16. Chapter 16
16
R ebecca’s pulse thundered through her veins like lightning and ice shooting through her. Her breath quickened. Her senses flared to full alert—watching, listening, feeling the air around her for whatever changes Rowan enacted next to force her back into the old waking nightmare her life had once been.
Did he not see how much it would cost her if he did this? How much it would cost them both?
“Honestly,” Rowan continued casually, as if he hadn’t a care in the world and nothing hidden up his sleeve, “I haven’t been in Chicago that long, so you’d be right to question my knowledge of the city.”
That was the conversation he returned to now?
Rebecca swallowed the seed of panic sprouting just beneath the surface of her self-control and tried to look at this logically. If he wanted to keep playing make-believe, fine. But she wouldn’t let him win. “But you’ve been here long enough to meet a key-maker?”
“No. I didn’t even meet him in Chicago.”
“What?”
“Funny story, really.” Rowan grabbed a thin twig off an overhanging branch and snapped it off as they walked. The tree rustled furiously behind him, and he studied the twig intently before tossing it over his shoulder. “ This guy I met in Colorado…”
As he named the state, Rowan shot her a knowing look beneath raised eyebrows.
As in Golden, Colorado, to be more specific.
He was talking about the Gateway, which had to have been how he’d made it into this world at all. It wouldn’t have been difficult for him. Not like it had been for all the others who’d crossed over before the Gateway was officially open. There were always other methods of getting from one place to another. If anyone knew that, Rebecca did.
Discussing Colorado and the Gateway, though, would only lead them further down the road of where Rebecca had been during her time on Earth. She’d crossed the country from Colorado before settling in Chicago, and she didn’t want Rowan to know how involved she’d been in the Gateway’s opening, however indirectly.
So she didn’t push him anymore on the subject, and they walked in silence for a significant length of time. Rowan seemed to take in the sights, but Rebecca suspected he was coming up with some other plan he meant to enact while they were out here, just the two of them.
Shortly, Millenium Park came into view.
She started to think they might actually make it to their destination without any other significantly uncomfortable discussions.
No such luck.
“About Harkennr…” Rowan began.
“Rowan, please.”
“I know that’s who this is,” he said. “I heard enough of your meeting to get the picture. However that slippery little skirra made it out of Ryngivát and all the way out this way, I’ll never know. But now he’s part of the story, and I gotta hear how you got caught up in anything with that asshole.”
Gritting her teeth, Rebecca debated with herself the pros and cons of telling him anything. On one hand, if she’d wanted Rowan involved, she would have called him to the meetings. On the other, he’d already heard everything. She couldn’t pretend that wasn’t true.
It was always better that he heard the information straight from her instead of coming by it secondhand. No telling how warped the facts might become if the grapevine became his only resource.
“Well, he’s in Chicago now,” she said.
Rowan chuckled. “I gathered that much.”
“He’s built a base for himself at the Old Joliet Prison. It’s been abandoned for decades, so I’m sure he found it easy enough to repurpose however he wanted with no one to get in the way.”
Now that they were here, walking alone without the need to speak in riddles, Rebecca slipped easily and with an old familiarity into sharing with him. At this point, the knowledge couldn’t hurt him, nor was this a special Shade secret anymore.
So she told Rowan everything she currently knew about Kordus Harkennr and his operation in Chicago, which was the same basic information she and Maxwell had relayed to her council. Rowan had sat in on the end of that meeting, spying from the other side of the door in the hallway, but she didn’t think he’d heard about her and Maxwell’s visit under old-law truce this morning.
She was right. After every detail she gave him, the Blackmoon Elf looked more and more stunned. He didn’t interrupt or ask any questions. At one point, she thought he even looked marginally concerned to hear what Harkennr had been doing in the old prison.
Beyond those general facts, though, she couldn’t tell him anything more. Not even the information extending so far back in her past to make it more relevant to Rowan than to Shade.
