5. Chapter 5

5

R ebecca’s ears rang with all the jumbled excitement, laughter, and eager shouts crashing through the compound everywhere she went. She was so determined to get to her destination, to finish this final crucial task, that she couldn’t have focused on what anyone said even if she’d tried.

But she knew the reason for it.

Shade’s burgeoning excitement and the pressure of expectation building within the compound was all too familiar—like working spells with tainted reagents until the magic blew up in the caster’s face.

The Striving was almost here.

In just half an hour, Rowan Blackmoon would begin The Striving to prove his worthiness to the entire task force.

Which meant Rebecca only had half an hour to make sure she did this right.

The boisterous commotion and frenetic energy filling every space within the compound tonight did nothing to settle her already fraying nerves or the anxious churning in her belly as she finally reached the double doors to the training gym and slipped inside.

She hadn’t felt this nervous in decades.

She also hadn’t had this much to lose in decades.

Yet here she was, so entrenched in her identity as Rebecca Knox and Shade’s new commander that she was willing to go to these lengths in secret, just to make sure an elf from her past had no more excuses and no further recourse to stick around any longer than necessary.

The more time Rowan spent within these walls, the greater the threat to Rebecca’s secrets—the higher the chances of those secrets being uncovered and tossed around for everyone to see.

The more likely it was that her enemies would come looking for her, just as Rowan had.

He’d called himself her friend, but right now, he was just as dangerous as all the others who’d ever claimed to care for her, once upon a time.

Even half an hour before The Striving’s scheduled time, the training gym was entirely empty. That was good. She could get in and out of here in minutes without anyone noticing what she’d done or suspecting a thing.

This was the only chance she had to finish this final piece of her last-minute plan to get rid of Rowan, to rig his challenges with a little something extra-special she’d whipped up just for him.

More specifically, to ensure that he would fail.

With only this last obstacle in mind, Rebecca hadn’t expected the gym’s sudden peace and quiet to have any effect on her nerves, let alone a calming one.

She hadn’t had any real peace and quiet in so long—since right before Hector’s attack on the compound less than a week ago, with his homunculi and Aldous’s ensuing demise all wrapped up together in a single night of deadly surprises and near-bloody uprising.

Less than a week…

Damn, it felt like forever ago.

Hopefully, once she got Rowan out of the way by setting him up to fail this Striving tonight, things could go back to the way they were. Or at least the way they were supposed to be, and maybe Rebecca might eventually feel like she could finally take a breath and relax.

But only after eliminating this newest threat to her secret identity. Rowan’s threat. A threat she also intended to be the last threat against her secrets for quite some time, if not forever. Then she could focus all her attention on being the leader Shade needed instead of jumping from one emergency to the next with no room in between to process any of it.

Just one more emergency to take care of, and after tonight, she’d be free of it all.

The training gym had already been refitted in the last twenty-four hours to host The Striving. The sparring equipment and practice dummies had been hauled away and stored somewhere nearby. The mats had been cleared, and the small amount of personalized decor the gym usually boasted had been stripped clean.

The room now looked more like a ritual arena—sparse and clean, with nothing left to interfere with either the initiate entering the challenge tonight or the spectators soon to crowd in for a clear view of the coming action.

A series of old-world casting circles drawn in chalk coated three of the gym’s four walls, ranging in size along the room’s perimeter, none of them smaller than a basketball. Between those casting circles hung wall-mounted iron sconces. When Rebecca had first been ushered into this very room for her own Striving six months ago, she’d assumed these were merely for ambience.

That was the last time the gym had looked like this, and here she was again, tonight, on the verge of another initiation challenge.

Only this time, she would be involved as Shade’s commander instead of its newest initiate.

Definitely an improvement.

This Striving, though, was for another elf, not to mention an elf from her homeworld whom she had known so well in a past life. Too well.

That knowledge made Earth feel suddenly fall smaller than it had ever seemed before. Smaller than Xahar’áhsh, absolutely, but the vast differences between these two worlds had made this one feel large enough to hold someone like Rebecca.

And to hide her from the truths she’d left behind in the old world.

It wasn’t big enough to hide her anymore, clearly.

Only when she approached the center of the room did she slow down to look over the largest casting circle painted on the wooden floor. Within that circle, the items for the ceremonial test had already been meticulously laid out—materials and spell reagents, specific physical trials meant to gauge an initiate’s proficiency in a variety of key focuses.

The same items had been set out for her when her time had come to prove herself as well.

