48. Chapter 48

48

S omehow, over the rush of Rebecca’s growing panic, and the pounding of her pulse in her ears, and the burning in her chest threatening to consume her and drag her down into the darkness forever, she heard other sounds throughout the theater hall.

Gasps and groans in multiple voices. Grunts of effort and heavy breathing. Staggered footsteps. The click of weapons being picked up off the ground or set aside for the moment.

Someone hissed, followed by a short-lived scuffle, two zapping magitek rounds fired, and a final squawk of surprise and defeat before two more heavy thumps hit the ground.

Clearly, Rebecca hadn’t taken every spark from every enemy combatant in the building. She just hoped whoever had been the target of those final shots wasn’t one of her operatives she’d been trying to protect.

More groans and thumps, coughing and sniffing, then Rebecca could hear nothing over the sound of her own wracking coughs when another fit of desperate breathlessness overcame her.

Maybe her coughing echoed across the theater hall from the balcony, or maybe it merely echoed in her mind. Other than her rising panic at the realization that she’d just endangered her own life with last-minute recklessness. Again.

For someone who couldn’t breathe and had surely just killed herself by using her own secret magic, though, she still managed enough breath to keep coughing without asphyxiating.

“Someone give me a headcount,” Maxwell called down below.

A multitude of different voices barked out responses Rebecca couldn’t decipher, her vision still darkening, her lungs burning, her chest as heavy and tight now as if someone had set the magitek bomb right down on the center of it.

“Praise the Shadowed Seat...” Rowan murmured.

It was a rough translation from old-world Xaharí, but the meaning was still perfectly clear.

Still, the Shadowed Seat had nothing to do with their mission tonight. This had all been Rebecca and no one else.

How odd that she would feel so opposed to the use of an outdated phrase like that, especially now. Because wasn’t she dying?

And Rowan still had no idea what he was talking about.

The stinging tears welling in her eyes—from the dizziness swimming through her head, and the pain in her lungs—squeezed out beneath her lashes when she clenched her eyes shut tight and waited for the end.

Drawing slow, labored, wheezing breaths she was sure would be her last.

How long did this dying process have to take?

Apparently, it included another round of raspy coughing to join the sounds of weary, labored movement on the ground floor before the single question from below almost made Rebecca wish she’d already given up the damn ghost.

Then she wouldn’t have to deal with what came next.

“Where’s Knox?” Maxwell asked.

Of course he would notice her absence before anyone else. Before even Rowan.

And she was up here, lying uselessly on the balcony, fighting alone to hang on just a little longer until her final breath.

“Oh shit,. I don’t see her.”

“Knox? Has anyone seen Knox?”

“She was just right here, I swear.”

“Knox!”

As her team’s voices echoed around the auditorium, Rebecca pushed herself off the balcony floor to sit upright, still barely breathing and somehow more capable now of processing what she’d heard despite knowing the end was near.

Hearing them shout her name as they searched for her made it impossible to just keep lying there without at least trying to communicate.

Great. If she was still capable of moving on her own and standing and responding, that meant she’d have to get up and show them all the unequivocal proof that the battle had rendered her terminally damaged. Again.

She dragged herself several inches toward the balcony’s railing and reached up to grab it for support. As soon as she did, she drew her next breath with far more ease and less rattling than those immediately before it.

Her head still swam, but her energy now flooded back into her in record time, as if it had never left.

With that energy and breath and the steadily increasing calm running through her came an overwhelming relief.

She wasn’t dying, after all. The poison didn’t still exist. She’d overloaded her system without sufficiently preparing for it first, but her system was fully capable of correcting itself. She’d just needed a little time.

By the Blood, that was all this was! She hadn’t ruined everything…

“Knox? Can you hear me? Knox!”

“Shit. You don’t think she—”

“No!” Maxwell snapped. “Find her. Now!”

“Wait,” Rebecca croaked, sounding plenty weakened even as she found the strength to haul herself to her feet by the balcony railing. “I’m here. I’m here! All good. Everything’s…cool.”

Puffing out a sigh, she leaned forward against the balcony and offered a perfunctory wave. Then she swiped loose strands of hair away from her cheeks and neck, the cold sweat of what she’d thought was impending death drying quickly now.

Every magical in the auditorium turned toward her and craned their necks to gawk at their Thon-Da’al appearing up in the wings.

“How the hell did you get up there ?” Diego asked, his head twisted toward her from where he still sat strapped to the deactivated bomb.

“The stairs,” she said.

“What happened?” Maxwell growled.

Rebecca took a deep breath, let it out in another sigh, and gestured toward the corpse on the balcony with her none of them could see. “Necromancer…”

“Seriously?” Whit asked.

She nodded. “I noticed him when that damn bomb started going nuts again.”

