51. Chapter 51

“ You know what?” Rebecca backed away from Maxwell and Rowan and lifted both hands in concession. “I’m done with both of you. Clearly, whatever you’ve got going on with each other trumps anything I’ve asked of either of you. So go ahead. Do whatever you need to do to get it over with. I’m done.”

They both gaped at her.

“Seriously?” Rowan asked, looking both dubious and ridiculously excited by the prospect.

For once, Maxwell ignored the Blackmoon Elf’s comments and took a hesitant step toward Rebecca instead, his eyebrows drawn together, that same look of pained indecision contorting his features.

That same look that had almost crippled her every other time she’d seen it, and she still didn’t know why the hell she thought she could feel his pain.

“Knox,” he said. “I didn’t mean to—”

“I don’t care,” she said. “Not now. And until you two learn how to figure this out on your own, I don’t want anything to do with either of you. Goodnight.”

As she spun away from them both, meaning to cross the common room for the hallway leading to the residential wing and her private twin-sized bed practically calling her name, Rebecca noticed that next zap of painful, tingling energy battling against the normally pleasant warmth of Maxwell’s presence.

Like she’d hurt him and was feeling it now reflected to her.

Right now, she didn’t care. She just wanted this day to be over.

When she stepped away from Rowan and Maxwell and that sharp pain subsided, she figured she was making the right choice. If they had to talk about it later, fine, but right now, she had to call it a night before she ended up doing something regrettable and inarguably unbefitting of a Thon-Da’al.

She hadn’t taken three steps into the common room, though, before the heavy slap of urgently running footsteps echoed from another branching hallway on the opposite side.

A second later, Leonard barreled through the archway, his eyes wide in terror and his hair sticking up in all directions as if he’d just woken up.

But the panic already on his face didn’t look like he’d gotten any sleep yet tonight.

“Hey, has anyone seen Nyx?” he shouted without even stopping to see who was in the room.

The conversations died down again while the operatives turned to look at him this time.

“ Seriously !” the mage shouted. “Where’s Nyx? Has anyone seen her?”

A heavy sigh came from the far end of the room by Bor’s service window, shut down for the night. Zida shuffled forward with a packaged snack clenched in her gnarled hands, having helped herself to Bor’s “Get It Yourselves.”

Rebecca hadn’t even noticed the healer hadn’t returned to the infirmary.

“Relax, mage,” Zida grumbled. “She’s in a recovery bed, where she’s supposed to be. I put her there myself.”

Leonard’s eyes widened even more when they centered on the healer, and he shook his head. “No, she’s not.”

“What do you mean she’s not?” Zida snapped. “You calling me a liar?”

“I’m not calling you anything,” he said, staggering toward the healer as he gestured with a hand in the general direction of the infirmary down the hall. “I’m saying she’s gone !”

A stunned silence overtook the common room before Rebecca turned around to meet Maxwell’s gaze.

His wide silver eyes reflected the same concern she felt.

After the state Nyx had been in when she’d returned from the transport team’s ambush, she wouldn’t have been able to get out of bed herself. Something was wrong.

With a frustrated growl, Zida tossed the GIY into the open bin where Bor set them out every night, then hobbled at a surprising speed toward Leonard. Her beady eyes swept across the common room, and when her gaze settled on Rowan, she pointed a gnarled finger at him. “I swear, if I find out you had anything to do with this, I don’t care what the Thon-Da’al says. I’m taking care of you myself. Move it, mage. Let’s go!”

As she and Leonard headed down the hall, Rowan chuckled and spread his arms. “I swear I didn’t do anything to that bubbly little katari.”

Rebecca pointed at him. “You stay here.”

“For how long?”

“However long you want. Or go to bed, for all I care. Just don’t follow me.”

Then she took off across the common room to catch up with Zida and Leonard.

She didn’t have to look back to know Maxwell was close on her heels.

Of course he would want to see this for himself too. He’d been one of the first to talk to Nyx when she’d returned from that ambush. Maybe even the one who’d saved her life, bringing her straight to Zida. There was no reason for Nyx to be anywhere but in a recovery bed, yet here they were, with one more inexplicable last-minute emergency on their hands.

She and Maxwell raced down the hall into the residential wing, and neither of them said a word. They caught up with Leonard and Zida before those two had even reached the infirmary, so they were all there together to inspect such an odd disappearance.

If Leonard was telling the truth.

Based on what she’d seen of the mage and the katari together, Rebecca didn’t think he had it in him to lie about something like this. The chances of him being responsible for it were non-existent.

Zida reached the door first, threw it open, and barreled inside, followed by Rebecca and the others. The healer shuffled toward the third recovery bed forming the rows of them in the front room, then stopped short and froze.

All the beds were empty. Rebecca saw it the moment she stepped through the door, and that shouldn’t have been possible.

Hissing through her toothless gums, Zida whirled on Leonard. “What did you do with her?”

“This wasn’t me !” He threw up both hands in surrender. “She’s supposed to be here!”

“I know that!” Zida spat. “So then what did you touch in here, you idiot mage?”

“Nothing!” Leonard’s gaze flickered from Zida to Rebecca and Maxwell, then back again. “I swear. I just came in here to check on her, to see how she was doing, but when I got here, she was just…gone.”

“And you didn’t touch a thing?” Zida asked again.

“Nothing. Honest. I went straight to the common room.”

