31. Chapter 31

31

C onsciousness returned with a flare of twisting pain that made Rebecca’s eyes fly open.

Two enormous, glowing eyes loomed over her, inches from her face, and she couldn’t move.

Dark eyes filled with dark light, scrutinizing her with a frigid, calculating certainty that made her blood run cold.

Whoever’s eyes these were, they meant trouble.

She’d been found.

With a shrieking gasp, Rebecca tried to scramble away from the dark light. Those luminescent irises felt like they were burning a hole through her. But the infirmary bed was too small and too soft, its wheeled legs too unsteady to support a quick getaway.

Instead of escaping, she rammed the bed’s frame back against the wall again, filling the room with a startling crash.

A ball of crackling red battle magic flared in Rebecca’s hand before she could take in any other details of her surroundings.

“Step back, and I won’t kill you where you stand,” she growled.

“Whoa, whoa, hey! Sorry. I…I didn’t know you were this picky about your personal space. I guess only when you’re not unconscious, huh?”

The nervous giggle stoked a memory in Rebecca’s mind. A memory that instantly made her feel like an idiot for thinking she’d been in immediate danger. For thinking her enemies had found her here.

She was still in the infirmary. Still lying on the wheeled cot where she’d collapsed. And those dark eyes weren’t dark at all but merely the play of shadow and light across a pair of luminous violet eyes.

Rebecca cleared her throat and darted quick glances around the infirmary, hoping her visitor had been too startled to notice her flare of instant panic. “I still need my personal space when I’m unconscious too, Nyx. ”

“Yeah, sure. I was…just checking.” The katari offered a sheepish shrug and another nervous giggle. “I had a feeling you’d wake up soon. Nobody believed me, but I kept telling them, ‘Wait and see. I have a feeling about the elf.’ And here you are.”

Rebecca blinked heavily at Nyx, using the excuse of grogginess to hide the fact that her mind raced tirelessly through a short checklist of critical confirmation points before she could relax.

She still wore her own clothes, which meant no one had tried to undress her or go through her things. She was still in the infirmary, though there was no sign of Zida. No more explosions or tremors moving through the compound, nor did it sound like there was any trouble in the hall.

No militant Bloodshadow force come to collect their greatest weapon. No angry mob ready to kick Shade’s one elf off the premises and out of the organization altogether.

She was still safe for now, but that could change at any minute.

“Are you trying to tell me everyone thinks I’m dead?” she asked, trying to keep Nyx occupied while she worked through her checklist.

Then she remembered the tiny wooden box she’d been stupid enough to keep in her room instead of on her person at all times and fervently patted down both sides of her jacket only to realize she wasn’t wearing her jacket. Zida must’ve removed it.

“Um, well…” Nyx replied, “it definitely came up as a possibility . Once or twice…”

On the verge of panic and only half-listening, Rebecca scanned the infirmary, ignoring Nyx’s bug-eyed stare until she found her jacket neatly folded on the stainless-steel bedside table doubling as the supply cart.

“You aren’t gonna, like, disappear on us again, are you?” Nyx asked.

“Just making sure I’m still in one piece,” Rebecca grumbled before reaching for the edge of her folded jacket and drawing it quickly into her lap. “Why are you here?”

“To check on you. Again.” Nyx watched her diligently, looking more concerned about her own wellbeing now. “Because I knew you’d come back. River wouldn’t stop talking about how Elves’ bodies keep living for a while even after the rest of them is gone, but I’m pretty sure that’s bullshit.”

“Interesting.” Rebecca flipped her jacket over to reach into one pocket, then the other. Her fingers closed around the smooth edges of the tiny box of pristinely oiled wood, and all the building tension flooded out of her with one long sigh.

It was still here .

“So you’re here to prove I’m not dead?” she asked, leaning slowly back against the propped-up pillows behind her.

Nyx let out another nervous giggle. “I mean, I know you’re not dead. I didn’t think you would be, even this whole time. I told them you’d come through. That you wouldn’t be out much longer, then you’d come back good as new. I’m not the only one, either.”

“But some people thought I wouldn’t make it?” Rebecca asked. “Not a lot of faith floating around this place when someone starts talking about a dead but not-dead elf right after she almost got stuck through the throat. After…what? Only two or three hours?”

Nyx grimaced, then her violet eyes flew wide open again, and she shifted from foot to foot. “ Two or three hours…”

“Or more?” Rebecca added, eyeing Nyx from the corners of her eyes.

“Try forty-eight.” Nyx wrang her hands, her nerves growing with little flashing sparks of violet light around her fingers. “Hours, I mean.”

