32. Chapter 32

32

T he bottom of Rebecca’s gut sank into a pit of dread peppered with refusal and resentment. Even before Nyx offered a verbal confirmation, Rebecca already knew what the katari hadn’t yet said.

Shade had held a huur-akíl, and for some reason, the entire task force had decided to make Rebecca Aldous’s replacement.

Groaning, she slumped all the way back against the pillows. “This can’t be happening right now.”

“Oh yes it is!” Nyx squealed in delight as she clapped her hands together. “Because guess who Shade’s new commander is!”

Rebecca didn’t have to guess. Not anymore.

How had everything so terribly wrong in such a short amount of time?

“It’s you!” Nyx exclaimed. Another squeak of rubber soles across the floor filled Rebecca’s mind with an instant image of Nyx doing a little dance right there beside the bed.

“I never put my name in the hat,” Rebecca muttered.

“Doesn’t matter now, though, does it?” Nyx said. “We had a huur-akíl. And those are binding.”

“I know what a huur-akíl is, Nyx.”

“You do? Honestly, I’ve never seen one in action before. Not up close. It was pretty incredible, actually. I mean, Bor was missing a few ingredients, but he made it work. Some kinda substitution clause.”

“Hold on.” Rebecca fought the urge to peel her eyelids open with her fingers before she could finally focus her gaze on Nyx again. “Bor led the huur-akíl?”

“Well, yeah. He’s the only one of us who had any experience with that kinda thing back in the old world.” Nyx leaned forward over the bed to add in a whisper, “And the only one who wasn’t terrified of attempting it in this world. But I don’t think any of the other old-timers would ever say it out loud.”

Of course they wouldn’t .

The old Xaharí tradition of the huur-akíl packed a lot more of a magical punch than traditions generally offered. More of a ceremonial rite, really, to which native Xaharí turned when someone challenged a previous ruler—or, more commonly, when that challenge ended in the old leader’s death.

They were a matter of contention among some circles. Either the challenger was determined unworthy and cast out of the group into exile or death, or they were fully supported and voted in as the next chief.

Which was literally the last thing in the world Rebecca wanted.

“Hey, are you sure you’re okay?” Nyx asked, the excitement in her voice replaced by concern. “You look a little pale…”

“I’m probably gonna look a little pale for a while, Nyx,” Rebecca said flatly, setting her hands down flat on top of the thin sheets covering her from the waist down. “I almost died. And you guys used an old-world ritual to make this decision, but this isn’t Xahar’áhsh. This is Earth. Things are different here. There’s gotta be some wiggle room in the rules.”

Nyx sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth. “I’m pretty sure there aren’t any. The huur-akíl chose you. You step up and take the job, or you join Aldous as a former Shade commander. End of story, really.”

Fuck.

Join Aldous as a former Shade commander, huh?

That was one hell of a euphemism for "Rebecca’s life would then be forfeit, along with her allegiance to Shade." As per the oath she’d sworn after initiation to enter the organization’s ranks in the first place, forfeiting allegiance to an entity like Shade only meant one thing.

Nobody survived a death sentence like that.

No, she did not want this new position she’d been thrust into without ever being asked whether she wanted it. At the same time, Rebecca wasn’t particularly fond of refusing the position in favor of losing her head. Right now, that was the only other option.

Because any other options she might have had had been systematically stripped away by this fucking homunculus wound and the deadly side effects of having consumed the essence of a pseudo-lifeform without a soul.

No way in hell could Rebecca fight all of Shade at once in her current condition, which didn’t look like it would be improving anytime soon.

She might have considered running, but that would only bring an entire privatized army down on her. Shade was good at finding their targets. That was, after all, part of the job description. And if they caught her, which would inevitably happen in her current state, it would be impossible to escape again.

“ Vrestí ,” she muttered.

“What was that?” Nyx asked, cocking her head.

Clearly, the katari knew as much about old-world Xaharí cursing as she did about the rules and regulations of a huur-akíl on Earth.

“This is probably the worst thing I could have woken up to,” Rebecca mumbled instead.

