4. Chapter 4
4
M axwell’s wary disapproval as he bristled even further beside her made the thin hairs on Rebecca’s forearms stand on end.
It certainly didn’t help things when that tingling heat of their connection flared up between them, because he’d leaned toward her, never once removing his gaze from Rowan’s ministrations in front of the mirror. “Now we know exactly what he’s done. We have proof and a confession. He didn’t even try to deny it. Whatever this is, we still can’t trust him.”
“I know.” She swallowed, as if that would steady her voice and her nerves. “But it has to be done. He’s right about everything that will happen if I don’t go through with this. Any other option we might have had means a whole lot more trouble than that battalion of Hakalini’ir soldiers out there. And a lot more than our teams could even begin to handle.”
In the last several months of her command as Shade’s Roth-Da’al, her task force had handled quite a lot. Possibly more than ever before. They’d made it through every obstacle and challenge with their dignity and sanity still intact. But even with all the experience and expertise that had led them toward victory in the past, none of it would be enough to see them through the consequences of Rebecca not following through with the ritual Rowan had proposed.
Shade had never fought an elite army straight from Xahar’áhsh, and Rebecca intended to ensure they never did.
Because if she didn’t go through with this, it wouldn’t be a specialized battalion of Hakalini’ir soldiers answering to Rowan Blackmoon. The Bloodshadow Court itself would unleash its own military force to infiltrate Earth and seize what it wanted from the Bloodshadow Heir.
The Hakalini’ir was formidable in its own right, but any other force ordered to complete the mission previously assigned to Rowan would be far, far worse and impossible for Shade to withstand.
With all his spell reagents and ritual supplies now laid out in front of him, Rowan turned to the final stage of preparation, drawing casting circles through the layers of caked dust and across the trailer floor, the lines of white chalk brighter and thicker than seemed possible.
Every few seconds, another bright and simultaneously dark flash of black un-light bloomed in his palm around one more spell reagent or grotesque totem he summoned from his own private piece of interdimensional magical storage.
A tiny, shriveled skull. A length of lace stained with blood and other less obvious—but no less undesirable—substances. An antique wooden hairbrush, the back carved in the image of a horrifyingly contorted face, mouth open in a perpetually frozen scream of agony. Each of them more macabre and off-putting than the last.
Despite knowing nothing of this ritual or most forms of spellcasting, Maxwell still scrutinized each item and every minute movement of Rowan’s exaggerated preparations. In his first display of involuntary reaction, the shifter wrinkled his nose. “What’s happening?”
“A spell.” Rebecca’s face flushed instantly hot when his gaze returned to her face with an unexpected intensity.
“I am well aware. What type of spell? For what purpose?”
The answer was far too complex and carried far too many cultural and political nuances of Agn’a Tha’ros to crush it all into the span of one or two sentences, and they just didn’t have the time. Maxwell would receive a better explanation than she could give by seeing it with his own eyes, though the cautious certainty boiling just beneath the surface of the shifter’s steadfast stoniness made her wonder if he would agree to even that much.
She looked up at him with as much reassurance as she could muster in the moment—for both of them. “I just need you to trust me on this.
“I do.” His silver eyes flickered back toward Rowan with another unblinking stare. “But I will not say the same of him.”
“I won’t ever ask you to. Not after tonight. I’m not sure I can trust him at all, either. But I do know he’ll do this the right way. No matter what he wants, he won’t turn on this ritual just to get it. He won’t sabotage something this delicate and important. He’d only end up hurting himself.”
And hurting Rebecca a little too, but she could no longer be sure that was enough on its own to stop the Blackmoon Elf from his usual tricks and manipulations. Self-preservation, though? She had no doubt that was at the top of his list.
Another shadowy flash of un-light in Rowan’s palm as he knelt before the mirror and the drawn casting circles and spell reagents arranged in their intricately intentional design. When the darkness of his magic faded again, a final item lay in his open palm.
A wickedly curved ritual dagger, its pristine edge honed into such a deadly fine blade, it was almost impossible to see where the blade ended and the empty air around it began.
He looked over his shoulder at Rebecca and Maxwell, lifted the dagger slightly in his palm, and flashed them a startlingly wide grin. A lunatic’s grin.
Maxwell’s next growl filled, louder than ever, filled the trailer with the rumbling vibrations of protective warning. His silver eyes pulsed as they locked onto the edge of Rowan’s blade before asking her, “Are you certain ?”
“About Blackmoon handling this spell with care and respect? Yes.”
“I do not approve.”
The overbearing heat of his need to protect her pulsed off the shifter in waves, echoing the quickening rhythm of his emotions Rebecca also felt radiating from the center of her core as if they were fully hers alone.
“I know,” she said. “And I won’t try to change your mind. But I do need you to let me do this the way it has to be done. If you need something else to focus on, make sure nobody walks through that door until this is finished.”
He slowly swept his gaze toward her to stare at her with a raised eyebrow.
At first, Rebecca expected him to launch into another aggressive and overly protective argument for why he couldn’t let her do any of this. Like he could actually stop her, anyway.
But then the energy rippling around him and through him, pumping through their unexplained connection and into her, transformed in an instant. He softened, the quickening pulse in his silver eyes slowing into a gentle rhythm like a heartbeat of light behind his eyes, and he dipped his head slightly toward her.