“And you went after a necromancer on your own?” Maxwell asked. “Without telling anyone?”

“Just seemed easier at the time,” she replied with a shrug.

“No shit.” Jay chuckled and shook his head. “Easier.”

“Tell me you’ve never been on a mission with Knox without saying you’ve never been on a mission with Knox.” Titus’s booming voice, though weakened after he’d spent so much time unconscious, still filled the entire auditorium with its thunderous, gravelly rumble.

A shocked silence followed as everyone gaped at him next. Then Diego threw his head back and roared with laughter, his chest and shoulders heaving as they strained against the ropes and iron chains still binding him to the harmless mechanical monstrosity at his back.

The tension amongst the team shattered, giving way to breathless chuckles and crooked, weary smiles—the product of everyone realizing simultaneously how close they’d been to mission failure tonight and, now that it was all over, how miraculous it was that they were all still alive.

The only person not visibly relieved or remotely amused was Rowan. He glared up at Rebecca instead, his arms folded, and shook his head. “About fucking time, don’t you think?”

Diego’s laughter cut off. “Whoa. What crawled up your butt?”

“Yeah, how about a little gratitude, elf?” Shell added as she gestured up toward the balcony. “Knox just saved all our lives up there. If that doesn’t earn a little gratitude, I don’t know what does.”

“Or at least a little more respect,” Whit said with a grunt.

Rowan eyed them both, and his smirk returned. “You know what? You’re right.”

Then he looked up at Rebecca again with visibly forced humility. “Wow. Thank you so much for running right into even more alleged danger and taking care of something no one else even noticed.”

Rebecca didn’t encourage his attitude with a response beyond glowering back and down at him.

Was he really still pissed at her for not blowing her cover and unleashing her darkest abilities out in the open for everyone to see, just to avoid the entire battle they’d already won?

She never expected a thank you, but the least he could have done was to not be an ass about it.

“Boy,” Titus said, his booming chuckle still startlingly loud and deep despite how tired he sounded. “Can’t say I’m upset I missed all the action, but I sure as hell am glad to see you guys here now.”

“Speaking of action,” Diego said, “how much longer are you guys gonna wait before getting us the hell out of here?”

So the rest of the team approached the stage to get their captured operatives out of their bonds and off the dead magitek bomb.

When a preliminarily cautious approach to the stage revealed no residual magic where the booby-trap wards and casting circles had once been, the team moved that much faster, their task unburdened by relief now that accidentally blowing themselves to bits was no longer a risk.

Rebecca picked that moment to take her leave of the balcony. The rest of her energy and strength returned as she slipped back through the door into the stairwell.

When she entered the auditorium again, casually stepping over enemy corpses before heading down the sloped floor, Diego, Titus, Burke had been released from their bonds, though Burke lay where the others had set him on the edge of the stage, breathing but still unconscious.

Then she noticed the conversation had inevitably turned toward how they’d gotten out of such a close call, which Rebecca had hoped they could all skip.

She’d known better.

“That’s insane, man. I don’t even know how it happened.”

“Maybe the thing just shot itself. You know, like a blown circuit or something. Too much energy plugged into it, and pop .”

“Yeah, I think that’s called a bomb exploding,. This one just went dead, and no one even touched it.”

“All right, hot shot. So then how do you explain what happened, huh?”

“Hey, don’t ask me. I’m just one of the guys who risked his life coming in to save your kidnapped ass.”

The laughter echoing around the auditorium, even while the team tried to reason out the cause of their victory, made everything Rebecca had risked for that victory feel entirely worth it.

They’d done it. The emergency rescue op was a success. No deaths, and only a few minor injuries, all things considered. And if the worst thing that came out of this mission tonight were a few inexplicable details of the how and why, she could live with that.

Honestly, it was more than she’d expected.

The sight of Rowan watching her the whole time as she crossed the auditorium to join them, however, his arms still folded and a knowing smirk tugging at his lips, dampened the satisfaction of victory.

He waited until she’d rejoined the team before making it even worse. “Maybe Knox has an idea. She was up above the fighting for a while.”

“There was plenty of fighting on the balcony,” she said. “Trust me.”

She’d meant it as a terse dismissal of his suggestion, but the rest of the team stopped what they were doing to watch her again, waiting for the explanation Rowan had all but promised them.

Still a pain in her ass.

With everyone’s eyes on her, Rebecca shrugged and went with the first thing that popped into her head. “I’m pretty sure the necromancer was responsible for all of it. Powering the casting circles and the bomb before going for the big guns with that last nasty spell that almost took us all out. I almost didn’t get to him in time. But as soon as I did, all the magic he’d been channeling collapsed on itself, and that was it. No more casting-circle traps, no more bomb, no more necromancer.”