That was a dangerous road to travel with him—confiding anything else in the Blackmoon Elf. Every move Shade made against Harkennr now had to be meticulously planned and perfectly executed. Nothing less. If Rowan knew half the things she did about the warlock’s past crimes and what he was truly capable of, she didn’t think she could count on Rowan to keep that information to himself.
When she finished, Rowan fell oddly silent, as if contemplating what she’d told him. At least, she hoped that was the cause of his silence.
Just when she’d grown used to the relief of not hearing him spew nonsense—even grateful for it—he opened the conversation again with more questions she absolutely didn’t want to answer.
“What’s keeping you here, Kilda’ari ? Truly. Because I see how intent you are on staying, and I just can’t figure it out.”
“Because I like what I’m doing here,” she said. “I’ve found a place I belong, and I think I’m doing something that matters.”
“Even with Kordus Harkennr involved?”
“Even then.”
Rowan pressed his lips together in thought, swiping stray hairs away from his face and neck. “Then I say we bring this bastard down as quickly as possible. The sooner that’s over with, the sooner you and I can get back to doing what we were meant to do. Together.”
“You say that like you’re so sure we were meant for anything.”
A bitter laugh escaped him. “How can you not be? All the pieces are falling into place, and you and I have a duty to put the rest of it into action. A destiny, even, if you wanna call it that.”
“I call it bullshit.”
“But you know I’m right. Forget the prophecy, just for a second—”
“You mean we can actually do that?” she asked flatly.
He rolled his eyes. “All that aside, you know I’m right. This is what we’ve been waiting for, Kilda’ari . All the signs are right in front of us. Movement on the Qriisri Plains. The Gateway’s been open for the better part of a year now. There’s nothing to stop the Bloodshadow Court’s enemies anymore, except us.”
The heat blazing in her cheeks could have been from the late-afternoon sun as they crossed the city on foot. More likely, though, it came from her rekindled anger that he would use this opportunity to try manipulating her into returning home with him again.
She should have expected it.
“I don’t see why that has any relevance to my life now,” she said, her jaw already stiff with the effort of not yelling at him.
“You don’t mean that,” he said gently. “I know you don’t mean that. But you have to admit, nothing else has ever looked like this before. The Bloodshadow Court’s enemies have already begun to gather their forces again. We’ve seen movement in every one of their territories, and it’s all been recent . Movement all across Xahar-áhsh. It’s happening now. Agn’a Tha’ros needs you. You have to come home.”
Rebecca stared straight ahead, masking her reaction despite already teetering on the edge of ditching him to go look for this damn key-maker on her own.
“That’s how we stop it, Kilda’ari ,” he added softly. “When you and I finally bond, then we’ll—”
“No!” She stopped short on the sidewalk and whirled on him. “ We aren’t doing anything, Rowan. Definitely not bonding .”
“But the prophecy—”
“The prophecy ?” she spat, then gazed around to eye the random human vehicles, some possibly even filled with magicals, zipping back and forth along the road beside them.
She couldn’t make a scene here, but she wanted to.
“Don’t talk to me about prophecies,” she hissed. “They don’t change a damn thing.”
“Really?” The amusement had returned to his eyes, though fortunately for him, he didn’t smile, or she might have tried to smack it off his face. “You’re telling me this doesn’t mean anything? ‘When the Bloodshadow Heir bonds with her heart and the fate of two worlds settles in her hands…’ That doesn’t apply to you?”
“I already told you I refuse.” She spun away from him and continued down the sidewalk.
Who cared if she didn’t know where they were going or how to get there? She didn’t want to stand out in the open with Rowan, listening to him spouting off all the same bullshit others had forced down her throat over an entire lifetime back home.
She didn’t want to stand anywhere with him, discussing any of this.
