50. Chapter 50

50

W hen Maxwell finally pulled the vehicle into the parking garage at Shade headquarters and there was only one person standing there waiting for them, Rebecca’s gut clenched into knots again.

It was Zida.

The old healer’s dubious scowl never changed as she glowered at the team hopping out of the van to unload the supplies they’d gathered from their fallen enemy.

The first thing running through Rebecca’s mind was that Zida was here to share with them some horrible news of what had happened in their absence.

That had become something of a theme during Rebecca’s short time as commander—some form of bad news every time she returned to headquarters.

But then she had to remind herself this was only part of the healer’s job.

Zida always knew when mission teams were expected to return, so she could be onsite to tend to sustained injuries and the operatives who required her skill sets the most.

None of Rebecca’s team were in dire need of the healer, which was also a fairly new development since she’d taken over.

Burke had regained consciousness on the ride back, and now he wobbled out of the van, scowling and slapping away anyone who tried to support him after his ordeal.

“I’m fine,” he grumbled, swatting away Whit’s outstretched hand. “Dammit, look at me. I’m awake. I’m alive. I can walk.”

“You were strapped to a magitek torture bomb,” Diego added with a smirk.

“So were you.”

“Just go talk to Zida anyway,” Rebecca cut in with a nod toward the healer still scowling at them all from her post at the base of the stairs. “Let her take a quick look at you, at the very least.”

“No offense, Knox,” Burke added with a grimace, “but all I want right now is to crawl into my bed and sleep for a week.”

“And you can do that after the healer takes a look at you,” she said. “Both of you.”

Diego and Burke broke into matching grimaces before Titus’s booming laughter echoed through the garage.

Rebecca turned toward the vuulbor and pointed at him. “You too, big guy. I know you all probably feel better than you look, and honestly, you look like shit right now. But I’m not taking any chances. Go.”

Titus’s goofy smile morphed into a similar grimace before he lumbered off after the other two rescued operatives to see the healer.

Rebecca forced back a smile and was more than happy to handle the rescued operatives’ gear as well as her own as she headed toward the armory with everyone else.

By the time all their gear and newly acquired weapons were returned to their proper places and the armory was locked up tight again, Zida had completed her preliminary inspections of the rescued operatives.

Rebecca made her way toward the healer at the base of the stairs in time to hear the old daraku’s final instructions.

“Right now, all I’m gonna tell you to do is get as much rest as you can. If you’re feeling hungry, grab one of Bor’s GIYs.”

Burke snorted and shook his head. “Can’t say I’ve got much of an appetite.”

“That’s fine. Just as long as it comes back. And if any of you experience any side effects after what you’ve been through and I find out about it from anyone else before you come to see me, I’ll kick your asses.”

“Side effects?” Diego asked. “Like what?”

“I don’t know.” Zida folded her arms and cocked her head at him. “You tell me. Or I can keep you under twenty-four-hour observation, if that’s easier for everyone. What do you say? Deal?”

“Deal,” Burke replied immediately, then swallowed.

Diego scratched the back of his head and seemed to have difficulty meeting the healer’s beady black eyes. “Yep. Pretty sure I can manage that.”

Titus’s low chuckle followed. “I’ll remind him, healer.”

Zida scowled up at the vuulbor looming over her and nodded. “I’ll hold you to that.”

Then the three rescued magicals slipped past the healer and made their way up the stairs, presumably to turn in for the night.

Rebecca couldn’t blame them after a mission like this. A night of solid sleep sounded amazing, and she hadn’t even been kidnapped and strapped to a magitek torture device and used as bait.

The second those three disappeared up the stairwell, Zida’s watchful scowl scanned the other operatives heading across the garage. Her black gaze settled on Rowan far more frequently than anyone else. Every time she looked at him, her scowl darkened.

What was that about?

Rebecca stopped beside the healer and nodded. “What do you think?”

“I think you got lucky as hell, kid,” Zida grumbled.

