2. Chapter 2
2
R ebecca silently wished for a reason—just one, any reason—to make Rowan shut up. She didn’t want to hear anything from him, no matter how important he thought it was for her to hear him out.
Short of separating the Blackmoon Elf’s head from his body, though, no viable solutions presented themselves.
Which meant he just kept talking.
“Until that night at the warehouse,” Rowan continued, “I didn’t understand what you’d built for yourself here. Not until I saw how terrified you were of losing the shifter.”
Another frown flickered across his brows, though he tried to make it look like haughty superiority when he lifted his chin and tilted his head, studying her face. As if he now offered her some grandiose, eye-opening revelation for which he expected her to thank him when this was over. “Then it hit me. I’d had it all wrong. The whole time. All of it became perfectly clear in that moment, and… Rebecca, I do regret having run into this so blindly bullheaded—”
“And immediately ordering your army to slaughter Shade’s entire network of innocent civilians in the city was supposed to be an apology ?” she spat.
The patient awareness in his expression darkened in an instant. Then the Blackmoon Elf glared at her as fiercely as she’d been glaring at him, hoping looks really could kill. Or at least seriously maim.
“I had changed my mind,” he stated gruffly. “But by the time I did, it had no bearing on the orders I’d given my men before I showed up at your compound. I’d been very clear with them. If I didn’t return with you within a given timeframe, they were to stage an assault on Shade’s network to pull you out into the open and force a surrender so I could take you home. Which, regrettably, they did.”
A wry bark of empty, humorless laughter burst from her mouth. “Sure. With all pertinent intel provided by you after you’d been with us for almost two months.”
Rowan glanced at the corner of the ceiling, then smacked his lips. “It does look that way, doesn’t it?”
“You’re unbelievable—”
“Listen, Hakalini’ir is under my command, but I didn’t train them. They’re the ones who found you at Shade first. I barely managed to hold them at bay while I infiltrated to assess, so to speak. And, as I’m sure you can imagine, they take their orders very seriously.”
Rebecca sat back in her chair and folded her arms. The bullshit never ended with him, did it?
Rowan genuinely seemed to think an in-depth explanation would get her to change her mind. Soften her up a little before he brought that same fucking battalion of elite elven warriors down on her task force if she refused to submit to his every demand. Which, no doubt, he’d eventually get to when he finished coddling himself with the sound of his own voice…
“By the time I realized how you really felt about your life here and I left the warehouse that night, Hakalini’ir had already gone to ground so efficiently, I couldn’t find them.” The same caliber of a humorless, joyless chuckle escaped him before he readjusted an elegantly crafted vambrace along his forearm. The silver-white armor gleamed beneath the illumination orbs floating above them.
“I know. It’s fucking humiliating, but they’re good. The best, even. Which was part of the appeal, right? But I couldn’t find them in time to tell them I’d changed my mind. To tell them you weren’t coming. I would have ordered them to stand down, but my original plan was already in place. Hakalini’ir went after Shade’s network, as ordered, before I could intervene.”
There it was. The admission of his guilt. The proof of Rowan Blackmoon’s crimes against Shade. Against her .
Hearing him say the words aloud stoked a new tempest of fury inside her, and Rowan’s continued babbling merely fanned the flames.
“I tried , Rebecca,” he said. “I did everything I could. I was only one step behind them almost the entire way—”
She lost control, surging to her feet and pounding the side of a fist down on the desk between them. “Beating individual operatives within an inch of their lives and leaving them for us to find? To me, that looks like one step ahead! You were a part of this !”
“I know. I know exactly how it looks.” Beneath her rage and now her shadow looming over him from across the desk, Rowan dipped his head and lowered his gaze. “Listen, with Archie and Lerrick, I didn’t have a choice. Hakalini’ir had their orders, and they’re vicious motherfuckers when they carry them out. I couldn’t find them. Meaning I couldn’t give them any names or individual targets to avoid .”
“You expect me to believe your incompetence with your own army was unavoidable ?”
He sat back in his chair and slightly lifted both hands from the surface of the desk, as if that could do anything to stop her. “All I could do was show up and step in before Hakalini’ir lumped your operatives in with their real targets. My only option was to neutralize Archie and Lerrick to get them out of the way . So I could save them—”
“You nearly killed them both!”