“Rebecca, wait,” he called, hurrying after her. “You have to come with me. You know that. We have to go back to Court to finish this the way we were meant to. It’s already been set in motion. Things you can’t control—”
“See, that’s just more bullshit,” she said. “I can control my decisions now, which you seem to have completely overlooked in your grand plan to come find me, sweep me off my feet, and take me back home so they can just put me in more of their chains. Again.”
With a snort, Rowan kicked at a patch of stray pebbles someone else had kicked onto the sidewalk, muttering, “As far as damsels and distress go, you make it really damn hard for me to do my part. With this one, it’s the other way around. Damsels giving me distress.”
“Another part of your master plan you didn’t account for,” she snapped. “I’ve made a new life here, Rowan. You keep telling me it’s time to come home, but you’re still not listening when I tell you I am home, and I’m not leaving it. I’m not going back with you. Not through the Gateway. Not through another spell. It’s just not happening.”
Rebecca tried to keep her emotions in check, but his refusal to see what she’d been telling him this whole time made it more than difficult not to lash out at him. She didn’t want to lash out, but the Blackmoon Elf knew exactly how to push her buttons.
“Maybe if you explain it to me again,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows.
“This is as simple as I can spell it out for you. I refuse all of it, okay? I refuse stepping foot back in my parent’s Court. I refuse the vows and the bone tile and everything that comes along with it. I refuse the stupid prophecy. I refuse to let my destiny be dictated by some old fool’s ramblings the elders decided was more important than who I am or what I want. And they call it a prophecy? It doesn’t predict shit.”
“It predicted your magic.”
“Chalk it up to simple genetics,” she retorted. “Centuries of the Bloodshadow Clan diligently pruning their bloodlines so someone like me would finally be born again. That’s simple science, not seeing the future.”
“With the opening of the Gateway, though? You can’t tell me those two things just coincidentally happened at the same time.”
“They didn’t. I’m over a thousand years old. The Gateway’s been open for almost a year. Where does divine timing come into that, huh?”
“Well then, what about us ?” Rowan asked, shooting her a cheeky smile that made her want to punch him. “The Bloodshadow Heir and her heart, right? Go ahead and tell me there was anyone else for even thousands of miles around Agn’a Tha’ros who could have qualified.”
Rebecca inhaled deeply, then let it out again in a steady sigh. “Are you really calling yourself my heart right now?”
“The elders certainly did. They believed it so much, they swore our oaths for us.”
“And created the bullshit fulfillment of the prophecy when none of it actually existed.”
When Rowan turned abruptly down an intersecting corner without giving her a heads-up first, she gritted her teeth and forced herself not to yell at him. “You won’t change my mind on any of this, Rowan. I’ve seen the world. Two worlds, actually, and far more of either than you ever will if you keep going this way. The old prophecies and destiny and laws don’t apply anymore—”
“They apply to everyone ,” he interrupted, then stopped and stared blankly at her as if he’d forgotten who she was.
“What is it?”
“Hold on.” He took several steps backward until he lined up with the mouth of an alley on their left. “Yep.”
Then he took off into the alley.
Rebecca searched the surrounding area, but they were so far alone, unnoticed and unwatched, though for how much longer, she couldn’t begin to guess. Now that they were out together, though, she felt obligated to keep an eye on him, to make sure he didn’t create even more trouble than he was worth.
Which was just about impossible these days, anyway.
“What were you saying?” he asked as he moved briskly down the alley, searching the grime-coated walls and lightly stepping over oil-slickened puddles.
“I wasn’t,” Rebecca replied. “I’ve been finished from the moment I left Agn’a Tha’ros.”
“Right. When you stopped being who you are and started playing at someone else. I get all that, but you don’t have any proof the prophecy doesn’t apply or that you don’t still have a duty to—”
“Blue Hells, Rowan! Since when did you care at all about duty? I’m so sick of hearing about duty.”
“But you still can’t prove the prophecies are wrong…”
“And you can’t prove it’s right!” she snapped, bordering on losing control of her volume. So she forced herself to calm down again. The last thing they needed was to be questioned by any curious bystander listening to two people yell at each other about nonsense down an empty alley before trying to get involved.