“There you go,” Diego said as he turned toward the others, gesturing in Rebecca’s direction. “Take down the source, and everything else goes with it, just like that.”

A smile flickered across Shell’s lips. “Badass.”

“Really?” Rowan asked with a snort. “You sure that’s how that went down? Because when you left all the fighting down here, you were gone awhile. Doesn’t take that long to get rid of one little necromancer.”

Rebecca stopped and stared straight ahead, forcing herself not to clench her fists but unable to keep from gritting her teeth instead.

She really hated Rowan Blackman’s guts right now.

Was he seriously trying to expose her in front of everyone, just because he’d been a little frustrated? What did it even matter to him? They’d won.

With her next breath, she turned to face him, pulling up an instant mask of casual apathy at his thinly disguised interrogation, and clicked her tongue. “Yeah, well, he was a strong-as-shit necromancer.”

“But Knox is even stronger,” Shell added with a grin.

Then Titus’s unrestrained, bellowing laughter thundered through the auditorium again. His amusement and relief were contagious now, and in seconds, the rest of the team was laughing with him. They shouted a few hyped-up cheers for their commander before diving into reliving some of the battle’s best moments now that the danger was over and their victory permanently claimed.

“All right,” Maxwell grumbled as he scanned the carnage littering the room. “Let’s get this shit cleaned up.”

“You want us to get rid of the bodies in an abandoned park?” Jay asked.

Shell huffed out a wry chuckle. “Isn’t this usually where people go to hide bodies?”

The shifter shook his head. “No, these assholes can rot here. But check them for anything that might tell us who they were working for, then grab the weapons and gear. We’re taking as much of it as we can carry.”

“What about…” Titus stuck a thumb over his shoulder toward the heap of junk the magitek bomb had become.

Maxwell didn’t even look at the device. “I never want to see that thing again in my life.”

A few operatives chuckled.

“Copy that, boss,” Titus said before ambling off with the others to start on their final tasks.

Rebecca couldn’t stop glaring at Rowan. He was making all of this so much harder than it had to be, true, but she hadn’t been too worried about it until now.

Because she couldn’t figure out why he’d tried so hard to undermine her tonight by questioning her explanations and trying to raise suspicions.

Her team hadn’t taken the bait, but that didn’t change the fact that he’d tried.

What was he doing?

As if she’d shared all this out loud with him while they stared each other down, Rowan raised an eyebrow, then lifted one hand to covertly signal her in quick, flicking gestures.

“You don’t like me like this? Until you and I finish what we started, you’re stuck with the new me.”

Dammit.

Rebecca had had her suspicions about what he’d wanted and why he’d seemed so intent on ruining things for her, but now he’d confirmed it.

Rowan had hunted her down all the way to Chicago—and who knew how much farther before that—to blackmail her into that conversation they’d barely begun in her room.

The conversation she never wanted to have.

The conversation Rowan clearly hoped, maybe even believed, would get her to change her mind and make an entirely different choice she’d already promised herself she would never make.

Clearly, he had no idea just how far or how deeply her determination extended when she made up her mind about something, especially when that determination had carried her as far as it had over her last several centuries on Earth.

He could try all he wanted. She didn’t have the time or energy to fight him, which would only encourage him to keep trying.

Instead, she turned away from him to help the others round up what they could before they left this battleground of a theater hall and the whole damn abandoned amusement park for good.

She’d hardly gotten started before the warm, tingling pressure racing across her body and instantly raising the temperature in the auditorium overwhelmed her.

Then she found Maxwell just a few feet away, his perpetual scowl focused on Rowan. He obviously didn’t appreciate the Blackmoon Elf’s current attitude, either. No surprise there.

But when he turned his silver gaze onto her next, dropping it for half a second to her hands before finally turning away without a word, Rebecca’s stomach dropped.

Had that just been a coincidence, or had he been watching her and Rowan this whole time?

Had he seen Rowan’s casual signaling? How much had he seen and how much did he think he knew?

She couldn’t just approach him and ask, but the possibility of Maxwell catching on to the existence of something else between Shade’s only two elves would only raise the stakes, not just for Rebecca but for Rowan too.

If Maxwell got it in his head that these two elves were colluding somehow, he would do everything in his power from here on out to ensure Rebecca never got another moment’s peace.

Another burst of laughter from the team echoed across the room, pulling Rebecca’s attention away from the potential what-ifs.

Diego stood in front of the stage with his arms spread wide, his crimson eyes darkening as he searched the other operatives’ faces. “What’s so funny? I just wanna know what happened to my phone.”

T he team made quick work of going through the enemy corpses for any useful information, but they turned up nothing. That seemed to dampen the relatively good mood, though most surprising of all was Rowan’s visceral response to not getting what he wanted, either.

