37. Chapter 37

37

H ow incredible it seemed now that something so small and seemingly harmless could hold so much power over her.

But that was the way of these things. The way of the old world and of the Bloodshadow Court especially.

It was only a bone tile. Nothing impressive. Nothing awe-inspiring.

Slightly larger than a quarter and triangular, its edges rounded and still glinting beneath her bedroom light even after the old Aegen breastbone from which it had been carved had clearly made the inter-world trip in Rowan’s possession, and who knew where else it had been?

The old Xaharí symbols carved into its face were still finely etched and perfectly legible.

Symbols that had been permanently branded into her in all ways but on her body.

The symbol of their promise to each other, her and Rowan. A promise made by others on their behalf but no less binding because of it.

A promise that bound them both to lives that never had been and never would be their own. To duty. To fate. To the Bloodshadow Court itself.

Binding Rebecca to everything she’d left behind, on purpose by choice.

The first real thing she had ever wanted for herself and pursued enough to seize.

She hadn’t wanted any of it back then. She sure as hell didn’t want it again now.

After what felt like an eternity focusing intently on that bone tile, she swallowed, took another deep breath, and forced herself with more strength than she expected to look up from his open hand and directly into Rowan’s hazel eyes instead.

“Put that away,” she commanded, her voice firm and steady and entirely certain. Unaffected and unattached, once again.

Back in control.

“It’s happening,” Rowan replied, leaning closer, his voice still pleading and alluring and sorrowful all at once. “The time has come, Kilda’ari . There’s no more denying it. You can’t keep running from this anymore.”

Just like that, the spell was broken.

He dared to tell her anything and dress it up like a command?

“The fuck I can’t,” she spat, opening her hand as if that might ward him away from her. As if she might try to hit him again and this time succeed.

She would have done anything if it meant not having to look at that damn tile a second longer.

Now that she’d broken away, her irritation and indignant pride flooded right back into her, buoyed by a rush of fury.

That anyone would have come after her like this, try to get to her like this, was beyond believable. That Rowan had done it…

That was unforgivable.

“You think you know what you’re doing,” she told him, “but I’m done. I got out. I still have a choice in this, and I’ll keep running as long as I want. There’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”

She’d expected some backlash on his part. She’d seen it coming from a mile away. But she didn’t expect to see the hurt and disbelief in his eyes.

It made him look like he was caving in on himself before he lowered his voice into a murmuring plea. “Don’t say that.”

“That’s the thing, though, Rowan. I can say whatever I want now. I can do whatever I want. Be whatever I want. That’s the whole fucking point! I’m not going back.”

“You made a vow—”

“Yeah, with a gun to my head!”

At his clueless frown, Rebecca rolled her eyes. “Figuratively speaking. And you know that. That vow? It’s meaningless. It was made for us. I never had a choice. Neither did you.”

“And that’s somehow more important than why it was made?” he asked. “More important than what’s expected of you? Of both of us?”

By the Blood, she wanted to scream at him. Instead, she lifted her chin and took a deep breath. “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“I was just the best option,” Rowan continued, his frown unwavering. “ You’re the Bloodshadow Heir. You have your purpose. You’ve known it from the very beginning. We’ve all known it. It’s yours , and all the duty and responsibility that come with it. But this?”

He dropped a pained glance toward the bone tile in his open palm before closing his fist around again. “This is ours . Our purpose. You and I, we share this. We were always supposed to—”

“That’s bullshit! All of it. Destiny. Duty. Swearing vows. That fucking tile. It’s all bullshit. You saw what was happening to me. You saw just as clearly as I did what I would have become. You knew. You know .”

The grief and loss of dredging this all back up to the surface now hit her like a train. Rebecca’s cheeks burned hot. Her body trembled. Stinging tears sprang to her eyes, but she would never let them fall. “And you came all this way to find me, to stand in front of me right now and try to convince me that that’s where I belong?”