“Show me the proof,” she added, her voice much calmer now. “Proof you didn’t just cook up on your own and that hasn’t been shoved down your throat by the elders. Show me that, and maybe I’ll consider what it means. But until then—”
“Wait, wait.” Rowan thrust a finger in the air, his gaze flickering back and forth across the alley wall, then his smile returned and he nodded. “Oh yeah. This is definitely the place.”
Rebecca turned in a slow circle before spreading her arms. “What, the dumpster?”
He looked over his shoulder at her and chuckled. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Then he walked toward the alley’s left wall, whispering something unintelligible under his breath, and stopped.
There was nothing there but old, stained bricks that looked even grimier than the dumpster that likely hadn’t been cleaned in years. The Blackmoon Elf pointed at a number of bricks one at a time, tilting his head back and forth, then finally pressed a hand down on the grossest stain among all the others. “He gave me incredibly specific directions. I’m sure this is it.”
“Directions to a brick wall? Rowan, I swear, if this whole thing ends being nothing but a massive waste of my time…”
“Well don’t write it all off just yet. You haven’t even talked to the guy.”
“What guy?”
He cleared his throat, still squaring up to the brick wall, then rapped his knuckles against the nasty, damp, sticky-looking stain on the bricks and waited.
She stared blankly at him, hoping this wasn’t part of some elaborate hoax. She couldn’t afford to be led off track like this. Not when Shade still needed viable resources for taking the game to Harkennr on their terms and not his.
The longer they stood in the alley, with Rowan expectantly facing the brick wall he’d knocked on while nothing happened, the more Rebecca started to worry he might have lost his mind in his alleged search for her. That would have explained so many things…
When still nothing happened, it occurred to her that, for as much as she knew she wouldn’t enjoy it, the best thing she could probably do for herself and for Shade—short of eliminating Harkennr immediately, through some miracle—was to get rid of Rowan.
Not permanently but in a way that would make it impossible for him to return. A way that would prohibit him from interfering with her world now, if he remained so intent on screwing with her the way he clearly was now.
The only issue there was figuring out how to do that without physically harming him and without inadvertently offering him some loophole through which he would just come right back to find her and start up with this lost cause all over again.
“Rowan?” she called from further back down the alley. “You said you knew exactly where to find this guy.”
“I do. Memorized the whole thing. My mind’s a steel trap. You know that.”
Sure. For useless information, not anything that might actually help them.
When still nothing happened, Rowan gave it another try and knocked again.
And still no sign of movement or anyone else’s presence.
Why would knocking on bricks in the middle of an alley bring them straight to this alleged key-maker?
Then it hit her.
Either Rowan had been duped by this magical calling himself a key-maker and claiming he could be found in Chicago, or Rowan had lost his mind.
He repeatedly tapped his foot beside one especially slimy puddle and folded his arms.
“Did he happen to mention how long this was supposed to take?” she asked.
“Just give it a bit longer. Patience as a virtue and all that.”
Oh, sure. He could throw that line in her face all he wanted, but if Rowan was ever dependably anything, it was impatient .
“I think your key-maker pulled a fast one on you,” she muttered, scanning the rest of the alley.
“Really, Kilda’ari ?” He looked over his shoulder at her with another vicious grin. “After all this time, you still have so little faith in me?”
She scrunched up her face. “It doesn’t even make sense.”
“It will if you just give it a minute and quit complaining.”
“Rowan, this is a massive waste of time. I only came with you because you said you’d show me where to find the key-maker, but this—”
A deep, resounding boom shuddered through the alley, making the stone tremble beneath her feet while all the little grimy puddles rippled with the vibrations.
Several more echoing clicks and rumbles filled the air, bouncing back and forth between the brick walls. Then, to Rebecca’s utter surprise, those brick walls of this nondescript alley in the middle of downtown Chicago started to move.