Now, Rebecca intended to modify these objects for someone else—to ensure Rowan Blackmoon could not prove himself worthy, even if he was.

She didn’t want him to be.

It was too dangerous, especially when welcoming a Blackmoon Elf into this completely different life of hers—this completely different world—with open arms. That would open up so much more space for so many more things to go horribly wrong.

She couldn’t expose herself to that. Not now. She couldn’t expose the rest of Shade to it, either, which was a surprising realization, no matter how much logical sense it made.

For now, this place was her home, these magicals her family, and Rebecca was responsible for all of them.

She couldn’t let anyone discover her true self, and she couldn’t let every other member of this task force pay the price and suffer the consequences of it.

Technically, she’d already been found. Rowan was here. That would all change very soon.

Having a solution to this problem, however, didn’t alleviate her concerns about the problem existing.

How the hell had Rowan found her here, anyway? She hadn’t left any clues behind her over all these centuries. No viable trail to follow across this world while she bounced around the country every five to ten years, always finding somewhere new for herself.

Never spending more time in one place than she could afford to leave behind her when it was time to move on.

There was no possible way she hadn’t covered her tracks. She’d been so careful. She’d made sure not even a sliver of information about her could have made its way between worlds and all the way to the Bloodshadow Court.

Even rumors wouldn’t have survived the journey to Xahar’áhsh and certainly not into the hands of the Blackmoon Clan.

So how had Rowan tracked her down?

Had he been following her for much longer than he’d let on, watching her, waiting for the best time to pounce and throw her off guard?

If that were the case, when had he found her? How long had he been following her? Where had she been when he’d picked up her trail? What had she been doing? What had she let slip?

Her mind reeled with all the possibilities and the exasperating unknowns as she approached the very center of the training gym.

Naturally, she would have loved to get all her answers too—to know where she’d miss-stepped somewhere along the way. But her answers weren’t the top priority.

The top priority was that she could guarantee Rowan remained the first and only person to track her down. Once she got rid of him, once she sent him back home with his tail between his legs so he could do something else with his life, she would cover her tracks much more effectively.

But she had to get rid of him first.

Among the other spell reagents inside that central casting circle sat a large iron brazier. It looked like it could have come straight from the old world through the Gateway and took up a significant portion of the circle. Its belly remained hollow and cold for now, but in a few minutes, it would blaze with magical flames.

Laid strategically around that brazier were items the other items for the initiate to use at will during their sacred challenge. Ritual dagger, candles, various reagents for spellcasting, some of them from Xahar’áhsh but most of them sourced in this world instead.

Their magic wouldn’t be as potent, but they still worked in a pinch.

Most things on Earth did.

Anything Rowan might need to aid him during his trial, all without leaving this spellbound circle, were right here.

Rebecca only needed one of them.

The small, delicate flask of clear glass was easy enough to pick out, especially with the glowing blue potion inside that would serve as the spark for Rowan’s final test. The liquid’s glow pulsed softly when Rebecca reached for the stoppered flask, but it would do nothing more to her.

This potion wasn’t for her, after all.

When she grabbed the flask and pried out the stopper, she almost dropped the thing before realizing how clammy her hands had become.

Why was she so nervous about this?

Because the elf about to enter this ceremonial challenge was a reckless, irreverent, unpredictable bastard at best, and because Rebecca wanted this to work.

No, she needed this to work.

And she didn’t have all night to crouch here, debating the pros and cons of the plan she’d already formed and to which she’d already committed.

Squatting beside the casting circle, she pulled a small glass vial from her jacket pocket, bit down on the stopper to remove it with her teeth, and poured the swirling black-and-mercurial-silver potion it held into the larger flask of glowing blue meant for Rowan.

The darkness of her added concoction churned with the foreboding silvery-black Rebecca would have recognized anywhere. Rowan probably would have too, come to think of it. This stuff looked like her Bloodshadow magic captured in a jar.

Technically speaking, that was exactly what this was. Just slightly modified by her own design into a new form meant to affect one other person and one person only.

She’d made this one with pieces of her own magic, delicately connecting it to and aligning it with the very specific bond she and Rowan shared. The bond that continued, even now, after centuries spent apart, whether or not she wanted to admit it.

This was the basis of their relationship back home and in her old life. Pieces of their past together meant to infiltrate the blue potion inside the flask and make this initiation that much more personally painful for the Blackmoon Elf.

And that much more dangerous.

It was the only solution she could think of, but now that Rebecca stared at the dark streaks of black and silver billowing within the glowing blue, she couldn’t help but wonder if she’d just taken this too far.