“Does anything look different, Healer?” Maxwell asked as he stepped forward into the room, covertly sniffing the air. “Anything moved or missing?”

“You mean the entire unconscious katari who’s supposed to be recovering right now?” she quipped. “No. Everything looks exactly the same. Well, except for that .”

Zida pointed at the bed where Nyx had been and shrugged.

Frowning, Maxwell approached the bed to investigate and stopped, his back stiffening, and every other muscle in his body growing taut with the revelation of whatever he saw there.

Seeing his reaction made Rebecca’s insides squirm with apprehension, but she forced herself to investigate with him. If it was bad enough to make her Head of Security freeze up, she’d end up finding out all about it anyway, and it was still her job to get involved.

Only once she’d stopped at the foot of the recovery bed and saw what the shifter was still staring at did she understand his reaction.

Because the very same jolt of confusion and dread rippled through her too at the sight. Just like Maxwell, all she could do was stiffen and stand there, staring with wide eyes.

The recovery bed was empty, all right. No bodies of living patients.

But it wasn’t completely empty.

Lying right there in the center of the bed where Nyx was supposed to be recovering was a very familiar shape.

A small, vaguely humanoid figurine cut from stone, its edges smooth and any specific details muddled, no facial features or garments carved in any measurable detail. Though this one was cut from an off-white stone with a vein of dark silver running through it, it was otherwise the same as the figurine sent to her in the box from Kordus Harkennr, addressed to The New Thon-Da’al of Shade.

Another message.

Almost exactly the same message. An invitation to join the game.

But this time, the message carried much more severe consequences.

However he’d done it, Harkennr had somehow abducted Nyx right out from under Shade’s noses, and he’d left this totem behind.

Rebecca knew in an instant what this meant.

Harkennr knew Shade was in some way responsible for the infiltration of his compound and the attacks on his soldiers at the Old Joliet Prison, and now he was hitting them back for it.

An eye for an eye, so to speak.

A cold wave of doomed helplessness and overwhelming guilt knotted Rebecca’s insides as she stared at that figurine and couldn’t quite bring herself to touch it yet.

Shit. Harkennr knew. How the hell did he know?

The how didn’t matter nearly as much as the fact that he’d abducted one of Shade’s most vulnerable members right out of the infirmary’s recovery ward, and it was all Rebecca’s fault.

She’d tried to enter Harkennr’s compound right under his nose, without the courtesy of accepting his invitation first and simultaneously using his soldiers to heal herself with her Bloodshadow magic before trying to investigate what else he was up to in the Old Joliet Prison.

This was her punishment.

“W-what is that?” Leonard stammered.

“Beats me, kid,” Zida grumbled. “Doesn’t look like much, if you ask me.”

Even if Rebecca could have thought of something to say, her mouth had already run dry. The only thing she could think to do now, more as a reaction than a planned response, was to slowly look up at Maxwell standing beside her.

The horror and guilt on the shifter’s face matched her own exactly.

He knew just as much as she did, and now he also recognized the implications of this horrible little gift left for them in exchange for another kidnapped operative.

Rebecca had fucked up going to the old prison alone that night, but the responsibility for the chaos after that fell on both her and Maxwell. They’d fucked up together, and now, Harkennr had taken one of their own to get back at them.

When she finally found her voice again, Rebecca couldn’t bring herself to admit out loud what they’d both realized. So she went with the next best thing. “I guess that open invitation for a chat’s off the table now, huh?”

Maxwell’s frown darkened, and he swallowed thickly.

Beyond the fact that Nyx had been stolen from their headquarters, this little figurine had also confirmed Harkennr’s next move as an act of war. Against the two of them, yes, whether or not he knew which specific individuals had infiltrated his compound.

But it was also an act of war against all of Shade.

The only positive here was that Rebecca and Maxwell now knew what they were up against if they returned to the Old Joliet Prison, which was now an impending certainty.

The real question, though, was whether Shade could handle Harkennr and his forces now that the guy knew they were coming and would be waiting for them. They’d caught the place off guard when it was just the two of them on their own—admittedly, the task force’s two most powerful members—and they almost hadn’t made it out.

How much danger would they be putting everyone else in when they went back a second time to retrieve Nyx?

There was never a doubt in Rebecca’s mind that this would be their next move. They had to go after the katari.

But Maxwell’s next words were surprisingly painful to hear, especially when laced with all the agony of guilt the two of them now shared over what their mistake that night had produced.

“We have to get her back,” he said. “If they took her to that place…”

“I know,” Rebecca murmured.

The pain and fear in his silver eyes, visibly dimmer now than usual, only made it worse.

They both knew this wasn’t good and that they would put an entire task force of magicals in harm’s way when they went to rescue Nyx. But they had to get her out.

“She won’t last long in there on her own,” Rebecca whispered.

The shifter set his jaw, the muscles clenching over and over again until he nodded. “Then we go in and get her out. The right way.”

The right way. Just like they’d agreed to start doing that night together.

And here Rebecca had been, all this time since then, thinking “the right way” was supposed to improve things for Shade. But if she had to go up against Harkennr now to free Nyx from that sadist’s clutches, she might just have to get her hands dirty in a completely different way.

No, she was certain of it. Because Kordus Harkennr didn’t play by the rules, which meant Rebecca couldn’t, either.

Otherwise, she had already doomed them all.