7. Chapter 7

7

A hot flush crept up the back of Rebecca’s neck as the realization hit her. Her mistake was too dangerous, too disastrous, to ignore.

She didn’t want Rowan to die. She knew that much.

By the time this certainty settled in and she changed her mind, she was already halfway toward the raised dais in the back, where Bor settled into a chair of his own.

“You know what?” She tossed a thumb over her shoulder, surprised to hear her voice so steady. “I think there might be something I need to—”

The gym’s double doors burst open at once, banged against the adjacent walls, and remained open as a flood of Shade operatives rushed inside. It felt like one long, endless drove of bodies surging forward through those doors, one after the other, magicals talking and laughing, jostling each other, whistling, shouting, riling each other up for the celebratory spectacle awaiting them.

All the chaos that had clanged through her head before Rebecca had slipped into this room returned full-force. Shade had a new initiation test to look forward to, and the time Rebecca had thought she’d had before The Striving began had now officially run out.

Now that she stood in frozen indecision halfway between the dais and the central circle, everyone spilling through the doors got a full view of their commander standing there alone, as if she’d intended to greet them individually.

A few members thumped fists against their chests when they saw her. Most nodded and smiled and continued their animated conversations as the spectators took the chairs first and then found their own places to stand around the gym wherever there was room.

Great. Now everyone could see her, everyone knew she was here, and if she went back to that flask, everyone would see her messing with the setup.

Then the questions would come popping out of the woodwork just like Shade members had come popping through those double doors into the training gym.

That would defeat the whole purpose.

Even if the operatives were all too excited and distracted to notice what she was doing, Bor certainly wouldn’t miss it.

He would know.

But she had to do something .

Rebecca surged forward toward the central circle anyway, counting on her ability to look purposeful and focused to hide her thundering pulse and the rising heat of her body as something like desperation but not quite flooded through her, spurring her forward.

A calloused, bony hand wrapped around her forearm and hauled her in the opposite direction.

“It begins,” Bor snapped as he led her back toward the dais. “Time to take our places, Roth-Da’al. We want everything to go well, don’t we?”

How had he reached her so quickly?

Bor couldn’t possibly have known what she’d done to the flask. He might have guessed after walking in on her. But for the life of her, she couldn’t think of a reasonable excuse to remove herself from the old giveldi’s grip that wouldn’t raise an instant alarm.

With her heart thudding in her chest, the sound of it in her ears drowning out every other bit of growing noise echoing through the training gym, Rebecca was helpless to intervene on her own behalf. She didn’t fight back as Bor guided her toward the dais and up the two shallow steps. This was where Shade superiors were meant to settle down for the best view.

The horror of her dawning realization thrust her into frozen inaction.

Rebecca couldn’t get out of this. Not when the gym was filling up faster than she’d ever seen. Not when she had nowhere to go without being seen. Not when the entire task force expected her to act the part as their Roth-Da’al for a ceremony she’d fucking ordered.

On top of that and without knowing it, she’d just inadvertently sentenced another elf to death.

“That one’s yours.” Bor finally released her forearm and gestured with a gruff toss of his hand toward the largest chair. This one was centered perfectly, all for the clearest view once Rowan took his place.

Larger than all the others, this chair could have passed as a much more tasteful version of a throne than anything Aldous had ever used before she’d taken his job. It was here for a reason—so everyone in this room knew without a doubt who was boss.

As she settled slowly into the largest chair reserved for Shade’s commander, her entire body vibrated with the flushes of dreadful heat and icy, numbing cold alternating inside her, battling for a monopoly over her physical sensations.

There was no getting out of this. No sneaking away. No cleaning out the flask and demanding someone refill it. There was no backtracking now that she’d already made her decision.

The deed was done. The only thing she could do was to sit here and watch the aftermath of it.

Everything happened too fast. Rebecca couldn’t pretend to withstand the growing dread gnawing at her from the inside. It was all she could do not to throw caution out the window and call the whole thing off, no matter how odd it would be or how suspicious. No matter how many people she disappointed.

But she couldn’t.