With a frustrated grunt, he kicked the closest corpse and scowled, looking genuinely put out. “This is such a fucking waste. We could have gotten this whole thing over within seconds if we didn’t have to walk on so many damn eggshells everywhere we went.”

Shell and Diego exchanged an amused look before she let out another wry laugh. “You wouldn’t know it, because you weren’t here before Knox stepped up. But there’s something to be said for a healthy amount of caution every once in a while.”

Diego snorted. “Like not setting us up to fail from the beginning.”

Rowan stopped kicking the corpse and fixed them both with uncharacteristic disdain. “You’re all fucking amateurs.”

Crouched over another body on the other side of the auditorium, Maxwell looked up, his scowl darkening more than usual. Then he stood abruptly and charged toward Rowan. “It wouldn’t hurt you to work on improving your attitude, elf.”

“It’s a statement of fact,” Rowan spat, “not an attitude. Watching all of you laugh and joke around after something like this is like watching an infant applaud themselves for walking down the hall.”

Growling low, Maxwell crossed the distance between them with three more lunging strides and loomed over the elf man, his silver eyes flashing. “What the fuck is your problem?”

Rowan’s sharp, bitter laugh cut through the air. “What are you talking about, wolf? No problem at all, right? Because we won.”

“No thanks to you,” Maxwell snarled. “You broke rank. You deliberately defied your orders to hold until we knew more about what we were walking into. You ran right into this like it was a solo op. We could have lost lives tonight because you still haven’t figured out how to follow the rules!”

Rowan’s gaze swept lazily across the room to fall on each individual operative before he exaggerated a shrug. “Well look at that. We didn’t lose any.”

“That’s not the fucking point!”

“Oh no. Of course not. But I figured it out, wolf. The problem is you’ve gotten so used to shoving your hand so far up everyone else’s ass that when you move it, they start talking. And you can’t stand anyone telling you you’re doing it wrong.”

“Everything you touch falls apart,” Maxwell hissed. “You almost killed our commander during training, Blackmoon. Training .”

“For the love of—” Rowan growled and rolled his eyes. “ That’s what you’re stuck on? Is that what’s pissing you off? Maybe if you knew what training even was…”

Rebecca had hoped they’d be able to work this out on their own, at least after this major win for the team tonight, but that was a premature hope.

“That’s enough, Blackmoon,” she called out.

“I would love to show you sometime,” Rowan spat, stretching his neck out toward the shifter standing an inch taller than him, at most. “Anywhere. Anytime.”

“I don’t have to prove myself to anyone,” Maxwell growled. “Least of all some entitled pain-in-the-ass elf who can’t—”

“Hannigan,” Rebecca tried again, thinking maybe her Head of security would be more responsive. “Let’s wrap this up. We’re almost—”

“Says the wolf who thinks he’s the king of the fucking reject club,” Rowan spat. “Because his own pack couldn’t even stand to keep him!”

Maxwell’s expression went blank for half a second. Then, with a violent snarl, he shoved Rowan away with both hands.

The Blackmoon elf staggered backward up the sloping auditorium floor, laughing all the way.

Great. Now they’d made it physical.

“Go ahead and say it,” Maxwell snarled. “I’m right here.”

Smirking, Rowan looked the shifter up and down, then shrugged. “Okay.”

His fist came swinging up with surprising speed and perfect aim before he punched Maxwell square in the face.

“Oh shit …” someone muttered.

The team had stopped working to watch, and now they all backed away as if of a single mind, their eyes wide as they shared nervous glances.

Rowan’s blow had little physical effect. Maxwell had dodged the worst of it, but with these two, it was less a matter of physical damage and more a matter of principle.

Apparently, that was the principle of murdering each other, because neither one of them had the stones to just let this go.

Maxwell’s furious growl and Rowan’s bitter, dangerous laughter clashed against each other as they geared up for a real fight.

Rebecca was done stepping up between them. She was done trying to mediate or keep them apart or get either of them to see reason.

If they wanted to act like morons, fine. She would treat them like morons.

While they bickered and shoved each other around, Rebecca snatched someone else’s momentarily discarded magitek weapon off the ground, gave it a quick inspection, then slapped the controls along its side to power up the mechanism.

Its low whine filled the air as a sputtering burst of neon-orange light glowed from within. She raised the weapon in both hands to aim it at Rowan and Maxwell, hoping they at least had the brains to realize the difference between a threat and a promise.

They might have been bluffing with each other, but Rebecca certainly wasn’t.

She hoped at least one of them took her seriously, or she’d have to follow through and make them.

Even if it meant going back on her refusal to let any member of Shade get hurt tonight.

But if that wasn’t enough…what then?