Rebecca gestured toward the stairwell. “I meant about them.”

“Oh, I know exactly what you meant.” The healer didn’t stop glowering across the garage, and she didn’t look at Rebecca. “Those three will be fine, given rest and a little space. I wouldn’t send them on any other field missions anytime soon, though.”

The healer snorted again and turned her nose up, still refusing to look Rebecca in the eye. “Not that you give two bishta’al shits about my recommendations…”

Great. Now Zida’s crappy mood made sense. She was still pissed at Rebecca for leaving the infirmary before the healer had given her the green light.

“I never said I don’t value your opinion, Zida.”

“Sure. You just ignore it. I pulled that damn stake out of your guts and patched you up while you went drifting off to who knows where, and then I told you twenty-four hours.”

Rebecca had to be especially delicate with this one. The healer had already put together too many pieces on her own to know Shade’s commander Rebecca Knox was far more than what she seemed.

With a sigh, Rebecca figured a bit of flattery couldn’t hurt. “And whatever potion you gave me helped a lot. I’ve already told you I’m a fast healer.”

“Uh-huh.” Zida finally looked Rebecca in the eye and raised the wrinkled ridges above her eyes where eyebrows should have been. “When are we gonna talk about what you haven’t told me?”

Shit.

Would the old woman start blackmailing Rebecca into revealing her secrets too?

That didn’t seem like something the healer would spend her energy on, but tonight, she looked pissed enough to warrant a few uncharacteristic actions.

Rebecca did not need someone else trying to pry into her old life and all the things she didn’t want to share with anyone.

Before she could settle on an appropriate response that didn’t make things worse, Rowan approached them casually, his self-satisfied smirk returned to its full, aggravating glory.

“I’d say congratulations are in order, wouldn’t you?” he said, stopping in front of them. “To us, of course. Successful rescue and all that.”

Blue Hells. He did not know how to read the room.

Either that, or he was deliberately stirring up shit, and they’d only just gotten back.

With a scoff, Zida looked him up and down. “I ain’t givin’ you shit, elf. As far as I’ve seen, the only thing you’ve done is act like you’re running the place, and I can promise you, Command By Proxy just because you’re an elf too doesn’t fly in this place.”

Rowan replaced his smirk with a confused smile, which, in Rebecca’s experience, most people seemed to think was genuine. She knew it wasn’t.

“Believe me, Healer,” he said, “I hold your unique skill sets in the utmost respect. If I’ve done anything to offend you—”

“Cut the bullshit,” Zida hissed. “Little birdie told me you stole our Thon-Da’al right out of her recovery bed before the two of you went running off together to play hero with everyone else. Nothing I could’ve done to stop you, but believe me, I’m keeping my eyes on you.”

A little birdie, huh? Maxwell had accused Rowan of the very same thing, right after informing the entire task force of their captured operatives. Unless literally everyone else in Shade also suspected Rowan of pulling their Thon-Da’al out of the infirmary without authorization, Rebecca knew exactly who that little birdie was.

The thought of Maxwell and Zida talking about Rebecca behind her back, or even teaming up to discover their Thon-Da’al’s secrets and comparing notes, was a dangerous possibility.

Rowan’s laughter echoed across the garage as he offered the healer a low bow overflowing with mockery. “What a flattering thought to be under your constant watchful gaze, Healer.”

“Oh, and flattery’s your refined deception, huh?” she snapped back. “Anything else coming out of your mouth, I’m not buying. You stay out of my way, I’ll stay out of yours.”

“Perfectly acceptable,” Rowan said. “Though you might want to take a second look at the source of your information. I haven’t stepped foot once inside your infirmary. Maybe you just don’t know everything about how your patients recover—”

“Blackmoon,” Rebecca interjected, trying to maintain the detached authority in her voice so it wouldn’t sound like she was panicking.

Was he seriously trying to plant even more seeds of suspicion against her? And with the healer , of all people?