“Well they didn’t make it any easier for me,” he snapped, hazel eyes flashing dangerously beneath the light orbs when he looked up at her, though he remained seated. “They fought back.”
“ Múrg dah’lás , Rowan. Of course they did!”
“Those two are still alive because I got to them first! If I hadn’t, you would’ve found both their corpses right there with everyone else’s!”
Sucking in a hissing breath, Rebecca threw herself away from the desk, kicking against the chair’s metal legs in the process and knocking it away from her. But she couldn’t go anywhere.
Maxwell still stood right there, hovering over her. Possessively. Protectively. Unyielding and unwavering.
Seeing him there brought her back into herself for the moment. Enough so she could rein herself in and continue this farce of a conversation.
She spun back toward Rowan with another hiss, slapped a hand on the desk, then pointed at him this time. “I don’t care what you thought you had to do. None of this makes you a fucking hero.”
“That’s not what I—”
“If Hakalini’ir answers to you,” she spat, “if you command them, you could’ve stepped in at any time!”
“That’s the logical conclusion, yeah. Believe me, I thought I could too. But these guys don’t play around, and they don’t show themselves unless absolutely necessary. All I knew was where their attacks would be and that you had people coincidentally in the same place at the same time. At that point, they’d cut off all communications. I had no way to contact them and no way to order a redirect.”
“You had no reason to stop them,” Rebecca seethed.
“You’re wrong there.” Rowan’s next empty laugh came out as a groaning sigh. “You’ve seen what Hakalini’ir leaves behind when they hit their targets. You think that kind of thing happens out in the open, with the soldiers standing right there to engage in battle? No. They don’t leave a trace. Meaning they’re not even there in the first place. But Archie was, once. So was Lerrick. They would’ve died with the others right then and there if I hadn’t stepped in to get them out of the way.”
“Hundreds of innocent magicals would still be alive if you hadn’t been such a fucking idiot playing Creator with my people’s lives !” she roared.
He sat there, unmoving, staring up at her.
And Rebecca couldn’t stop herself.
“You never stopped to think what your little games would cost anyone else! You never even considered the fact that nothing’s a game anymore, did you? And no one else is even playing ! And all those magicals outside right now, the people I had to leave behind for your fucking guard dogs to play with while you try to string me along in here? They trusted you!”
She could almost see the lump in Rowan’s throat when he swallowed, but she still couldn’t stop.
“They took you in! They gave you a place! And no matter how many times you fucked around and almost got any number of them killed at any given time, none of them considered an alternative to putting up with your shit because we made you one of us !”
“I know.”
“And now we’re here ! Fifty of my magicals out there waiting for your fucking coin toss to decide what happens to them because even when I’m the only one left who even bothers to set you straight, you still can’t do your job!”
Her last scathing accusation blistered out of her mouth and left her breathless, hovering over the desk, wanting to simultaneously break something, kill something to settle her nerves with a life spark, and storm out of this stupid temp building to collect her teams before she brought the full wrath of the Bloodshadow Heir down on Rowan and his Hakalini’ir and end the whole thing.
Which, of course, would only open up countless opportunities for numerous other factions, both alleged ally and foe, to try their hand at succeeding where the Blackmoon Scion had failed.
Someone else would come after her, and someone after them, and it was only a matter of time before Rebecca had no fight left in her. Not for Shade. Not for Maxwell. Not even for herself.
She could only stand there, fuming, catching her breath and waiting for Rowan to say something .
His hazel eyes glinted beneath the light orbs as he studied her face, and when he finally spoke again, his voice had dropped into the humblest, most sincere version of itself she’d ever heard.
“I know,” he repeated. “And I am deeply sorry, even if you don’t believe it. If I could take it back, I would, but we both know dwelling on the better decisions we should have made doesn’t get anyone anywhere.”
With a final snorting exhale, Rebecca finally brought her racing pulse down to a speed resembling normal. How she hadn’t already summoned any form of her own magic in her rage was beyond her. For as uncontainably furious and beyond hurt as she was, this was still a surprisingly civil discussion, given the circumstances.
That was Maxwell, she realized. The unmoving, unyielding rock standing behind her. The steadfast support she hadn’t known she’d needed until this moment—her first unbridled argument with Rowan Blackmoon that didn’t end in a physical brawl of some kind.