“Well, with that attitude, yeah. No kidding. You know what? I think you’re looking at this all wrong. This could be a—” Nyx jumped when the office door at the back of the infirmary swung violently open with a bang against the interior wall.

Through it stormed a wild-eyed, furious-looking Zida. “What did I tell you? All of you! Everyone trying to get their hands on the magical of the hour, and I turn my back for five minutes !”

Nyx spun around and backed up several steps at the sight of the old healer barreling toward her and shaking one crooked claw of a finger in her face.

“I never approved visiting hours! I never said anyone could come in here to disturb my patient. I don’t care what’s going on out there . Our new commander is still my patient, and that means I decide. Get gone! You hear me?”

Unable to meet the healer’s gaze, Nyx offered a curt nod, then leaned slightly back toward Rebecca to mutter, “You really should hurry.”

“Out!” Zida barked, shooing Nyx away with both hands and coming dangerously close to physical blows in the process.

“But she said—”

“None of that! I have to inspect my patient one more time before she goes anywhere, at the very least, and the rest of you will just have to wait.”

After fixing Rebecca with another desperately pleading glance, Nyx finally took the hint and did as she was told.

Instead of using the infirmary door like everyone else, though, she disappeared with a soft pop and a burst of brilliant violet light.

Without missing a beat, Zida pivoted in her warpath across the room and headed straight for Rebecca’s bed. “I’m surprised you’re already conscious. I expected at least another day or two, but let’s get a look at you now, I suppose. How do you feel?”

“Like I should’ve been unconscious another day or two,” Rebecca quipped.

The old woman’s beady black eyes flicked up toward her patient’s face, though her expression gave away nothing of her thoughts or emotions. It usually didn’t.

Which was only part of why Rebecca had made it a point to stay away from Shade’s healer as much as possible.

Clearly, that plan had also failed.

Zida scurried around the bed, whisking the sheets away from one of Rebecca’s legs, then the other, then off her lap and tsking to herself. Then she snatched up Rebecca’s wounded arm in both claw-like hands and raised it to her mouth like she was about to take a giant bite out of an even more gigantic cob of corn.

Rebecca tried to pull away, but the healer’s grip was too strong. “What are you—”

Zida inhaled deeply through her nose, all but pressing it against the bandages wrapped around the homunculus wound, though she clearly took pains not to touch any visible traces of the death magic that had remained in her patient’s physical body.

Her nostrils flared, making the rest of her already wrinkled face pucker even further before she tossed Rebecca’s arm back like a piece of rotten meat. “Just as I feared.”

“Oh come on.” Rebecca rolled her eyes. “Can’t anyone just tell it to me straight from the get-go? I might be physically out of commission, but my brain still works just fine.”

Zida’s beady eyes glinted in the overhead light. She looked Rebecca over from head to toe and back again. “Not necessarily. But there’s really no way to test that at the moment, is there?”

The old woman had to be talking about something else, Rebecca was sure of it. She just didn’t know what yet.

“But I work with what I’ve got,” Zida added. “And no, bitching about it never solved anyone’s problems. Don’t move.”

She spun smartly away from the bed and headed toward the cabinets holding a bevy of glass vials of various colors filled with who knew how many different substances.

Don’t move? Where was she going to go? Two feet across the room…on wheels?

The infirmary filled with clinking of glass, wood, and a collection of metal instruments while the healer searched for undisclosed materials.

Then the healer’s last inference finally hit her.

Rebecca had been out cold for the last two days, lying in this infirmary bed with no one else but Zida for company. The healer had certainly used that time wisely and efficiently. She’d stripped off Rebecca’s jacket, which had given her plenty of opportunity to more closely inspect her patient in the process from top to bottom. Maybe even from the inside out.

A truly skilled healer worked with the energetic and the physical, and Zida had brought her reputation for being one of the best with her when she’d joined Shade’s ranks far before Rebecca’s time.

So how much of her unconscious patient had the old daraku seen ?

Rebecca had been trained just as fervently in the practices of hiding her darkest magic—her most identifying Bloodshadow power—from most methods of discovery. Of course, it was hard to implement that training when she was in a short-lived coma of her own making.