“That’s who you are,” Rowan replied, leaning toward her. “And believe me, if I thought we had more time, this would be different. But we don’t. I’m here now. With this. Because it’s time for both of us to—”

“Fuck you!” she shouted, backing away from him until she felt steady enough to plant her feet again.. “No, Rowan. I refuse.”

He froze, staring at her as if she’d just screamed to him in a foreign tongue he’d never heard. As if she were a stranger parading around as Rebecca Bloodshadow.

As if she were a stranger …

By all rights, she was.

Two hundred and seventy years. Anyone would become a stranger after that.

That pain behind his eyes—the willful ignorance, the complete lack of acknowledgement, despite everything he’d watched her endure for decades—hit her harder than any physical blow.

It broke her heart.

Yet even as she felt her blood boiling, her temperature rise, and her breath quicken until her pulse rushed in her ears, she also realized there was only one way to handle this.

If she didn’t do it now, she never would.

Taking another deep breath, she lifted her chin again and rolled her shoulders back. “You heard me. I refuse .”

“Rebecca…”

“I no longer recognize the power of that tile,” she continued, feeling the growing power in her own voice and, more importantly, behind the words themselves. Because now she finally spoke the truth, all of it, instead of running away from it like she had for so long.

“It no longer holds power over me. Nor does the Blackmoon Scion.”

“Stop,” he commanded, though now his voice trembled. “You don’t mean it. You can’t mean any of this. Just…stop.”

“I mean every fucking word!” she screamed.

Without intending to, without consciously choosing it, she summoned her Bloodshadow magic so quickly and with so much desperate urgency, the deafening crack shattering across the room when she plunged the butt of her conjured Bloodshadow spear into the wooden floor at her feet said more than her words ever could.

The blast sent a rippling crackle of power and heat bursting away from her in an unmatched ring of strength. The ensuing shockwave from such a force whipped her hair around her face and rattled the door and the single window on the other side of the room in their frames.

All her righteous fury, her indignation, and her refusal of everything Rowan stood for now—everything for which she had once stood herself, alone, and at one point beside him—refueling her more than even her dedication to stay away. To stay hidden.

It was stronger even than the necessity of how she would survive in this world, beyond the Bloodshadow Court’s reach, because without this part of her, there was no survival.

Letting her true power out like this, without having to hide it, without having to dampen who and what she had always been, felt like new life.

A gift and a curse.

Just one more impossible thing she shared with Rowan Blackmoon that could never and would never be.

“I’ve said it.” Rebecca’s voice echoed with an unnatural timber, even within the confines of her tiny private room. “I meant every word of it, and I swear By the Blood, Rowan, if you keep pushing this, I will do what I have to do to keep my life .”

For the briefest flash of a moment as he stared at her and her power fully unleashed, she wondered if Rowan would try to challenge her right then and there.

It would have been a death sentence, and they both knew this too.

She could end him in a heartbeat, effortlessly and without hesitation.

If she wanted.

They also both knew she didn’t want to, and therefore, she wouldn’t hurt him. Not physically. Not like this.

Even after all this time, Rowan clearly recognized the display as a warning just to shut him up. A reminder that she was far more capable than she’d let anyone believe in such a long time.

A reminder to him . A reminder to her .

More than anything else, Rebecca wanted this conversation to be over. She didn’t want to hear any more of his excuses or his alleged justifications. She didn’t want to hear any more of his pleading or his pain.

She couldn’t deal with this right now. He’d brought the absolute worst issue to her, at the absolute worst time, and she had to shut him down.

Not that there ever would be a right time for this conversation—for his daring decision to reject everything she had embraced the day she left Agn’a Tha’ros and the Bloodshadow Court behind forever, and Rowan with them.

This had to stop.

Then the moment of shock and awe passed, and that infuriating expression of unaffected, unconcerned apathy washed over Rowan’s face one more time. It erased the hollows of concern around his eyes and the desperation underlying his creased brow.