“ What ?”

With a squeak, Nyx leapt backward, disappeared into thin air with a pop and a burst of crackling violet light leaving that effervescent vinegar smell in the air. Then she reappeared on the far side of the infirmary, her back bumping against another rolling cart filled with various supplies.

The cart crashed backward against the wall, all the vials and implements and tools rattling against each other. Something toppled onto the floor, but neither Rebecca nor Nyx paid it much attention, because Nyx was terrified of the elf.

And the elf was certain she’d misheard.

“Did you just say I’ve been lying here for the last forty-eight hours?” Rebecca asked, pointing at the cot beneath her.

“Maybe…” Wringing her hands again, Nyx took another step backward and bumped into the supply cart all over again. “But—”

“Nyx, you’re the one standing in front of me right now, so you’re the one who’s gonna tell me what’s going on—”

“Okay!” With another squeak, the katari threw her hands up beside her head. One of them smacked against a wall-mounted cabinet behind her, bumping the door open before a glowing bottle of unidentified liquid toppled off the shelf.

Nyx’s next shriek sounded like a hiccup as she fumbled with the tumbling bottle and finally caught it. Then she straightened and held the container in both hands for dear life. “It’s been forty-eight hours, okay? That’s what I said. And nobody knew what was gonna happen to you. ”

“I wasn’t even hurt that badly…” Rebecca muttered under her breath. Then her gaze fell on her left forearm, where the homunculus’s handprint had been dutifully wrapped in bandages, most likely cleaned and covered in one of Zida’s salves as well.

She’d lost two whole days. Anything could have happened in those two days. Especially after both Hector’s and Aldous’s deaths.

With another sigh, she tried to adjust herself more comfortably on the cot, closed her eyes, and gestured for Nyx to approach again. “All right, then. Fine. What else did I miss?”

“Oh! I mean, you know…not really all that much… There was something, but maybe it’s better if…”

“Go on,” Rebecca prompted, hoping she’d captured just the right combination of reassurance and warning in her voice before another wave of dizziness barreled through her head and made her close her eyes again. “Please, Nyx.”

“Right. Well, after…everything went down in the garage…” Nyx gingerly set the medicine bottle down on the counter behind her, then resumed her usual handwringing. “I mean, a lot of us, most of us, just assumed you and Zida came back up here so she could treat you, right? Easy peasy. But then she came back and told us you were still out. With no viable ETA. Or…ETR, I guess. Estimated time of recovery…”

“Nyx.”

“Then things just kinda…kept going on their own. After that.”

So even the old healer had no idea what was wrong with her Elven patient. Great.

“That’s not the full story, though,” Rebecca added, beckoning Nyx closer one more time and trying to keep her movements calm and relatively unthreatening. “Let’s hear the rest of it.”

Nyx’s violent gaze darted all over the infirmary. A quick flush of brilliant pink colored her cheeks before it faded into an even more alarming paleness, washing out some of the vivid violet hue of her hair. “Actually…I think it’s probably better if someone else explained to you what—”

“Not interested in somebody else,” Rebecca interrupted. “You were the one hovering over me in bed. You’re the one who’s here now. You’re the one who’s gonna tell me what else happened.”

Nyx’s heavy gulp was the only sound in the infirmary for a moment before she sighed. “Well, after that, no one else really wanted to wait anymore. So then, you know, everybody decided to hold a huur-akíl. And, well…I mean, we did.”

“A huur-akíl.” Rebecca blinked. “Here in the compound.”

“Um, yeah?” Nyx shrugged again. “It was Earl’s idea. ”

Of course it was. The one Shade operative who was older than either Bor or Zida. Probably even older than both of them combined, which would have still made Rebecca the oldest magical here, but she wasn’t counting herself.

The ancient gnome had suggested they hold a huur-akíl right here on their own turf, according to however many old laws of Xahar’áhsh they could accurately follow in this world without the usual ritual requirements of the birthplace of magic.

Essentially, in Rebecca’s absence, Shade had decided to take an incredibly official, incredibly binding vote without her. A vote that, given the circumstances, had dictated Shade’s new active leader of their ranks, plus however many other decisions had been proposed as add-ons before the huur-akíl officially begun.

Two days was fairly fast for that kind of ceremony. But this was Earth. No matter how desperately some magicals still clung to the old ways, there wasn’t a whole lot that could be done when those old ways didn’t exactly mesh with the resources of an entirely different world.

Nyx took another steady step closer. “Like I said, I was really hoping you’d wake up soon. Which you did. And that’s great! Because, well…I mean, the others are kinda running out of patience at this point.”

