Elven Lies (Court of Rebellion #3)

23. Chapter 23

23

“ T here’s something else I’ve been meaning to ask you about,” Rowan said.

Walking down the sidewalk past Millenium Park on their return to Shade headquarters, Rebecca stopped herself from giving him a meaningless smartass response, but she couldn’t do a thing about the curdled knot growing tighter in her stomach by the minute.

She didn’t want to talk about anything else. Not with him. Not now.

Plus, she was still angry after discovering Aldous’s secret cache. She didn’t think she could remain objective with anything else involving Rowan.

Apparently, though, he took her silence as an invitation to continue.

“I noticed it before, but now that I got to see it in action… What was that thing?”

Rebecca looked sharply at him and frowned. “What thing?”

“That doll you were waving around in there like some kinda totem.”

The hex doll. Of course he would ask about that, but only after she’d been so caught off guard by seeing the results of Aldous’s betrayal in his vault.

He was trying to blindside her with this one.

“It’s nothing,” she said, her voice clipped and flat.

“That’s it?” Rowan chuckled and sidled toward her as they walked side by side, an extra bounce in his step. “That was definitely not nothing. Nothing doesn’t get two orcs to stop dead in their warpath and start blubbering like newborns instead. I don’t care how thick in the head they are.”

“It’s not important.” She refused to look at him, even while her hand slipped absently into her jacket pocket.

“Yeah, see, I don’t believe that, either. And now I can’t help but wonder if—”

“Rowan, please. Just drop it.”

He studied the side of her face as they continued their casually brisk pace back across the city. “Well now I’m even more intrigued.”

Rebecca heard the smirk in his voice. Playing even more games. Always.

She didn’t want to discuss the burlap doll with insanely powerful old-world magic buried deep inside, mostly because she still had no idea what this artifact was or the full extent of what it could do. Plus, every time she’d used it had been by accident.

So she kept her silence, which seemed enough to stop Rowan from questioning her further.

“Oh, hey. Look at that .” He pointed to their left, leaning toward her. “What’s that all the way out there?”

“What?”

“What do you mean, what? Come on. That thing. The big, giant, shiny silver…bean-thingy.”

“What, The Bean?” she asked with a wry laugh. “You’ve been here how long?”

“Don’t be like that. I’m still a tourist. You’re not gonna explain it to—whoa!” He stumbled forward and sideways, knocking into Rebecca to send her almost stumbling off the curb.

“What are you doing?”

“Sorry. Just not watching my feet. I think I tripped over something.” Rowan looked over his shoulder at the sidewalk behind them and chuckled. “My bad.”

“You sure you’re okay?” Rebecca looked him up and down. Had one of the orcs hit him with their attacks inside Nexus and she just hadn’t noticed?

She’d never known Rowan to be even a little clumsy, even under the worst circumstances.

Not unless he was doing it on purpose.

Like bumping into someone…

Her hand went instantly to the outside of her jacket pocket, but when she patted it, there was nothing there beneath her hand. No solid weight of the hex doll she’d been keeping there.

“Hey!” she shouted. “You—”

“Just couldn’t help myself,” he finished for her and leaped nimbly away toward the opposite side of the sidewalk. “And just look at this thing!”

He lifted his hand to study the burlap-covered hex doll he’d just pick-pocketed from her and grinned. “Holy shit.”

“You can’t just reach into my pockets whenever you want.” Rebecca extended an open hand toward him.

“Oh, really?” Chuckling, Rowan twirled the hex doll back and forth between his fingers by one of its narrow arms. “The evidence begs to differ.”

“Give it back.”

This was ridiculous. Why did she feel like she was talking to a child?

“Yeah. Sure,” he said. “I just wanna check it out. You know what this is, don’t you?”

“Not yours.” Rebecca swiped at the doll, but he whisked it out of her reach at the last second.

“This is the Darkspawn,” Rowan declared.

She fixed him with a deadpan stare, then burst out laughing. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Why? Because I haven’t been walking around with it hidden in my jacket this whole time?”

“Because the Darkspawn doesn’t even exist,” she said. “And that hardly looks like one of the most dangerous old-world artifacts in existence. It’s a doll. A doll that was made here on Earth.”

“The outside of it, yeah.” Rowan turned the doll over in both hands now, inspecting it from every possible angle. “That’s obvious. But what’s inside ?”

Another sharp laugh escaped him. “It’s actually brilliant in its design. Whoever did this wanted to make sure it stayed hidden. Who would think to look for the Darkspawn in a little girl’s toy that looks like it’s a hundred years old?”

