9. Chapter 9

9

T he room erupted with a violent cheer. Every member lifted their voice in anticipation and encouragement, some even in the kind of hunger for violence and blood and struggle that could only be slaked by watching someone else go through it all alone.

The floor trembled beneath so much stomping and pounding against the floorboards while Shade’s gathered operatives ushered in the beginning of a night for their newest potential initiate unlike any other night.

A night which, for everyone else in this room, had changed the course of their lives forever.

The dais vibrated beneath Rebecca’s feet where she sat as the air of anticipation thickened and the noise intensified. She had no idea what to think or how to feel. She couldn’t even decide how she truly wanted this to turn out now that she was here, about to watch it all unfold.

If Rowan successfully completed The Striving tonight and passed, she would be stuck with him for far longer than she wanted to consider.

If he failed, there was now a high probability of him not surviving past that failure, and there was nothing she could do.

In a ritual initiation like this, even as Shade’s commander and even with someone she knew very well standing in the central casting circle, Rebecca’s hands were still tied. Everything from here on out was up to Rowan alone.

She liked the way that felt even less than the idea of him having found her and breaking through Shade’s security in the middle of the night just to sit down for a little chat.

When the screaming cheers and stomping and cries for action died down, each casting circle lined with chalk along the walls and painted in various locations across the floor burst with renewed magical light. The old-world runes and newer iterations used more commonly on Earth, the wards and spellbindings all programmed into this part of The Striving—each component flared to life with the blistering green light, swirling and flashing and pulsing.

Rowan Blackmoon stood at the very center of it all.

The central casting circle grew brighter by the second. Then the runic imprints scrawled on the walls followed suit, imbued with their own single purpose for the ritual. Over a dozen different spells etched into this physical space all powered up together to signal the beginning of what could very well turn out to be Rowan’s last trial ever.

Because Rebecca had been so focused on stopping him, she hadn’t stopped to consider the hidden consequences of such a thing.

While the magic thickly pulsing through the gym grew and intensified, Bor turned on the stage to head back toward his seat. He huffed out a tired-sounding sigh, as if he’d stopped enjoying these things long ago and only continued overseeing the rituals because it made everyone else happy.

He met Rebecca’s gaze and nodded.

For the briefest moment, she thought there was some deeper meaning behind that nod, some secret message meant just for her. A reassurance she hadn’t asked for—that everything was going to be okay, that she’d made the right call, that no matter what happened next, it was all out of her hands and beyond her control.

Because The Striving wasn’t about anyone else but the person in the center of that casting circle.

As soon as the thought occurred to her, Rebecca shook it out of her head.

Why would Bor try to tell her any of that with a look ? Why would she make it so obvious for anyone else in this room to pick up on her guilt and the brewing fear of what she might have set in motion tonight?

She had to be imagining it.

As if they merely followed some silent order from the old giveldi, the second Bor settled onto his stool at the corner of the dais with a low creak from the furniture beneath his weight, five different glowing green circles of runic power and concentrated energy lit up within the walls all at once.

Each of them filled the air with a dangerous hum, mirroring the whine of high-powered automatic weapon systems augmented with magitek for that extra boost of firepower.

But these were nothing like precision rifles or automatic assault weaponry. This was magic—ancient old-world stuff from way back in the day, meant to test far more than just a person’s proficiency with loading, aiming, and firing.

The brighter those circles on the walls lit up with their internal green glow, the more violently the gym’s overhead lights flickered, strobing faster and faster until it looked like they were about to give out. It was impossible to tell which casting circle would strike first until it already had.

A blinding burst of magical energy erupted from the center of the casting circle to Rowan’s left. An enormous, crackling orb of blue-green energy tore away from the wall with a trembling boom ricocheting across the gym before. The churning energy barreled toward Rowan without any sign of stopping or slowing.

Rebecca’s ears already rang with the whining buzz of so much magical firepower warming up all at once. It made her dizzy, but she didn’t dare look away from Rowan.

He noticed the enormous magical blast hurtling toward him at the last second and stepped easily to the side, avoiding a full blast of attack magic hitting him square in the face.

The elf moved with impossible speed. His evasion techniques made his first maneuver look as easy as if he were jerking away from an annoyingly buzzing fly and nothing more.

The attack missed him and continued straight across the gym, where the churning energy bashed into the opposite wall with a heavy crack and a spray of plaster and sawdust. The impact shuddered the walls, as if the casting circle’s single purpose was to bring down the entire compound instead of a single magical being pushed to his limits by an ancient ritual.

So far, this first trial wouldn’t be an issue.

The second Rowan realized the first attack had passed him by, he turned toward the crater it had left in the wall behind him and raised an eyebrow, still smirking like a stuck-up moron.

