9. Chapter 9

9

S urviving on her own when she’d had no one else to worry about—or even in mixed company comprising much smaller groups than Shade—had been the top priority for as long as Rebecca could remember.

That hadn’t changed just because Aldous was too pig-headed to realize he’d singled out the wrong elf.

Now he’d just backed her into a corner, and Rebecca would have to get really damn serious about every move she made from here on out. Deadly serious, even, if it came to that.

It wouldn’t be the first time, though she’d hoped to avoid a little longer what she knew she’d now have to do.

When she reached the end of the narrow hall on the ground floor, the noises of the common room beyond filtered toward her—murmuring voices, scraping chairs moving across the floor as people shifted around, a few terse chuckles in response to something not particularly funny.

Rebecca stopped without warning and spun around to find Maxwell still right there behind her, close on her heels.

The shifter stopped in his tracks, his eyes widening as he seemed to realize his normal shifter instincts hadn’t predicted this next close encounter. But he quickly recovered and simply resumed his dubious scowl fixed on her once again.

At least he didn’t share his commander’s disgusting smirk. A decent smile every now and then wouldn’t kill the guy, would it?

Rebecca liked that mental image, despite how little she’d actually seen Maxwell smile at all.

“Seeing as you’re still here,” she said, looking him pointedly over from head to toe, silently admitting that he definitely cut up a much more impressive image than anything Aldous could produce, “any chance he told you ahead of time who this so-called shadow’s supposed to be? ”

Maxwell stared at her like she’d grown an extra head, which was odd coming from a guy who changed the full physical makeup of his own body on a regular basis. “He doesn’t tell me everything.”

“Oh, come on.” Rebecca rolled her eyes before fixing him with that deadpan stare she usually reserved for moments when she didn’t want to be dragged into a conversation. Now, though, it felt like the best way to further drag the shifter into this one. “Don’t tell me he doesn’t talk to you. You’re his right-hand wolf.”

His brief flash of a grimace confirmed she’d struck a nerve. Despite how quickly he covered it up afterwards, it had still provided an opening there.

Rebecca could get her hooks into that, at the very least, if she had to.

“You had to at least know what he was gonna try in that joke of a meeting, though,” she added. “Right?”

Those silver eyes narrowed before Maxwell folded his arms again. He certainly didn’t look like he wanted to speak, especially when his gaze left her face to float along somewhere across the common room behind her.

Then he let out a long, heavy sigh and shook his head. “I had no idea. I was under the impression he wanted you there to discuss my mission report. Not to do…whatever the hell that was.”

Well, at least the guy had a functional sense of what boundaries should look like.

Didn’t really count for much when that understanding was left behind like an abandoned shoe on the side of the road.

“So he blindsided you with the whole thing too.” Rebecca nodded. “But you still just went right along with it.”

With his arms still folded, Maxwell’s shrug looked like he was trying to squirm away from something disgusting hovering just over his shoulder. “Part of the job.”

“Yeah, sure. Job description’s very clear, I get it. Head of Security’s there to carry out orders and protect the big boss from…whatever, right? But you’re missing the bigger picture here, Max.”

She could have broken into another grin when the scowl faded from the shifter’s face and he seemed to finally see her for the first time.

Or maybe he’d just never been called Max before today and still didn’t quite know how he felt about it yet.

“And what’s that?” he asked blandly.

Rebecca spread her arms. “In the end, when shit goes belly-up, and it will , who’s gonna be there to protect the Head of Security from himself?”

For as sharp of mind as he was, not to mention his obvious level of mental clarity, Maxwell didn’t provide an answer to that one .

She didn’t expect him to; it was absolutely rhetorical.

His only response was to wrinkle his nose and offer a half-hearted scoff, which proved her point and her previous assumption.

She’d definitely struck a nerve.

The shifter was more than competent enough to realize that, unlike the changeling he served, Rebecca wasn’t just blowing hot air up his ass; she had a point. Maxwell didn’t have to like it, but at least he understood what she was trying to say.

As far as the Head of Security was concerned, Rebecca had now just planted a new seed of doubt inside him, the way Aldous had tried to plant something similar in her.

No, Rebecca wasn’t having doubts about her own abilities—just further acknowledgment of how much harder she’d have to work now to keep things running smoothly for herself.

Not to mention keeping her secrets where they belonged.

Sooner or later, though, after however long the shifter needed to further analyze what she’d just told him, Maxwell Hannigan would have his own doubts. Then, if he was smart, he’d come back to her about them.

So she left him with that fun little mystery floating around in his mind and hurried across the common room toward the hallway on the other side that would take her right to the compound’s member quarters.

Their great and fearless leader didn’t deign to mix with the likes of those under his command. No, Aldous’s personal suite was as far across the building as one could possibly get, which in and of itself only served to further divide their commander from the rest of his designated operatives.

