf or any sense of familiarity wouldn’t go unnoticed.

But she did feel something in him soften while he stood beside her at the refreshment table.

Then, with a low bow bordering on the stiflingly formal, Rowan backed away from her and murmured, “As you wish, Thon-Da’al.”

He was making fun of her, she knew. But maybe he was also finally getting it through his thick head that things were different now. That she was different. That too much time had passed and too many things had changed for Rebecca to just jump right back into their friendship the way they’d left things.

Actually, almost anything was better than the way they’d left things all that time ago, and she had no interest in revisiting them anytime soon. Or ever.

Getting Rowan to back off and leave her alone had just been outrageously easy. Hopefully, that didn’t mean he had something rash and infuriating up his sleeve for later. Knowing him, that was probably what he was planning.

From the open service window, Bor grumbled as he smacked his lips like he’d just bitten into something particularly insulting to his palate. “Except that one. Whatever he’s got going on, I wouldn’t call it go-get-’em like everyone else.”

No, Rebecca would call it trouble.

But that was her problem, not Bor’s. “He’ll figure it out eventually.”

“You think so?”

She shot the cook an amused glance, then leaned closer to the service window. “So that’s really what you think is going on here?”

He raised a scraggly eyebrow. “What do you think is going on here?”

“Well, it’s definitely not celebratory morning-after vibes.”

Bor snorted. “Sounds like you’ve got a decent handle on things as is.”

“Right. But, pretending for a second that I’m brand-new to all of this, you’re telling me that what we’re feeling in the air right now is just general boredom. Is that it?”

“That’s one way of looking at it.” Bor grunted and turned away from the window, shaking his head as he shuffled across the kitchens to get back to work.

An idle mind was the devil’s playground and all that. Now that Shade recognized what it was capable of again without someone like Aldous yanking the chains, Rebecca had a task force of efficient magicals no longer content to sit around and waste their talents and skills instead of using them.

And it was her job to figure out how to use them before the restlessness took over. Most likely, that would look like these operatives finding their own way to stay busy, and that smelled like too much trouble waiting to happen.

Not if she could get ahead of it first.

“All right, everybody, listen up,” she called. Her voice only rose partially over the constant murmur of conversation until someone let out a sharp whistle, then the noise faded.

Most of the magicals already had their eyes on her, but now those slow to get with the program were jostled and directed toward the refreshments table Rebecca had now apparently made her stage.

And they all expected her to say something worthwhile, didn’t they?

Fine.

“We did good work last night, and I know everyone’s feeling like things are finally starting to change around here.”

A murmur of assent filled the common room, joined by a few bitter laughs at such an understatement.

“That doesn’t mean we get to sit around trying to figure out what the hell to do next,” she added. “We stay busy. There’s a lot of shit out there that shouldn’t be, if you ask me. Last night was just the first example of what we can actually get done, and it doesn’t stop there. Hannigan?”

At the sound of his name, Maxwell straightened from leaning against the archway of the hall where they’d entered, his jaw clenching as he looked around the room before settling his gaze on Rebecca with a questioning frown.

There was something to be said for keeping him on his toes.

She bit back a smirk before asking, “We still have the weapons shipment on site, don’t we?”

His frown only deepened. “Yes.”

“And we haven’t made any other plans for those yet?”

“Nothing that’s been decided yet, no.”

Rebecca could tell already he wouldn’t like what she was about to do, but this was part of the job, wasn’t it? Making the decisions that needed to be made, whether or not her Head of Security, who acted more like her personal bodyguard, approved.

She was commander here, not Maxwell Hannigan.

“Good.” Rebecca nodded. “Seeing as everyone’s up so early with nothing else to do, we’ll be training with the new weapons we hauled in off the docks last night. Unless, of course, anyone has any objections?”

She’d opened the floor for decorum’s sake. Every operative staring back at her now looked like they’d just hit the jackpot, faces lighting up with eager anticipation.