The first time she’d ever spoken to him like this and they weren’t alone…
Was Maxwell really the reason she hadn’t already thrown Rowan through the decaying walls of this temp building?
Whatever the answer, she clung to the reassuring warmth of the shifter’s presence, like a cloak she could wrap around herself to ward off the worst of her temper and the consequences of surrendering to it.
They still had to get through this discussion, and Rowan still had to make his demands. That was how this worked.
After watching her long enough to apparently become satisfied that he wouldn’t be physically attacked just yet, Rowan lifted his hands again, imploring her with both words and expression. “I am sorry. And listen, my understanding of what’s happening in this world, of your whole…situation here, has changed. I can’t deny that, and I won’t.
“I was wrong. I can admit that. But unfortunately, what hasn’t changed are my orders and the ongoing expectation that I check in to deliver my report.” He spread his arms, looking genuinely apologetic for his next words even before they were out. “I have to give them something .”
“No,” she said flatly.
The lump forming in her throat was too big, too knotted, too formidable to stand against or fight back.
Rebecca knew exactly what he was asking, even without framing it as a question. And he wasn’t really asking.
He wanted the one thing above everything else Rebecca refused to give. Because it would ruin her.
She swallowed anyway and couldn’t stop staring at him, because anything else felt like a single wrong step that would shift the weight on a precariously balanced ledge, and falling off would be the end of her. Forever. “Absolutely not.”
Rowan sighed. “I know this is the last thing you want.”
“I can’t ,” she growled.
“But you know they’ll just keep sending more until they wear you down. And what do you think the chances are that anyone else will be as friendly or as willing to take you seriously as I am?” He raised his eyebrows. “You know it has to be done.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” The sound of her own small, terrified voice made her hate herself—that Rowan could so easily unravel her defenses with something as simple and vaguely delivered as his current proposal.
Rebecca pulled away from the desk, straightened, and remembered who she was. “I already told you. I refuse the vow and my station. The only way anyone’s getting me back to Agn’a Tha’ros is with my dead body in a bag.”
Rowan widened his eyes before his gaze darted toward Maxwell behind her, then back to Rebecca. A low chuckle escaped him. “Well we both know that’s not gonna happen. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be plenty of other dead bodies left in your wake if you don’t at least make an appearance.”
Maxwell stepped up beside her—a living statue of heat and power and strobing silver light. “Try it, and you will never leave this room.”
“Oh, I wasn’t referring to myself.” Rowan feigned a pout and chuckled. “Though the threat’s adorable, regardless. Seriously, Rebecca, if you want to keep them safe while making your case to the Council, I’ll support you in it however I can. Because I know how much this means to you.
“I also know that doesn’t hold much weight at all right now, if it ever did, but they do need to hear it from you directly. It won’t land coming from me. And refusing to make contact will only lead them to much more…violent tactics further down the road.”
A wave of frigid, all-consuming dread washed over her at his words, as if all of existence closed in to wrap itself around her and freeze her where she stood. Flesh, muscle, bones, and all.
He couldn’t be serious…
“You know I’m right,” he added. “I’m just offering the best variation of a shitty inevitability. You also know once that door opens, there’s no closing it again. If you don’t want to accept anything else I say, fine. Just accept this. It has to be done. Don’t make it easier for them to destroy everything you care about. I know you don’t want that.”
By the Blood, he’d done it.
He’d said the one thing, proposed the one heinous solution, that could tear down all her walls in an instant. One moment, she was Rebecca Knox, Roth-Da’al of Shade, raging against the coward responsible for so many wrongs against her and her task force, against civilians .
The next moment, she was a child again, overwhelmed beneath the weight of duty and power and fate all thrust on her at once and cowering beneath the stern gazes of every Elder who would break her so they could mold her into what they all agreed she would become.
Every particle of her being screamed at her to run. Again. To run as far and as fast as she could, and never look back, never stop. Or it would all have been for nothing anyway, and the Rebecca she’d become would cease to exist forever.
The same urge that had driven her away from Agn’a Tha’ros and Xahar-áhsh in the first place.
But that was no longer an option.
Rebecca no longer had nothing to lose.
Despite how much she hated Rowan in this moment, or how justified she was in that hatred, or how willing she would have been to give anything but what he’d just suggested she do, she had no other choice.