Zida had been her ally through the homunculus poisoning, but Rebecca knew only too well that once someone thought they were being lied to, their unconditional support, without asking too many questions, didn’t tend to last very long.

Rowan settled his hazel gaze on her and raised his eyebrows, his smile growing again.

“A word,” she said, nodding across the garage before stepping away from Zida. “Now.”

A soft, airy chuckle escaped him. “But of course.”

He offered Zida another mocking bow before following Rebecca far enough that she figured they wouldn’t be overheard.

Not too much, anyway, though something told her both Maxwell and Zida could hear just about anything within the acoustics of the garage, so she’d have to be careful with this too.

Even when she jerked Rowan to a stop beside her, he was still laughing.

“This is the last warning you’re gonna get,” she told him. “Because you’ve been a pain in my ass from the very beginning, and it stops now. Understand?”

His hazel eyes shimmered with endless mischief as he tilted his head and searched her face. “Is that a command, Laen-Cáir ?”

Dammit, even now, he couldn’t stop throwing in these little barbs at her, could he? He knew they were both on thin ice, and it had to have occurred to him that if anyone who spoke the old tongue overheard him calling her Highness , that would lead to more confusion and prying questions.

Unless he was counting on the fact that, after his short time as a member of Shade, everyone else had already decided not to take him seriously.

Rebecca couldn’t count on it. It was too risky.

She forced down the urge to grab him by the front of his shirt and throw him up against the wall to knock some sense into him. But Rowan Blackmoon didn’t learn lessons the traditional way.

So she gritted her teeth and stuck with using her words instead.

“I’m not commanding you to do anything right now,” she said. “And don’t ever call me that again. It doesn’t apply.”

His playful smile vanished before he hissed, “That’s bullshit. After everything I’ve seen here, it’s perfectly obvious.”

“Oh yeah? And what’s that, exactly?”

He gestured toward the other side of the garage, where Maxwell and Whit finished loading the rest of the weapons and munitions. “You’ve found yourself a surrogate position of power, ruling Shade instead of taking your rightful place on the Shadowed Seat. You think you’ve changed. That you’re so different . But you’re still here ruling, as if that could ever be an acceptable alternative to your true purpose—”

“No.” Rebecca thrust a finger in his face, closer to losing it on him than she’d expected. “You think you know everything about this place and about what I’m doing here, but you’re dead wrong. This whole Commander-of-Shade thing? This happened purely by accident, I can promise you that. None of it was my choice, and by the time I tried to make that clear to everyone here, it was already too late.”

Rowan’s mischievous grin returned as he studied her face and leaned in closer. “If that’s what you have to keep telling yourself so you can sleep at night, Kilda’ari . But I know better. I know you . It’s starting to look like you’ve already forgotten that.”

And that was starting to sound like a threat.

Dammit, she’d hoped their last and only private conversation in her room had made her stance on this perfectly clear, but Rowan was too stubborn to listen to her words and take them with any grain of truth.

Likely because most of what spilled from his mouth was a twisted version of the truth, if it ever contained any truth at all, and he assumed now that she was doing the same.

In her periphery, Rebecca noted Maxwell and Whit almost upon them on their way to the stairwell. The closer they approached, the more of this infuriating conversation they would hear. She had to wrap this up.

“Bottom line, Blackmoon,” she said, “you’re already on thin ice. If you can’t pull yourself together and be a part of this task force the way you agreed when you swore your oath, we’re going to have a major problem.”

“If it’s anything like the problems I’ve already seen in this place, I’m sure it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

Rebecca wanted to scream.

Why couldn’t he just listen to her?

Now Maxwell was close enough that the tingling warmth consistently racing across her skin and flooding through her limbs and through her core had become impossible to ignore.

He had to have seen her standing here with Rowan, which probably meant he was about to break this up and insert himself between them again.

So she turned away from Rowan to acknowledge her Head of Security before he could repeat his habit of sneaking up beside her at the worst moments.