She’d made this bed for herself, thinking after all this time that she could outsmart and outmaneuver Rowan Blackmoon on her own turf and with an entire magical task force behind her. But she’d taken it too far in the wrong direction.

This was as bad as putting her proverbial foot in her mouth could possibly get.

Minutes after the first operatives had streamed through the gym’s doors, the room had filled to the brim with eager magicals talking and laughing and adding to the growing energy of anticipation thickening in the air.

Never before in her six months with this underground organization had Rebecca felt so stifled by the collective energy, so suffocated by the sentiment she couldn’t share with them. All of it mixed with her own acute helplessness and made her sick.

There was nothing she could do. She’d run out of time.

This was happening.

At the end of the constant stream of Shade operatives came Zida. Their resident healer hobbled across the gym more slowly even than Bor, though no one offered to help the old daraku woman to her seat.

No one dared.

Before she knew it, Rebecca sat stock-still in her commander’s seat, with Zida in a slightly smaller chair on her left and Bor on a stool at the far corner of the elevated stage—the traditional old-world positions for advisors and consultants to the Roth-Da’al of any community.

Some help they were to her now.

Rebecca didn’t want to speak with either of them, and she couldn’t ask for their advice or counsel now. She couldn’t trust anyone when it came to her fears.

When it came to her near-future crime of sending Rowan to his death.

Neither Bor nor Zida would insert their own opinions unless their Roth-Da’al specifically asked for it. But Rebecca was too terrified of what she might have set in motion to ask for anything.

After a minute-long gap in the last of Shade’s members to enter the training gym, the final group made their appearance.

Maxwell stepped through those open double doors first, scanning the gym as if he led the way as a personal bodyguard for those who followed instead of as the Head of Security answering only to Shade’s commander.

The second he appeared, that warm, tingling pull toward him tugged at Rebecca’s core again, like it did every time she and the shifter were in the same room.

Like a coil of rope woven from threads of the sun had tied itself around some unknown, integral part of her while the other end led to that same missing piece inside Maxwell Hannigan.

Over the last few days since this sensation had first started, Rebecca had ignored it, for the most part. It was all too easy to ignore what she didn’t understand and couldn’t explain.

But now, that feeling combined with the tightening dread gnawing at her insides, growing heavier and colder by the second as she watched Maxwell enter, only made her nauseous.

Directly behind Maxwell, the five most trusted and experienced members of his handpicked security team entered next. Five Shade members answering directly to the task force’s Head of Security, with a sixth figure moving at the center of their protective formation.

No one touched that sixth figure as they guided him toward the center of the room. They didn’t have to.

Rowan had already been sufficiently bound with a combination of heavy iron chains rigged with dampening wards and submission hexes to keep him from trying anything until The Striving was complete.

Even a scion of the Blackmoon Clan couldn’t have gotten himself out of those bindings on his own, though Rowan didn’t look the least bit concerned for his own wellbeing or the state of his unknown future.

He walked within the security formation with a constant smirk riding his lips. The expression remained as he noted the entire task force lining the perimeter of the training gym to watch his magical performance tonight. He even nodded to a few of them, adding a flash of brilliant grin to whoever he thought worthy of receiving it.

As though, even while bound, warded, and rendered almost useless by the chains and the magic surrounding him, this was all still one massive joke to him. A comedy of errors from which he would of course rise victorious, because that was what Rowan Blackmoon did.

Only he’d never had Rebecca Bloodshadow waiting there on the sidelines and meddling with the mechanisms of an ancient rite she’d thought she understood.

Now it was too late to take it back.

Rowan’s amusement didn’t surprise her. He still thought he was superior to everyone else in this room—in strength, speed, skill, and ability.

That would have been true, if Rebecca hadn’t dosed that potion flask with her own magic. The only power in this room, maybe even in this entire world, stronger than his.

While Maxwell and his team led their elven prisoner toward the central casting circle, the feeling of being trapped and suffocated and robbed of all agency only grew thicker around Rebecca, closing in by the second and tightening its awful hold on her with every breath.

What have I done?