She walked across the common room without pausing or offering an acknowledging glance to anyone else still awake at this hour just before dawn. Rebecca was positive their Head of Security would end up seeking her out eventually.

She’d given him too much to think about and far too much doubt not to seek her out when he was ready.

And until he did, however long that happened to be, she had her own planning to get to and her own secrets to keep.

She felt pretty damn pleased with herself on her way back through the compound. Once she returned to her private room, though—small and sparsely decorated, with a dreamily soft, slightly used mattress as the only real luxury in a space that had probably been a supply closet before her arrival—Rebecca was a lot less sure of her upper hand in this situation .

She plopped down onto that infinitely soft mattress and its featherbed topper she refused to sleep without since the first time she’d discovered mattress toppers existed and puffed out a sigh.

So much for getting any kind of positive recognition around here. Sure, she’d saved her team’s ass out there against Edwardo, but she’d garnered herself so much more attention than she could afford as a result. Not the good kind of attention either.

For the next hour, she pored over everything she knew about power struggles and incompetent leaders and the best methods for worming her way out of circumstances that tended to make most other people give up.

She’d known big bad leaders in her lifetime—the kind that made Aldous Corriger look like a schoolyard bully in comparison. The only thing making this changeling noticeably dangerous was how fervently he believed his own bullshit.

Unfortunately, given his position in Shade and the backing he already had through the organization’s alliances with several other underground magical crews, there were marginally powerful people out there who didn’t want to see him lose his position, either.

Nyx hadn’t been entirely wrong earlier when she’d said someone wanted Aldous sitting in the command chair and calling all the shots for Shade. That he’d been put in that chair for a reason.

Anything Rebecca tried from here on out would inevitably be met with a certain level of resistance, either from the members of Shade itself who allegedly believed in the changeling and what he was doing—like the shifter Maxwell Hannigan, for instance—or from those who supported Aldous in his current position because of the inherent benefits of it for themselves.

She wouldn’t get any support from outside contacts, either, even if she’d had them. Rebecca had cut ties with all her powerful friends and acquaintances over the years, simply to keep them from getting to know her well enough to threaten the safety of her secrets.

No, Maxwell wouldn’t help her in this; that was perfectly clear. He might not actively try to stop her, but she couldn’t bet on that.

The others, though? The Shade members who’d been with her on this last bungled mission, not to mention at least half a dozen others who’d been personally screwed over by Aldous’s ineptitude in all its various forms? They could probably be trusted. Eventually.

All Rebecca had to do was plant a few more seeds in a few more minds and patiently wait for those seeds to take root and sprout into full-fledged ideas—until the other Shade members came to believe they’d come up with the idea entirely on their own and that Rebecca had had nothing to do with it .

Then she could make a lasting, impactful change within the organization. Clean out the dead refuse. Pull it up by the roots. Help Shade move on.

After that, she could move on.

The tricky part was in just how crafty she’d have to be about it from the start. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d had to scheme with her eyes wide open at every moment, waking or otherwise.

Still, she’d have to work quickly in the next few days, because as far as Aldous knew, his mandatory offer was still on the table. If she took too long, he’d assume she’d refused his demand for the Darkspawn, and then he’d inadvertently expose her when he tried to kill her for insubordination.

If she moved too soon and Aldous caught wind of it, he’d expose her and jeopardize everything she’d worked so hard for anyway.

There was only one logical and obvious solution to this entirely new problem of hers.

Rebecca didn’t necessarily mind the promise of violence and dissension. She just had to pull it off without implicating herself along the way.

Because if anyone knew who she really was and where she’d really come from, it would all be over for her in the blink of an eye.

She stripped off her black jeans and long-sleeve black shirt worn specifically for the latest Shade mission gone wrong and climbed onto the luxurious mattress squeezed against the far wall of her private room.

Time to be a team player and the mastermind pulling the strings behind the curtain all at the same time, and she’d have to work quickly.

Fortunately, the kind of subterfuge and political intricacies required to successfully pull something like this off had been such an ingrained part of her childhood, it would probably end up being second nature even here.

As long as she hadn’t been pretending for so long to be someone else that she’d forgotten how to play the biggest, grandest, deadliest game of them all.

That was, in fact, what Rebecca had been born and bred to do from the beginning.

No one in Shade had any idea who she was or what she was capable of. Hell, Chicago was oblivious. So was the rest of the country and most likely this entire human-populated world. Assuming, of course, that Rebecca had laid her foundation correctly, and she usually did.

That should have made all this easier.

But now, thanks to Aldous, she’d have to work so much harder than usual to get the job done. And even then, unfortunately, nothing was ever guaranteed.

Excluding the certainty of being discovered, abducted, tortured, and then used as a weapon of mass destruction if she failed.