“As my Roth-Da’al commands,” he rumbled, his voice barely audible. “It will be done.”
That simple bit of support and solidarity, coming from him in a moment like this, almost undid her. She wanted to thank him, but any words of gratitude felt woefully insufficient.
She wanted to show him how much it meant to her that he would still stand beside her in this, despite Rowan’s massive betrayal and the dangers both elves faced in attempting this ritual spellcasting.
In all honesty, Maxwell faced those same dangers with them. The rotting trailer was a small, enclosed space; should anything go wrong, it would take a miracle for even the shifter to escape unscathed.
He was aware of none of the dangers, had no information or explanation whatsoever, and he was still willing to do as she’d asked. For her.
Since she’d found the swooping black marks of ink forming an elven rune on Maxwell’s chest, Rebecca hadn’t thought she would find this level of comfort in his support and steady presence beside her ever again. Clearly, the shifter certainly hadn’t run out of surprises.
She still didn’t know how much she could trust Maxwell, but she knew for a fact how much she did not trust Rowan Blackmoon. He’d shattered all but the last of her faith in him with his crippling betrayal of not only her but all of Shade—bringing his Hakalini’ir cohort to Earth to act against them, failing to stop the systematic slaughter of all their contacts in and around Chicago, when he was the one who’d ordered it in the first place. By the time she’d discovered it, it didn’t even matter that he’d changed his mind at the last second.
Rebecca wanted nothing to do with the Blackmoon Elf she’d once called her best and only friend. But what they were trying to achieve together right now, all in the name of finding an acceptable compromise that might leave Rebecca with half a chance and wouldn’t get all fifty of her operatives beside the bridge killed tonight in the process? This spell she and Rowan we’re about to cast?
This was different.
She had to trust Rowan to follow through with this to the very end, the right way. She had no other choice. He was powerful and relentless and a major pain in the ass, yes, but he wouldn’t jeopardize both their lives during something as important and dangerous as what they were about to attempt.
Probably.
Either way, the chance to change her mind, however brief, was over.
With a heavy sigh, Rowan rose from his knees, dusted off his hands again, and gave the ritual area in front of the mirror a quick once-over before nodding in satisfaction. “That’ll just about do it.”
Now that he’d moved out of the way, the full expanse of the spell’s setup became clearly visible, every item placed with meticulous precision in and around the casting circle, with two positions marked by wavering lines where Rebecca and Rowan would soon be kneeling in front of that mirror side by side.
If each spell reagent and potion and collection of herbs he’d conjured and been disturbing to look at on their own, all of it set up together and fully prepared made the whole thing look just as eerily macabre and dangerous as Rebecca already knew it truly was.
Thrusting his hands on his hips, Rowan turned toward them with another grin. “What do you think?”
It didn’t matter who the question was for; Rebecca and Maxwell both ignored him.
“What is all this for?” Maxwell asked her with another low growl, his frown darkening more than ever.
“Necessary for this spell,” she replied with a curt nod. “From here on out, we take this one step at a time.”
As if emerging from a dream—or an eon spent as a lifeless thing carved from stone—the shifter tore his gaze away from the casting circle to look at Rebecca head-on. The horror behind his silver eyes nearly made her shudder, and though they couldn’t precisely read each other’s thoughts at this point, she knew in that moment exactly what he was thinking.
Maxwell stood on the very edge of bringing this all to an abrupt and perilous end. Of going back on his word. Of ripping Rebecca away from this horrid ritual, away from the elf who’d betrayed them all, and right back out this door, leaving everything behind and damn the consequences.
It was right there at the edge of his awareness—and hers too, now. So clear and strong, if she focused on it only a few seconds longer, she might have started to believe it was her idea.
So she addressed it in the only way she knew how. “Now’s your last chance to step outside. You can still guard the door from the other side of it.”
His eyes widened for half a second before the dark, stony mask she used to think was his only real expression returned, joined by another firm set of his strong jaw. Then he dipped his head toward her a final time. “I will stand right here. No matter what.”
That came as a relief she hadn’t expected. That he chose to stay, even if it meant he was about to see more than a little mess in this trailer, during this spell—plus a whole lot more bullshit once the ritual was complete.
“Then stay,” she told him, depending on their ever-strengthening connection to let him feel her gratitude when any other words just wouldn’t do the trick. “Watch and listen.”
His jaw muscles clenched a few times as his frown shifted. “Can I… do anything?”
Not that it mattered, but she still looked over her shoulder at Rowan to find him kneeling over the casting circle again, his attention seemingly consumed by any last-minute preparations. It didn’t matter if he was actively listening, but at least he wasn’t watching them.
Which made it a lot easier for her to slip her hand briefly around Maxwell’s fingers before giving them a light squeeze.
A burning tingle of ravenous need and dark hunger jolted up her hand and into her arm at the contact before she released him. When she finally found her voice again to answer his question, it was every bit as grave and deadly serious as the spell waiting for her.
“Don’t say a word,” she murmured, holding his gaze as if it were the only way to make him understand. “And do not interrupt us in any way or try to intervene. No matter what you think you see or hear.”