Rebecca flicked her gaze sharply back up at the katari and frowned. “Patience for what?”

Nyx grimaced again and glanced at the closed infirmary door. “I think the top of the list right now is mostly what to do with the bodies…”

The bodies. Hector’s, which Rebecca didn’t want to think about because she had no idea what kind of reaction the corpse of a former nurúzhe might have produced, especially one who’d dabbled in death magic as much as Hector had.

Then there was Aldous. Definitely dead. Definitely gone. Out of the picture entirely, because Rebecca had ruptured his very existence with her Bloodshadow magic and left the body behind, and no one had any idea what she’d truly done to him. She hoped.

An unexpected pang of regret surged through her at the thought of Aldous. She truly had hoped Aldous would have taken the easy way out—easy in the short term for him but admittedly far more difficult in the long run. She’d hoped he would live past his overthrow as Shade’s leader, spending an appropriate stint of time in the stockade before the task force as a whole figured out what to do with him.

Just so he might have eventually come to understand exactly how much he’d screwed up in his tenure with the organization and maybe even just how much he owed them all for wanting to spare his life in the first place .

But the moment he’d opted for physical violence and revenge by trying to stab a knife through Rebecca’s throat while pinning her to the floor, all those possibilities had disappeared.

She regretted his terrible decision-making skills, and she regretted having to end him, but in no way did she regret protecting herself.

And the rest of Shade wanted to know what to do with the bodies ?

“Are…are you okay?” Nyx asked, leaning forward as if she meant to step closer but then clearly deciding against it.

“Nope.” Rebecca grunted. “Honestly, I almost feel worse than when I came in here.”

“Oh. Oh, no. Should we…” Nyx’s handwringing intensified as she cast nervous glances over her shoulder at the rest of the infirmary’s recovery room. “Do you want me to find Zida? Maybe we should—”

“No.” Shaking her head and closing her eyes against the next wave of dizziness, even while sitting in bed, Rebecca tried to swallow down the brewing nausea that came with it. “Just, uh…tell me about the bodies.”

“What do you mean?”

“As in you’re going to have to be a little more specific. It’s usually a pretty straightforward process…”

“Oh. Mostly, people are wondering about Hector. Specifically. You know, because he was one of us. But not really, I guess. Because he went all traitor and everything…” Nyx raised one shoulder in a self-conscious shrug. “And, you know, then all those weird little creature things he was controlling. The ones you…deactivated, I guess.”

“The homunculi,” Rebecca corrected blandly. “Listen, Nyx, right now, I’m nursing a serious lack of brainpower, okay? So if you came to ask me what to do with the bodies, just tell everyone they’re gonna have to figure it out themselves.”

“Totally. Yeah. I mean, I would , except… It’s been a pretty tense few days around here. The whole task force just keeps arguing about what to do, and I don’t really think anyone’s in the mood to figure out their own solution that works for everyone.”

“For everyone?”

“It’s just hard to get a word in edgewise, you know?” Nyx looked her in the eye and swallowed. “While we’re all waiting for the final word.”

Rebecca pinched the bridge of her nose and inhaled deeply to hopefully soothe a fraction of her pounding migraine.

The squeak of Nyx’s sneakers shuffling closer across the linoleum floor made her pause.

“Do you think you can stand?” Nyx asked .

“Currently?” Rebecca asked. “I haven’t even tried. Waking up in the infirmary kinda left me with the impression that I probably shouldn’t try.”

“I get that. But still, it’s probably best if you make an appearance, at the very least. Just, you know…so at least everybody knows you’re alive.”

“Did someone specifically claim that I’m dead?”

Nyx froze before a tiny gasp escaped her. “Um…”

“Well I’m not.” Rebecca gestured toward herself with both hands. “Obviously.”

“Which is great! Because now we can go show everyone, and you can start making all the hard decisions—”

“Wait. No. I’m not making any decisions.”

“Yes, you are.” The katari’s confused frown sent a twisted knot of dread tightening deep in Rebecca’s gut. “You have to. Because of the huur-akíl.”

Then it hit her—why any of this had anything to do with Rebecca specifically. Why Nyx had come to check if she was conscious yet so all those hard decisions could finally be made. Why the timid katari had looked so nervous about asking for directions in what to do next .

“Because of the huur-akíl .”

A decision had already been made, without Rebecca’s presence or her consent, and while she’d been lying unconscious in this infirmary bed for the last two days, she’d been forced into the very center of Shade’s rebellion once again.

Only this time, getting out of it would be practically impossible.