Rebecca couldn’t hear it over all the cheering and whistling and stomping feet, but the look on his face said it all. Especially when Rowan turned in a slow circle to take in every aspect of the room, as if declaring in surprise how new and unexpected that fun little trick in the wall had been.

Or maybe he was just surprised by the amount of people cheering him on right and the fervor with which they did.

Of course he found this amusing. None of these people knew who he was, or where he’d come from, or why he’d shown himself on Shade’s property to begin with. But here they were just the same, cheering him on, anxious to watch the elf man overcome and complete The Striving to earn his place.

Two more blazing yellow energy shots burst from two different casting circles in the wall. This time, they thumped into existence where they’d been conjured, one right after the other, as if Bor had figured out how to rig them specifically for the element of violent-magical-surprise.

In the chair on Rebecca’s right, Zida leaned toward her but kept her gaze squarely focused on Rowan’s calm, casual demeanor. Once again, he dodged both attacks barreling toward him, first one and then the other, casting stretching and shrinking shadows across the walls and floor and every other surface as they passed.

“Hey, elf. Don’t look so pissed.” Zida snorted. “If it goes well tonight, we get a new member. If not… Well, at least we’ll have had some entertainment, right? Ancestors know we could all use some of that right about now.”

Rebecca might have appreciated that little assessment if it hadn’t been Rowan standing inside the central casting circle, held prisoner there by the laws of The Striving until he either completed all four trials or failed miserably in his attempts.

No, she didn’t find this nearly as entertaining as Zida clearly did. Still, she remained in her honored Thon-Da’al seat, smiling tightly and chuckling through her nose whenever in response to comments she barely heard.

On the outside, she looked very much like someone else enjoying the show.

On the inside, her nerves had tangled up in knots, all of them growing tighter and more constricted with every magical attack bursting from within the casting circles in the walls and barreling across the room from every direction, all of them aimed at Rowan.

Once again, Rebecca had assumed she’d accounted for all the factors without once stopping to consider The Striving might have had a mortality rate. She couldn’t just sit here enjoying herself, because Rowan could die.

Especially if what she’d added to the flask did what she’d originally intended it to do.

Of all the things she’d pretended to be—the identities and the backgrounds and the intentions and goals—sitting here, pretending to enjoy this display among dozens of magicals howling and screeching and stomping their feet was the most physically sickening by a longshot.

Because Rebecca had more to lose in this than her own anonymity or the secrets she knew full well how to keep. If Rowan didn’t survive, she wouldn’t even have the chance to say goodbye.

Or to apologize for having royally screwed up, at the cost of his life.

The Blackmoon Elf passed the first trial with flying colors. He ducked and dodged and evaded every powerful blast thrown at him from the casting circles in the walls—first one at a time, then in twos and threes, and finally in a complicated volley of blazing, crackling attacks for the grand finale.

Twice, he tried to incapacitate one of those casting circles by attacking the wall on which it had been drawn, succeeding on the second attempt. He gained an ear-splitting round of applause from the spectators when a thick chunk of the wall cracked away, breaking the circle’s seal and neutralizing one of a dozen simulated enemies around the room.

The magicals watching him went nuts over that one. Their enthusiasm only increased when the remaining casting circles powered down in a series of stuttering flares and showers of green sparks bursting from the walls.

Rowan’s physical proficiency had been tested and marked, and now it was time to move on to the next trial.

As the dummy attackers powered down, removing their eerie green light from the gym, a wane dimness hovered in a momentary lull over both initiate and spectators. The transition was quick and efficient.

Two seconds later—plenty of time for Rowan to have realized the pattern of challenges had not changed—the larger casting circle around him on the floor flashed once with a deep green hue. When that light faded again, a single item among all those laid out before him around the iron brazier illuminated on its own.

A wooden cube, small enough to balance in the palm of his hand but large enough to lend a certain extra weight to its complexity and importance. Rowan clearly got the message. He stepped forward toward that glowing cube that filled the central circle with more eerie green light, then stopped in front of it to hunker into a squat.

The first thing he did was to lift his head and look right at Rebecca again. He caught and held her gaze for a split second before returning his full attention to the box and gingerly picking it up.

Whatever he’d intended by that look, Rebecca got the distinct impression he was laughing at her. Still.

She wished he would take this seriously, but she couldn’t blame him for getting a big head about it.

She’d known he would easily ace every other trial tonight before the very last, which was why she’d tampered with the potion in the first place. Only now, these first three incredibly easy tasks would keep going to his head, one right after the other. They would make him that much surer of himself before the end.

When he got to that potion vial, he would find himself dangerously unprepared for what awaited him within it.

Once Rowan sat in the center of the circle and crossed his legs beneath him to hold the wooden box in his lap, a new type of expectant silence filled the gym. All the better for the initiate to maintain his focus.