“Are we all good down here?” she asked.

Maxwell’s silver eyes bored into Rowan’s skull, but at least the shifter had stopped walking toward them. “Everything’s locked up for the night. Unless you have any objections, I say we call it a night.”

“No objections at all.” Rebecca fixed Rowan with a final warning look. “That sounds perfect.”

Then she took off toward the stairs to be the first climbing them toward the compound’s ground floor.

Otherwise, if she’d let Maxwell and Whit head upstairs first, she’d end up alone with Rowan in the garage. She didn’t think she could keep a lid on her anger and frustration with him when there wasn’t a potential audience to keep her in check.

More than that, though, a small part of her recognized that if she found herself alone with Rowan again, where they could speak freely and he could openly plead with her again the way he had in her room, the more his words would chisel at her resolve.

She should never have let him stay.

She should have tossed him back out on his ass the moment she’d recognized his face in that holding room.

Someone would have tried to question her about that decision, probably, just like she’d been questioned about her decision to put Rowan through The Striving—when she’d been so certain she could make him fail. But just like then, she wouldn’t have had to provide an answer.

The Thon-Da’al didn’t have to explain herself to anyone.

That was one lesson Rebecca had learned in the last several days since Rowan’s official swearing-in. A lesson she wished she’d learned sooner.

By giving Rowan a chance in her efforts to hide the past connection between them, she’d made her own bed.

And it reeked of Blackmoon Elf and broken promises and the life to which she’d sworn she would never return.

Despite having separated herself from him, Rowan still wasn’t finished making what remained of tonight a living hell for her.

When she reached the top of the stairwell and made her way down the long, narrow corridor toward the common room, followed by Rowan, Maxwell, and Whit, the Blackmoon Elf raced up behind her again, as if she’d refused to hear his urgent news.

“We could get out of here at any second, Rebecca,” he whispered, leaning as close to her ear as possible while they moved through the hallways. “Tonight, even. No one would notice until we were already on our way home. Together.”

She was aware of the footsteps echoing behind them as Maxwell and Whit followed in the same direction. Those two were engaged in their own conversation in low tones, and she couldn’t pick out the words. But if they stopped talking and overheard anything Rowan said now—which was absolutely possible with a shifter’s hearing—it was all over for Rebecca.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she hissed, staring straight ahead. “Drop it.”

“You can act like you’ve already forgotten who you are,” he whispered, “but you can’t play make-believe in this place forever, Kilda’ari .”

“We’re done talking. You need to shut up.”

“ You need to remember your duty,” Rowan pressed. “Your purpose. The promises you made before any vows you took here or anywhere else in this backwards human world. Don’t even try to tell me those are more important than your destiny.”

Gritting her teeth, Rebecca picked up the pace down the hall toward the sound of animated conversation spilling from the common room.

It made sense that the rescue team was still too riled up after their successful mission to head straight to bed. Plus, there were likely several other operatives who’d remained awake to hear all about it once the team returned.

She tried to focus on those voices, on the optimism in the words as tonight’s team shared everything they’d gone up against tonight and how they’d achieved their victory.

Rowan wouldn’t even take the cold shoulder for an answer.

“It’s time, Rebecca,” he whispered again, matching her faster pace with no added effort. “We can play around a little here and there, the way you’ve been playing with these magicals here, but the real battles are back home. And you know it. Your real purpose, where you can do the most good, is in the Bloodshadow Court. It’s still waiting for you, even after all this time. I’m still waiting for you.”

No matter how hard she fought it, how hard she’d been fighting it since the night Rowan had first appeared in her life again, hearing these things from him now stoked the burning embers of something old and buried inside her, deeply rooted to her very core.

Embers she’d truly believed had died out centuries ago, after all the pains she’d taken to smother them.

But Rowan was here now, bringing with him all the pieces of herself Rebecca had let no one see. The more he talked about their home, the more he tempted her with the possibility of return, the stronger the blood in her veins reacted to that call.