All of it was overtaken the next second by a brilliant flash of enthusiastic appreciation in his dangerous hazel eyes as they widened. Then Rowan broke into an awestruck, gleaming grin that made him look as hungry for her and her power as everyone else who’d seen Rebecca for who and what she was.

Seeing that hunger now, within him of all people, made Rebecca physically nauseous.

How many lies had the Bloodshadow Court fed him over the last two hundred and seventy years? How many twisted truths had they stuffed into his mind and his own self-perception to make him look at her like this ?

Rowan spread his arms and huffed out an airy laugh dripping with wonder. “ That , right there… That’s exactly why I came here for you. That’s exactly why I finally found you. Because the Bloodshadow Court and all the factions are going to need you for what’s coming.”

Blue Hells, they’d completely brainwashed him.

“Lies,” Rebecca hissed, and with a flick of her wrist, she released her Bloodshadow spear and the powerful control she held over the invaluable forces inside her.

Her spear disappeared with a crackling flicker of dark, mercurial silver and a shower of sparks. The residual energy in her room ebbed, bringing all the natural forces of Earth’s physical plane back into alignment with themselves.

Even the wan overhead light seemed to shine brighter, with more space to do so now that her darkest power had been put to rest where it belonged.

She was still breathing heavily, though, and she still felt sick. But at least now she’d gotten it out of her system. She’d said everything she needed to say, but there was still a little more.

“You don’t even know anything is coming, Rowan. You can’t know. There’s no proof, and there won’t be until either the moment we do what needs to be done or the moment it’s too late. Nothing’s happened in centuries. You’re grasping at straws.”

He responded with a deepening frown, making her think at first that he might not have thought that one through and now realized she was right.

But Rowan was smarter than that.

He stepped toward her again, his frown blossoming into the kind of smirk that always accompanied some smartass comment about to spew from his mouth.

She still knew him well enough to predict that much.

“You think nothing’s happened in centuries?” he asked, moving closer still. “I found you , didn’t I?”

Damn him. Damn the whole Blackmoon Clan, and the Bloodshadow Court, and all the elven factions.

Damn old Theodil, and Bundros, and Sha’alvali.

Damn everyone who ever sought to own her, and manipulate her, and use her.

The Dalu’Rázj could take them all.

As far as Rebecca was concerned, it already had centuries ago.

And yet, even as she cursed them all within the silent privacy of her mind, she couldn’t ignore the weight of what Rowan had just said.

Yes, he’d found her after centuries of nothing. Rebecca’s success in fleeing, and hiding and insulating herself among strangers in a strange world had finally failed her. After centuries of the same, something had changed.

He had changed it.

That inarguable fact reminded her yet again of all the other people—enemies and alleged allies alike—who might have also found her too.

Like Azyyt Ra’al. Like Kordus Harkennr. Like anyone else who might or might not have been affiliated with either or both or neither of them.

Gods, she would have had so much more information about what she faced now in Chicago if Maxwell hadn’t sabotaged her plans the night she’d snuck out to the Old Joliet Prison on her own. Hours before Rowan had shown up at Shade headquarters out of nowhere to further jeopardize everything she’d built here.

Right at the very moment when it all could have finally went her way.

It still wasn’t enough to change her mind.

“I refuse,” she told him again—firmly, solemnly, without the intimidating show of her power or the need to raise her voice or keep him at arm’s length. This time, she said it not as a knee-jerk reaction to her fear and the seemingly impossible but as a product of her certainty.

She’d made her choice, and she would stand by it.

“I will always refuse,” she added. “No matter what you do. No matter how far you follow me or for how long. No matter what you say to me or how many stale oaths you dig up from the grave to shove in my face. I won’t do it.”

By the time she finished declaring out loud the promises she’d made silently to herself almost a lifetime ago, Rowan had closed the distance between them again. Holding her gaze, not saying a word or offering any visible reaction in his expression.