Rowan was right. If she kept fighting this the way she desperately wanted to, it would only get worse. Whoever came next, trying to succeed where he may have failed, would be crueler, and more brutal, and would care far less about who or even how many innocents they cut down along the way in order to get to her.
None of this excused his behavior or his choices. None of it erased the fact that he’d ordered the Hakalini’ir to assault her task force and everyone they knew if he didn’t return to them on time with Rebecca in tow, like she was some kind of fucking buried treasure to be dug up out of the earth. Like the first one to find her and claim her was entitled to the prize.
But he had ordered those soldiers to stand down tonight, with her operatives vastly outnumbered and dangerously outmatched.
He’d saved all their lives tonight, even if that hadn’t been his secondary or even tertiary goal tonight. It probably hadn’t even been on his checklist in the first place.
On top of all that, as Rebecca stood in front of the slanted desk—frozen within the impossibility of her only remaining option she now had to make possible—with Maxwell at her side, she knew Rowan had put it all out there on the table now.
She could see it in his eyes. He’d played his hand, made his apologies, and tried to lessen the blow by taking on the brunt of her anger himself so no one else would have to.
So no one else would lose their lives for Rebecca’s obstinate refusal.
He meant every word tonight, and he hadn’t cracked a joke in the last several minutes, which was probably a new record for him.
Rowan hadn’t so much as smiled, either.
He knew how deeply this would wound her and how much it would cost for Rebecca to accept his proposal. Like she had a choice.
He knew this was the only way.
Against her better judgement and every ounce of self-preservation she’d honed to damn near perfection over centuries, Rebecca also knew she’d hit a dead end. The only way out was through .
Even after she’d promised herself she’d never let herself be drawn into this again.
She had to give in.
“Fine,” she snapped, then cleared her throat. “What do you suggest?”
She felt Maxwell’s surprise and indignation as he bristled beside her, but at least she’d made the right choice to have him by her side through this whole thing, and she would continue to insist he stay at her side through what came next.
The fleeting realization that she couldn’t do this without him by her side brought a dizzying wave of relief and unexpected determination to the forefront, and all she could do was ride that wave until it broke.
Maxwell Hannigan’s role in all this—that elven rune on his chest, the blisteringly formidable connection always between them like its own sentient being—remained a mystery, but at least now she could say she hadn’t fully submitted to that pull. Now, submitting was a necessity.
Whether he knew anything about her true identity and her old life, she was about to find out. Soon. And she’d have to deal with the fallout later.
Because the coming danger looming just around the corner—so close she could almost smell the gardens of her home, hear the tinkle of chiming bells over the whisper of servants’ footsteps, taste the ritual wine on her lips mixed with ash and blood—would be far worse than anything the shifter could ever do to her.
Both Rebecca’s priorities and her greatest threats had been changed for her.
Rowan studied her a moment longer, then seemed to acknowledge that she’d accepted and meant to move forward. “Where do we start? Well, since a trip through the Gateway clearly isn’t an option, and the Bloodshadow Court isn’t invading Earth just yet, I say the last resort is a good old-fashioned call back home. More or less.”
For fuck’s sake…
Rebecca gaped at him.
He didn’t intend to force her back to Xahar-áhsh at all.
He meant the Bloodshadow Council literally wanted to hear from her .
As in face to face, in real time, looking the Elders in the eyes while she stated her refusal to be anything but who and what she was now while they balked and raged at her continuous refusal to change.
Because they would.
But instead of returning her to their homeworld as both his prisoner and the spoils of war, Rowan now offered her the chance to claim herself in front of everyone who still thought they owned her.
She’d never have to leave Chicago.
Every bone in her body screamed at her not to do this, but the consequences of not doing it would be vastly more devastating to Shade, and Chicago, and this entire human planet, if she listened.
Rowan understood this just as well as she did—Rebecca cared enough about all of it here, in this world, to do whatever was required of her if it kept that impending devastation at bay.
Even if it made her relive every agonizing horror of her past.
Even if it targeted Rebecca’s centuries-old scars and ripped them open again like fresh wounds.
Gritting her teeth, she pinned Rowan beneath her gaze, strengthened by Maxwell’s presence beside her as his barely audible growl trembled through her, and dipped her head.
“Then let’s get started.”