About time too. Shade had been stuck with so many old models of nearly ancient magitek weaponry. More often than not, relying on those weapons could be deadlier than only relying on their own magic, and not everyone here had that luxury.

With no voiced objections, Rebecca nodded again and took another sip of coffee. “Excellent. Then that’s what we have to look forward to today.”

A few tables throughout the common room broke into animated conversations. When Rebecca glanced toward the hallway where Maxwell stood, a little flicker of vindication rose inside her.

She would’ve been lying if she’d said she didn’t enjoy it, either.

She’d known Maxwell wouldn’t like this, and while she hadn’t intentionally made this announcement just to piss him off, she liked the idea of being able to predict what he would and wouldn’t appreciate.

Their understanding of each other was getting somewhere, at least.

Farther than even Rebecca had anticipated, because then the shifter surprised her when he barked out, “You heard the commander. Report to training at nine hundred hours.”

That sounded good enough, though when Rebecca checked her watch and found it was still only seven in the morning, she cringed inside. That gave her two more full hours of actively avoiding Rowan and trying to keep herself busy doing something else.

“Better make that eight hundred hours,” she added.

Maxwell did not like being corrected by her openly and in public like this, either, but he’d just have to deal with that.

“There’s no reason to waste time if everybody’s this awake and ready to go,” she said. “So I’ll see you all in the gym. Get ready to figure out exactly what else we’re up against out there, because now we’re gonna be using it ourselves.”

She lifted her Styrofoam coffee cup in a silent toast toward the entire common room, which garnered several excited shouts from some operatives while others raised their morning cups toward her in return.

Then she made her way back across the room, heading for the hallway that would take her to the private stairs up to her second-story office. She could still feel Rowan watching her from whichever table he’d chosen to get comfortable at next, but she ignored him.

Instead, she looked Maxwell’s way and found him scowling at her.

The expression didn’t carry as much vitriol in it as she’d grown accustomed to, but it did make her wonder if she’d have to explain herself to him at some later point—that she hadn’t taken over just to piss him off but that this was what leading Shade in the way it needed to be led looked like.

This was how she did things right .

Who was she kidding? She didn’t need to explain herself to anyone, including the shifter.

She raised her cup toward him as well and hoped Maxwell got the message: she’d be in her office, after all, if he needed to find her.

When she left the common room, the weight of avoidance and indecision lifting off her shoulders made what had been her emotional baseline now feel like overwhelming relief.

She’d made a plan for Shade’s operations in the field and at the compound, and she’d managed once again to keep Rowan at bay long enough that he couldn’t drag her aside into some stupid conversation.

Maybe if she just kept this up long enough, he’d finally get the hint that it would never happen the way he wanted. He might get so fed up with trying and being made to wait endlessly after all his efforts that he just stopped asking.

Rebecca snorted and took another sip of coffee.

Fat chance.

W hen Rebecca entered the training room twenty minutes before she’d ordered their new weapons training to begin, her first look around put her instantly on edge.

The gym looked nothing like the last time she’d been here, but it didn’t need to look the same. She still felt the residual magic lingering in the air just days after Rowan had completed The Striving here.

It was equally easy to remember what she’d done to him during the ceremonial challenge.

If she had only had her guilt over almost killing Rowan with her Bloodshadow magic in this very room, she might have felt more in control of herself. Today, though, she also had Maxwell’s new mood to deal with.

And she knew it was her fault.

He hadn’t argued with her after she’d ordered Shade’s new training regimen to start today, but that hadn’t kept him from souring toward her.

For the last half hour, she’d tried to first gauge his intensely pissy mood. Then, when she’d realized it was one of those things only time and distance would mellow out, she’d switched to avoiding him so they wouldn’t get on each other’s nerves even more than they already had this morning.

Her Head of Security was not happy about her current decision, which also reflected in the attitudes of his security team when he’d ordered them to unload the contents of the eighteen-wheeler’s cargo trailer down in the parking garage and bring it all up to the training gym to prepare.