Rebecca vividly remembered how easy opening this same puzzle box had been during her own Striving, once she’d figured out the underlying mechanism. It wouldn’t be difficult for Rowan, either, though he had yet to discover the contraption’s secrets.

The first one hit him when he attempted to open the puzzle box. He received a burst of deep purple light and a zap of painful magical energy bursting through his fingers and up his arm—the prize for his incorrect methods.

A few spectators grimaced or winced at the memory of those jolting shocks. Others held their breath or leaned forward for a better view.

The scent of burning hair thickened in the air, but Rowan’s only reaction was to widen his eyes at the puzzle box, shake out the hand zapped by one of its traps, and barked out a loud, crass laugh that echoed across the room.

He only looked up at Rebecca one more time, as if expecting to see her smiling along with him, like this very serious puzzle with extremely serious consequences had brought back a certain level of nostalgia.

She understood what that felt like, not to mention the pang of memory and regret flooding through her like the last dwindling vestiges of a bad dream. The sound of Rowan’s unabashed laughter, the twinkle in his hazel eyes, the way his grin flickered at the corners while he aimed it up at her on the dais—all of it brought her back.

All of it was painful.

How many times had he laughed just like that in their past, when it had been only the two of them? How many times had she laughed with him?

Rebecca forced herself to return his easy amusement with a darkening scowl. She glared back at him until he finally looked away and went back to solving the puzzle box, laughing the whole time.

She couldn’t encourage his recklessness during The Striving, or his amusement in these little games, or his epically proportioned confidence in himself. Not that he hadn’t earned it.

But if refusing to share his good mood now made Rowan suspect something was wrong—or perhaps even that The Striving saved the most difficult task for last—she might be able to warn him of the coming danger that way.

At the very least, it might make him suspicious enough of her foul mood to expect something worse waited for him. Then what she’d added to that potion wouldn’t blindside him.

It was wishful thinking, but at this point, it was all she had.

Rowan just kept laughing as he worked on the puzzle box. Minutes later, he began humming to himself—some ancient, eerily haunting tune Rebecca vaguely remembered from their afternoons spent in the gardens at home.

When she recognized it, she couldn’t get it out of her head. Nor did she want to hear it. That melody brought back too many memories. Too many old, lost things. Too many possibilities and wasted potential she’d chosen to leave behind her forever, and for a very good reason.

Then she realized how tightly she clenched her fists in her lap while that elven tune echoed around the gym. How badly she wanted to leap off the dais and throw Rowan to the ground just to make the humming stop.

To distract herself, she gazed across the gym, taking in the intensely focused expressions of the others all watching the same thing.

While Rowan’s laughter at another burst from the puzzle box momentarily interrupted his humming, Rebecca’s gaze pulled back toward Maxwell again, through no fault of her own.

When she first found the shifter, he wasn’t looking at her. For once,

She found that odd and strangely uncomfortable, unnerving, as if something had gone horribly wrong as a result of an infinitesimal change in what had become her new normal.

Normally, Maxwell was the one staring at her first. Now, though, he glowered at Rowan, his arms folded as he stood among his security team beside the closed gym doors. He didn’t even seem to blink, he was that focused on the Blackmoon Elf, as if he could will Rowan into failure from afar with nothing but unbridled disapproval.

Of course it bothered him that Rowan still treated this whole thing like one big joke. Rebecca didn’t like it, either.

Just as she found herself wondering whether Maxwell would decide to dig into Rowan’s background as dauntlessly as he’d tried to dig into Rebecca’s, the shifter cleared his throat in the expectant silence and looked up toward the dais.

To meet Rebecca’s gaze.

With his stare came that warm, heavy allure racing through her, racing across her body—that same tingling pull flaring between them every time they were around each other, as if the sensation itself were a third party that never left them alone.

It hit her with full force this time, overpowering and beckoning and challenging Rebecca all at once. Until now, it had been more of a welcome sensation, though she’d been dealing with it instead of wanting it to return or wishing it away.

Now, though, mixed with the tension of excitement and anticipation of every other magical in the room dutifully focused on Rowan, this thing overwhelming Rebecca’s body every time she and Maxwell so much as looked at each other felt for the first time like a burden.

It made her too hot, too uncomfortable. It only added an extra weight of temptation and confusion to the situation she already didn’t appreciate, like wearing a heavy winter jacket to a summer picnic.

It was too much.

It wasn’t enough.

If she couldn’t focus on The Striving now because the shifter posed too much of an irresistible distraction, she might lose her window to act. Rowan might need her, if she’d taken her meddling too far.

Maxwell hadn’t done anything or said a word. So why, with his silver gaze setting her on fire, did it feel now like he was forcing her to choose?