No condescension. No disbelief. No hurt or pain or surprise. Not even adoration anymore.

Just plain, simple Rowan, open and honest and real. The Rowan Blackmoon most people never knew existed beneath all his other masks.

Rebecca sucked in a sharp breath when he gently took her hand in both of his. His fingers were surprisingly warm, his palms calloused enough to feel but still somehow oddly comforting in their solidity.

What was he doing?

The cold weight of the bone tile pressed into her hand.

She would have let it drop to the floor and pulled away, but Rowan curled her fingers around it, firmly but gently closing his grasp around her clenched fist and the bone tile inside it.

He’d come all this way to return to her both the reminder of the promise and the promise itself—that he would never let her renounce it all.

She knew that now.

He studied her face, his hands closed with gentle warmth and permanence around her fist and the bone tile. There was nothing but pure, unadulterated, authentic Rowan Blackmoon gazing back at her now.

“Our people need you, Kilda’ari . I need you. We’re all connected. Every single one of us is a part of this, and we all knew this was going to happen sooner or later.”

His words touched her, plucking a cord of memory from the world to which she had once belonged, filling Rebecca with a long-abandoned yearning devastating in its sudden return.

Then he did them both a favor and kept talking. “No matter how you look at it, duty is a duty.”

Duty…

The magic word to bring her back to herself.

All her senses, her awareness, and her common fucking sense rushed right back in to fill the hollow space from which they’d just fled, and her fury rushed right back in behind it.

Rebecca tore her fist out of his hands and chucked the bone tile across the room. It pinged off the wall and toppled softly onto her bed, from the sound of it, though she didn’t care to look.

She shoved Rowan in the chest with both hands, sending him stumbling backward away from her with wide eyes, cluelessness etched across his features.

“Fuck duty,” she spat. “Fuck what everyone else expected me to be. Fuck destiny and vows and all of it. My life was never even mine , Rowan, since before I was born. Not once. That’s why I left the Bloodshadow Court and Xahar’áhsh in the first place. You know that. Everyone trying to tell me who I am and what I’m worth and what I’m meant to do. How I can best serve them. I have no fucking choice in it at all. I never did, and that’s why I’m not going back!”

“But I’m here now.” Though he didn’t sound as confident as he had up to this point, Rowan swallowed thickly and looked her up and down, as if he could find the real answers somewhere else. Because he refused to accept her words. “That has to mean something …”

“It means you found me, Rowan. Good for you. If anyone ever could, I guess it would be you. Congratulations. But it doesn’t change a thing. It doesn’t mean I have to do any of this, and it doesn’t mean they were right . I don’t owe anyone a goddamn thing.”

“Rebecca, if I found you, do you really think others won’t? It’s only a matter of time. We have to do this now, before anyone else has a chance.” The desperation in his eyes as he just kept pushing made all his other attempts look like an act, like practicing in front of a mirror. Now it was real.

“You know this is the only option,” he added, “because it’s the only one we have.”

The way he looked at her now—pleading, desperately hopeful, understanding everything she’d risked and lost and fought for while still relinquishing it beneath the greater truth he still believed in… It was all too familiar.

That look from him now made her skin crawl when, once, it had made her feel so seen.

But Rowan didn’t see her at all anymore, did he?

No, when he looked at her now, after all this time, the only thing he saw was their duty…

With a sigh, he dipped his head toward her and lowered his voice, reaching for her with one hand.

Like he thought that was all he had to do to get her to come to him. To meet him halfway. To surrender herself to what they might once have accomplished together after having spent so much time alone.

But that was how she wanted it, and that was what Rowan didn’t seem to understand.

Rebecca didn’t step toward him, but he didn’t lower his hand.

“Listen,” he said, “I know it’s not my place to tell you how to feel, and I won’t even try—”

“Don’t.” Rebecca closed her eyes and focused on her breathing. “I don’t want to hear it.”

She couldn’t hear it.