Rebecca had stayed out of the team’s way too, not wanting to piss anyone else off by making it feel like she was just rubbing it in while they did all the heavy lifting and she sat back to watch.

That was how Aldous had always made things feel, anyway. Even something as simple as normal maintenance and daily tasks around the compound.

She might have stepped into this role as Thon-Da’al far more quickly and easily than she’d expected, but the last thing she wanted was to become a repeat of the worst commander in Shade history.

Once Maxwell and his team had finished moving the weapons, they’d left, and Rebecca had slipped inside to find herself entirely alone.

Yes, she had the excuse of coming in to check the merchandise before letting her entire task force play with weapons that could have killed her and her small team during their last mission on the docks, but that was merely a surface excuse.

What Rebecca wanted was a moment’s peace, alone, without locking herself up in the office just to get away from literally everyone.

So she made her rounds in the training gym for a preliminary once-over of all the weapons, thinking she would appreciate the solitude and the silence. She hadn’t expected to become so uncomfortable here, with memories of Rowan lying on the floor in the center, with dark, web-like streaks of her magic dividing up his flesh while he seized and fought both her own and his own personal demons.

This was not the break she’d hoped it would be.

Then laughter and rising voices echoed in the hallway, growing louder by the second, and she didn’t have to check her watch for the time.

For all Shade’s difficulties with Aldous in charge, these magicals still managed a surprising and often impressive punctuality.

Their Head of Security most likely had something to do with that.

Now Rebecca had to be on again for everyone, to put on a show, to act the part until maybe, someday, she felt worthy of playing it.

At least she’d had experience overseeing various forms of training, no matter how long ago that had been.

The gym’s double doors slapped open with a thump and squeal before Rowan entered behind another group, naturally making a big deal out of his own arrival. He let out a low, piercing whistle of appreciation that already grated on Rebecca’s nerves.

That wasn’t a good sign.

What was wrong with her? Since when did she get so jumpy or easily irritated?

Since the Blackmoon Elf she’d planned never to see again had popped back up into her business. That was when.

He moved across the training gym in a cocky strut, eyeing the walls and floor and ceiling as the rest of the task force spread out around the gym’s perimeter to await their instructions. Most of the others were far more interested in eyeing the giant crates of confiscated magitek weaponry they would soon get to know for themselves.

Rowan Blackmoon, however, moved around like he owned the place and just hadn’t been back to visit in a long time.

“Well, look at that,” he said, spreading his arms and turning in a slow circle. “Looks like a whole new world from the last time I was here. You guys have a decorating committee I don’t know about?”

That got him a round of easygoing laughter from the rest of the dock’s mission team. Nyx, Leonard, Diego, and Titus all seemed to have fostered a light-hearted, if not simultaneously wary, appreciation of their newest member, who joked around more than he did anything else but could also pull out some seriously effective badassery when needed.

“I mean it,” Rowan added. “Whoever you’ve got changing this place up, my hat’s off to ’em.”

Sure, because he’d spent so much time during The Striving focusing on the details of the room chat could very well have been the last room he ever entered.

Rebecca considered telling him Bor was responsible for all of it, but she had a feeling that would backfire when the old giveldi got too many unwanted compliments from Rowan. If that happened, something told her Bor was likely to put an extra unsavory surprise in her next meal for the trouble.

While the rest of the task force spread out among the crates, continuing their conversations in hushed tones and waiting to get started, Rowan meandered around the gym like he was on his own private tour.

He didn’t actually give a shit about any of this, and he wasn’t impressed. He’d made that perfectly clear on the docks the other night, but he always did have a knack for putting on one hell of a good show. At least when he had an unwitting audience.

Those who knew him, like Rebecca, understood what existed under all his posturing.

He was only playing along until he got what he wanted from her, and she had no intention of ever letting that happen.