No matter how hard she tried to deny herself, no matter where she hid or how far she ran, Rebecca could never change the fact of who and what she was.

She was a Bloodshadow Elf and always would be. She was the heir prophesied to unite the Bloodshadow Court and the clans of Agn’a Tha’ros in their darkest hour.

She was everything her people needed to destroy their enemies.

And yet, in all the years she’d spent on Earth instead, Rebecca had come to understand she was also so much more than those things. Rowan might have been the only other magical on this planet with true knowledge of Rebecca’s past and the duty he kept trying to settle on her shoulders again, but he was also the only one incapable of seeing who and what she’d become in this world.

Right now, that was what kept her from giving in, from accepting his offer and letting him lead her right back into the endless war zone of her own life, no matter how worthy the cause for which she’d been created to fight.

The lively conversations rising from the common room grew louder by the second. Just when Rebecca caught a first glimpse of the operatives inside, still awake and wanting to be a part of the lingering excitement at this hour, she stopped at the entrance to the common room.

Rowan just kept pushing.

“Listen, I know you’ve been doing everything on your own for so long, you might not even remember what it’s like to have someone on your side. Someone who has your back, no matter what. But you won’t be alone anymore, Rebecca. It will be easier this time. You and me. We can leave tonight. I’ve already arranged the whole thing. The fastest route back through the—”

“You just don’t get it,” she hissed, whirling on him and fighting to keep her voice down while the rest of her self-control had already shattered. “Nothing you say is gonna change my mind. I don’t want to go back. You keep talking about this like I’m some kind of prisoner here, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m choosing Shade, so save your breath and fucking drop it.”

His eyes had widened when she’d rounded on him, and they remained that way as he studied her without expression. Then his hazel gaze narrowed as he leaned in close again and hissed, “You’ve been lying to yourself for so long, you’ve forgotten one crucial point in all this. You can’t lie to me .”

“And you’ve forgotten how to listen.”

A hot flush rose, strangely, along the back of her neck and the tops of her shoulders before it crept up into her cheeks. She didn’t think anything of it. Her frustration with Rowan would make her body respond like this.

“I’ve told you nothing but the truth since I found you in that holding room,” she hissed, “and you still refuse to hear it. You refuse to believe me, and believe me, I haven’t forgotten anything. If you can’t see that, you’re not the elf I left behind. And you’re certainly not who I thought you were.”

He blinked once, slowly and with heavy exaggeration, his mouth popping open.

Rebecca couldn’t decide if she’d finally stunned him into silence or if he just needed a little more time to come up with another barb he thought would convince her she wasn’t already where she belonged.

The heat in her cheeks became almost unbearable a second before Maxwell’s low, warning growl rose from directly behind her.

“If I have to tell you one more time to back off, elf…”

Rowan stepped to the side, as if willingly rearranging their little huddle to let the shifter enter, and spread his arms with a chuckle. “Just having a congratulatory chat with our commander, wolf. Everyone’s already talking about tonight. It’s like a little private party. Why don’t you go join them?”

“You first,” Maxwell muttered.

“Nah, I’m good, thanks. I’ll finish this little talk with Knox first.”

Maxwell surged forward and would have knocked Rowan backward away from Rebecca if the Blackmoon Elf hadn’t been quick enough to take several steps back first. “ You just got here. Earn your place!”

The underlying threat in his command, echoing from the hallway and across the common room, made all the conversation dwindle while the operatives tore themselves away from their stories and exhausted celebration. Now, they stared at their commander, their Head of Security, and their newest elven member all squaring off in the hall.

Great. This was not the kind of attention Rebecca needed now, especially after she’d already spoken to Maxwell and Rowan more than enough times about getting a grip and leaving each other alone.

Apparently, she’d picked the two guys least likely to follow her orders because they just despised each other that much.

After everything, Rebecca didn’t have it in her to continue keeping the peace.