A part of her still knew he was right, that everything he said carried so much weight and so much truth already. The proof of that had been popping up out of the shadows all over Chicago in the last week alone than in all her centuries of running.

“But I will tell you how I feel,” he said.

The conviction in his voice was more painful to hear than she ever could have imagined, because Rebecca had truly thought she would never hear it again.

“I know you,” Rowan continued. “Not just who you are to them, or to the rest of the world, or what you are, or what you can do. I know you , Kilda’ari . That’s what I believe in.

“That’s why I’m doing this and why I’m not going anywhere unless you’re standing right there beside me the whole way. If you can’t hear anything else, hear that.”

Rebecca opened her eyes despite telling herself to keep them shut.

Rowan’s hazel eyes bored into her with the same intensity as she remembered—the same confidence and trust and truth with which he’d made his very first vow to her in her old life and in her dream last night. Only now, any hint of jest or mischief had disappeared.

“That’s a promise I’m making to you right now,” he said. “Without ceremony. Without a binding. Without the bullshit mysticism or the pressure or expectation. Just me .”

Now she had to blink away the first shimmering blur of tears she would never let fall.

Her gaze settled on his face.

Those luminous hazel eyes capable of such deception and such unbelievable depth in equal parts. The straight, sharp line of his nose. The shadow along his jaw. The way his russet-colored hair swept back away from his face to spill behind his shoulders while the same few locks that had never been tamed in their youth still refused to obey, curling beside his neck and in front of one sharply pointed ear.

This was Rowan. Her Rowan. The one thing in all of Hells-cursed Xahar’áhsh that had made her stay as long as she had, because he’d been all she had.

By the Blood, if anyone was going to find her here, now, it was a damn good thing Rowan was the one to have done it first. Because then, maybe, Rebecca might still have a chance.

Not the chance she wanted, but it was better than nothing.

The urge to give in to him, to break down the wall and tell him everything, overpowered her. The idea of opening up to anyone for the first time in so very long became a nearly irresistible temptation in the next few seconds.

Why should she deny herself that relief and that comfort when she’d gone without it for so long? When it was literally standing right here in front of her?

She wanted to tell him about the Azyyt Ra’al and their branded thralls she’d found in Chicago. About Hector’s involvement with them and possibly even Aldous’s.

She wanted to tell him about Harkennr’s base in Joliet, about what that soulless bastard was up to in her city.

She wanted to tell Rowan everything she had discovered here in the last few days, that her enemies were here, that they were already so close. Too close. He was the only one who knew in great and horrific detail what those enemies were truly capable of and how far they were willing to go to get their hands on what they wanted.

To get their hands on her .

Rebecca fought against that urge with every last reserve of her strength. But this thing she faced now—this thing she and Rowan shared—had become too powerful to ignore.

Had it always been this way? Or had she let herself go soft, believing it would never come to this? Just like she’d believed he would never find her.

It was an enormous risk to tell him anything, let alone to talk to him like this in her room, with who knew how many eyes and ears might be eavesdropping. But having Rowan’s support, even for five minutes, would be better than running around blindly in the dark forever.

Better to be prepared for trouble than trying to avoid what was already right there in front of her.

So she chose, just for now, just this once, to let herself trust what she’d thought had already died.

“Rowan, listen,” she said before taking a deep inhale and a pause to gather herself. “I have to tell you something. There’s—”

A piercing shriek erupted in the hall outside her room before she could get out another word. One long, low wail rising in pitch and drowning out all other noise before dipping again in warning and a call to action.

Rebecca spun around and saw the red light in the hall flashing through the crack beneath the door.

Right now? Seriously?

“What is that?” Rowan shouted, his words barely audible over the siren. “Is that a breach alarm?”

“No.” Rebecca glanced at him with a frown. “But the way things have been going lately, it’s probably something just as bad.”

A warning alarm for Shade’s entire task force to drop whatever they were doing and report immediately.

And one more horribly timed interruption.