Then her gaze fell on her jacket lying in a pile in her lap.

There was an even greater possibility of Zida having gone through Rebecca’s personal effects once she’d removed this jacket, and it would have been incredibly stupid to assume the old woman hadn’t found the small wooden box protecting what amounted to Rebecca’s most precious, most valuable belonging in both worlds.

Had the healer been particularly nosy, or had she merely stuck to her duties to focus on Rebecca’s injuries?

If Zida had found the box and opened it… Well, she was an old-timer straight from Xahar’áhsh too, just like Rebecca. The woman certainly would have recognized the pendant inside that box as a clan insignia, even if she couldn’t pin down specifically which clan.

The Bloodshadow Elves weren’t commonly known nearly as well as some of the other clans, but there was always a chance someone would eventually recognize her for what she was. Especially if they looked inside that box.

There was no way to tell what Zida had done with Rebecca’s possessions or how much new knowledge and awareness of her patient she’d gleaned over the last two days. That had been a massively stupid oversight on Rebecca’s part, but at least she still had her possessions.

The box with the pendant of her clan insignia remained in one jacket pocket, and after one more quick double-check, she confirmed the hex doll remained snugly nestled in the other.

So far, though, the healer hadn’t given any indication that she suspected any more of Rebecca than the old bird usually showed anyone on a regular basis.

She might have discovered Rebecca’s identity, or at the very least that Shade’s single resident elf wasn’t who she’d made herself out to be.

As long as Zida didn’t bring it up to Rebecca or anyone else, Rebecca could keep her mouth shut too. Until Zida gave her a reason to believe otherwise, and it would just have to be good enough.

“Aha!” Zida thrust a glass vial high in the air after successfully pulling it from one of the cabinets. “I knew you were still here.”

Then she spun back toward Rebecca to return to her patient’s bedside, moving with remarkable speed and agility for someone so old and with such crooked bones .

“Here we go,” Zida repeated as she reached the side of Rebecca’s bed, the glass vial clamped tightly in her fingers.

“Is that gonna make all this better?” Rebecca asked.

The healer gaped at her, eyes wider than normal in the infirmary’s sterile, blindingly bright light. “Now what in the world would make you say a thing like that?”

“You obviously found what you were looking for.”

Zida grunted. “Yes, well, before that, I specifically remember clicking my tongue in disappointment and saying, ‘Just as I feared.’”

“And then you went to find that .” Rebecca nodded at the vial, her current migraine now strengthened by the overwhelming confusion of the conversation. Trying not to frown didn’t help. “So that’s what’s gonna help me, right? To fix this?”

A bitter bark of laughter ground out of the healer’s throat. “Absolutely not! At this point, I’m afraid even my vast skill set falls short in this specific scenario. That wound on your arm seems to be a bit beyond my healing abilities.”

“A bit?”

“Yes. And for someone with my level of experience, a bit is quite a lot, actually. In this case, it’s more than enough for me to feel quite confident when I tell you I can’t help you.”

“You don’t seem all that worried about it,” Rebecca replied through gritted teeth as the pounding in her skull merely intensified.

“What’s there for me to be worried about? I’m not the one lying in the infirmary. Just because I can’t fully heal what remains of your injuries doesn’t mean there isn’t someone out there who can. You just won’t find them in this building, I’m afraid.”

Of course not. That would just make this whole thing far too easy for her, wouldn’t it?

The healer couldn’t help her, but she was right about one thing. No one in this building was capable of giving Rebecca what she needed.

Her Bloodshadow magic would most likely undo most, if not all, of the damage caused by sucking up a homunculus’s nonexistent soul. But as long as Rebecca remained inside the compound, she sure as hell couldn’t use that part of her magic. Especially not now that the rest of the task force had held a huur-akíl without her and voted her in as the next commander.

Which meant until Rebecca could get out of here and put a safe enough distance between herself and the other Shade members now under her leadership, she would be stuck this way.

Rebecca sighed heavily, shook her head, then pointed at the vial clasped in Zida’s claw-like hand. “Then what’s that for? ”

“This? This is just in case.”

“Of what?”

“We'll cross that fun little bridge when we get there. Which is what ‘just in case’ means.”