“You sound sane. That’s not the Darkspawn.”

“Please. It’s too obvious. How do you keep the most covetous assholes from finding something like the Darkspawn, especially when you don’t want anyone to find it? You make it look like anything but the Darkspawn!”

“How exciting,” she replied flatly. “Now give it back.”

“You don’t believe me?” Rowan tossed the doll over and over in his hand, still laughing. “Fine. Watch this.”

He snatched the doll out of the air and took off, leaving the sidewalk to race up the grass-covered hill beside them toward the art and the river and the civilians enjoying their afternoon there.

And humans.

“Rowan! Stop!” Rebecca took off after him, filled with disproportionate dread when he disappeared over the top of the hill and down the other side.

By the time she reached the top and caught sight of him again, he was already closing in on his target—a group of human teenagers enjoying a summer day in Millenium Park as they sprawled out on picnic blankets, listening to music and eating and laughing together.

Blue Hells. This was bad.

Rowan had already proven he didn’t care to listen to her anyway, and he was already too far away to catch up to him before he did something stupid in a public park in broad daylight.

“Rowan!” she shouted again, but it was already too late.

Whether they’d noticed his approach or Rebecca’s shout had caught their attention, the teenagers stopped what they were doing to stare at the tall, thin stranger with a long russet-colored ponytail who only looked human as he stepped ever closer and raised a small item covered in burlap toward them.

Then the screaming started.

First, it was just one girl’s voice rising with ear-bursting clarity across the park. Then another and another followed as every young girl lounging on their picnic blankets in the grass fell victim to the hex doll’s magic.

Two of them leaped to their feet and took off running in the opposite direction, screaming bloody murder while their arms and legs pumped madly in their escape.

The girls who remained screamed a bit longer before one of them passed out, her eyes rolling back in her head, and she keeled over to land on the blanket with a thump.

The other two also stopped screaming but only to blubber and whimper like terrified children watching their worst nightmares come to life before their eyes.

The girls clutched at each other, hyperventilating while their eyes bulged and they watched Rowan approach.

From the top of the hill, Rebecca could only see the masses of silvery blue smoke hovering in front of each girl, but she couldn’t make out their shapes.

She jogged down toward them, furious at Rowan and still trying not to draw any unnecessary attention toward her during this little episode.

Like that was even possible at this point.

Rowan stopped at the edge of the closest picnic blanket, still extending the hex doll toward the teenage girls, and muttered a quiet, flat, “Boo.”

More screaming split the air, then all three remaining teenage girls scrambled across the blankets, kicking over cups and plates and what remained of their lunch in their terrified efforts to flee.

The screaming continued, fading into the distance as the girls ran for their lives, seemingly without taking another breath. Then only Rowan remained, standing there alone at the edge of the abandoned picnic blankets.

Rebecca finally caught up with him, seething and grinding her teeth as she hissed through them, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

He looked at her over his shoulder with another smirk and shrugged. “You didn’t believe me. So I’m enlightening you.”

Then he faced the blanket again and squatted in front of it. “Oh, look. They left their lunch behind. Don’t mind if I do, actually.”

He crouched over the blanket to pick at a bunch of grapes beside an overturned paper plate. “Ooh, I love these.”

“We’re in a public park in the middle of the day,” she hissed, finally catching up to him. “What were you thinking ?”

“You’re the one who needed proof.”

“That doesn’t mean using it on humans in broad daylight. Just give it back.”

“I didn’t even crank it all the way up,” he said, then grabbed an abandoned water bottle. “But you’re too stubborn to—”

She leaped at him, meaning to snatch at the hex doll again. But Rowan stood at the last second and stepped neatly out of the way.

Rebecca stumbled forward and almost tripped over the picnic blanket catching around her shoes.

“Hold on. Check this out. It works on literally everyone.” Rowan jiggled the hex doll at her, then zeroed in his focus on another group of humans enjoying a stroll across the grass.

A family with three young children.

Was he trying to bring the MJC down on both of them?

She tore away from the twisted picnic blanket, dropping the heavy silver briefcase, and charged Rowan head-on, colliding into his side with a growl. “Don’t you dare!”

He grunted and struggled to keep his footing, but then they were both on the ground, rolling and wrestling and scrambling while Rebecca tried to seize the doll from him and Rowan wouldn’t stop squirming away. His constant laughter only made it worse.

Finally, after a punch below his ribcage and an elbow across the side of his jaw, she gained the upper hand, pinning his arms beneath the pressure of her knees. Then she grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt collar and loomed over him.

“You can’t do this,” she hissed.

His laughter died into a soft chuckle as he grinned up at her through heavy breathing, his hazel eyes glinting. “Only because you won’t let me get that far.”

“Mommy? What are these grownups doing?”

Rebecca looked up to find a child pointing shamelessly at her and Rowan.

The mother tugged on the little boy’s hand. “Don’t point. It’s rude. And that’s none of our business.”

The man beside her, likely the father, tugged the other two children along with him. Unlike his wife, though, he glared disapprovingly at Rebecca practically sitting on Rowan beside a rumpled picnic blanket and spilled snacks.

Though he couldn’t move his arm, Rowan still lifted his hand to wiggle his fingers in a friendly wave. “Lovely afternoon, don’t you think?”

“There are kids here,” the man hissed. “Get a room.”

The family hurried away, and Rowan exploded into another round of dangerous, carefree laughter.

As much as she wanted to teach him the kind of lesson he was far less likely to forget, Rebecca couldn’t do a thing to him out here in the open. There were so many civilians around, magical and human, or she would have already.

Instead, she shook him by his shirt collar with a growl, then released him. His head thumped back onto the grass, but she still held him down with one hand and yanked the hex doll from his grasp with the other. Then she stood to leave him in the grass, pausing only to snatch up the silver briefcase from Aldous’s stash. “You are really pushing it.”

“Why? Because we could’ve been seen, or because I’m right?” Rowan pushed himself up to sit in the grass, then found his discarded grapes and popped him more into his mouth. “Not that those are mutually exclusive.”

She wanted to scream at him, to list all the ways he’d made her job harder than necessary, plus all the ways he’d deliberately disobeyed her or acted against the plan in the last twenty-four hours. That list was quickly piling up.

Her aching fingers reminded her how tightly she clenched the hex doll, so she shoved it into her pocket and stormed back toward the sidewalk.

Her fingers brushed against the cool, smooth surface of the Mindstone Maxwell had given her, filling her thoughts with even more possibilities.

If she sounded the alarm with this thing, the shifter would be here in minutes. She was certain of it. The thought of him appearing at her side to muscle Rowan back into shape for her tempted her rage, but it was only a fantasy.

Maxwell had given this to her to ensure her own physical safety. Or, at least, he’d implied as much. But summoning him here under the pretense of an emergency just because she didn’t want to lose her cool on the Blackmoon Elf out in the open? That wasn’t a good enough reason.

She couldn’t afford to piss Maxwell off with a stunt like that, either.

Instead, she quickened her pace down the sidewalk and focused only on getting back to the compound and moving forward.

Rowan’s laughter catching up to her set her teeth on edge. Then he’d reached her side again, squeezing a string of water from a teenager’s stolen water bottle into his open mouth. “I just don’t see the point in pretending it’s anything else.”

“And I don’t see the point in harping on it forever,” she muttered. “It’s not the Darkspawn.”

“How about we take an objective inventory of the facts then, huh?” He tossed the water bottle back onto the grass, then counted on each of his slender fingers. “First, there’s the legend of the Darkspawn. A uniquely powerful weapon of old-world destruction that confronts each target with a manifestation of their own worst fear. If left unchecked by its master, the Darkspawn doesn’t let up until it destroys its target. Highly coveted, lost to Xahar’áhsh for centuries, with tales of it popping up in various forms all over places known and unknown.”

“Those are the legends,” Rebecca muttered.

“Hey, I get it. The point where legend meets reality is often a revelatory disappointment. But everything I’ve just said definitely applies to that little doohickey in your pocket. How, Kilda’ari , you could use it on Harkennr and—”

“I don’t wanna use it on anyone !” Rebecca’s shout echoed up the street, making several unknowing pedestrians slow and look her way to watch the train wreck, but no one bothered to ask if she needed any help. Of course not.

She jerked her hand out of her jacket pocket, zipped it up for good measure, and clenched her fists at her side to keep from throwing them at Rowan’s face.

“If this is really what you say it is,” she said, lowering her voice, “do you have any idea how many people are looking for it?”

“That’s what makes it so fun ,” he exclaimed. “So who’d you take it from?”

“I said I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Yeah, sure. I heard you. But you know what your options are here at this point, right?”

Her options. Either tell him as much as she could afford, or suffer through the remaining hour of their walk to Shade headquarters, losing her mind while Rowan poked and prodded her with questions, trying to break her with his own outlandish conclusions.

Then his focus would shift from wanting answers to doing everything in his power to piss her off and get another rise out of her.

They were already having this conversation, so she couldn’t hold it off any longer. It made more sense for her sanity, if nothing else, to give him something .