Rebecca had to get out of here. If she stuck around this woman any longer, she would lose it.

All she wanted right now was to return to her room, lie in her own bed, and wait for the right moment to sneak out again and heal herself. Instead, though, she decided it was better to use her time wisely—or more specifically to make do with what little energy she had right now and use it on clearing up as many misunderstandings and unfounded assumptions as possible before she passed out again for another two days.

Or maybe longer. Who knew?

Moving like she’d been dumped into a tub of molasses, Rebecca forced herself out of the infirmary bed and onto her feet. Her balance was unsteady as hell, but with one hand on the bed’s railing to balance herself, she managed to slide her jacket off the sheets before completing the long, painstaking process of putting it back on again.

The whole time, Zida watched her silently, refusing both to look away from her patient clearly not following instructions and to offer anything marginally resembling help.

Every muscle in Rebecca’s body ached with overwhelming fatigue by the time she finished pulling her jacket on over her shoulders, but she’d done it. When her gaze landed on the strappy black heels she had been wearing two days ago, though, the thought of trying to put those on her feet almost made her flop down onto the bed again in defeat.

Fuck shoes. She didn’t need them for what came next.

So she left them there and nodded at Zida before making her wobbling way toward the infirmary door. “Thanks for trying, anyway. I guess I’ll just have to look somewhere else for the rest of it.”

Only when it became clear that Rebecca was in fact going to make it to the door without falling flat on her face did Zida jump into action again.

“Oh no, no, no, no!” she shouted, hobbling after Rebecca and shaking a crooked finger. “You think you can just get up and walk out of here?”

Rebecca huffed out a laugh before immediately regretting it when a surge of blinding pain lanced through her head. “You stood there and watched me get dressed. Obviously, I’ve been planning on leaving.”

“Well, yeah, but I wanted to see how far you could get on your own. Honestly, I’m surprised you didn’t kick it again. But now that you’re this far, I can’t let you leave my infirmary on your own. I refuse to allow it. ”

Dipping her hand into her jacket pocket for the slight bit of reassurance she got from the feel of that small wooden box at her fingertips, Rebecca turned around and nodded at Zida. “Which is why you’re coming with me.”

Few things seemed to surprise the old healer, but this was clearly one of them.

She gaped at Rebecca a moment longer before snorting out a violent bark of a laugh. “Oh, really ? Already giving commands, eh? Why, exactly, am I coming with you, Roth-Da’al?”

The old Xaharí word with no literal translation—but meaning something close to “chief”, “boss”, or “commander”—sent a pang of bitter nostalgia and distaste through Rebecca’s core. She tried not to let it show.

Zida couldn’t possibly have known what a word like that had once meant to someone like Rebecca. She sure as hell wasn’t going to broach the subject now.

She stopped at the door and rested her hand on the handle, more for added support in standing than the desire to open the door, but she could force herself to do both.

“To call a meeting,” she finally replied, then met the healer’s beady black gaze again and tilted her head. “There’s obviously been a serious mistake here, and we need to correct it.”

“Both of us?”

“You heard me.”

Zida raised her almost non-existent eyebrows, then shrugged and hobbled toward the door to open it for her current patient, who wasn’t anywhere close to recovered enough for this fun little outing. Clearly, she knew just as well as Rebecca did that a bit of unhealable sickness at the moment wouldn’t be enough to stop Rebecca from calling this meeting for the entire task force to attend.

Waiting any longer would only make what Rebecca had to do that much more difficult.

She had to convince all the operatives who’d voted for her in the huur-akíl that they’d made a mistake and that someone else needed to be chosen.

Because if she took this job as Shade’s new commander, her chances of flying under the radar within Chicago’s magical underground would practically disappear. That was one more risk she really couldn’t afford, now more than ever.

Not when any number of different factions, clans, and organizations were already hunting for the Bloodshadow Heir. If any of them were to find her like this, which would be infinitely more possible with her shining a magical homing beacon onto herself as Shade’s commander, it would most likely mean death for every single magical who’d voted for her in the first place.

And it would absolutely mean something even worse than death for her.