26. Chapter 26
26
O ne black spear protruding from the earth, its pitch-black surface inscribed with the ancient runes and symbols of power that could only have come from one place. From one world. From a different lifetime.
With it, Rebecca’s entire existence shrank into one terrifying moment of realization. The end of everything.
No. This wasn’t possible. How did they find her?
This wasn’t supposed to happen!
“I repeat!” The same voice ruptured her shriveling focus as it reverberated from above. “Reveal yourself!”
Rebecca finally tore her gaze away from the spear shaft in front of her and searched the darkness beyond for the owner of that voice.
Of course she found nothing. That was the point.
Then she turned slightly to look over her shoulder at all her operatives standing there in mute bafflement—every able-bodied member of Shade they could spare tonight, all of them watching her for their next move despite none of them knowing what was going on or who bellowed at them from the sky.
It was better that way. If they knew what they faced now, they’d lose all hope.
This could get out of hand so quickly.
And it all depended on what Rebecca did next.
First, she signaled for all four teams to hold their positions—to wait, to let her handle this.
Everyone obeyed, but they all looked as if they’d just been woken from a shared dream.
A dream that could so easily become a nightmare if she made the wrong move. Without ever getting the chance to explain to her operatives what was really happening.
But they held their positions, so she turned steadily back to face the bridge, still searching for the one who’d thrown that spear, though she already knew he would only show himself on his own terms.
“This is all of us,” she shouted into the night. “I swear. There’s no one else but who you see in front of you.”
She didn’t expect an immediate response, but the ensuing silence settled a heavier weight upon her teams now than the sight of so many enemy corpses forming the path they should never have walked.
Rebecca knew that now.
“ Hal’a fri’it !”
The elven battle command blasting down at her from the sky electrified Rebecca’s skin. Every hair raised on end. Every intuitive sense honed to a keen edge.
And with it came the doom of all her plans, of everything she’d wanted.
As soon as the command was given, a blistering echo of metallic clashing cut the silence before the hidden enemy revealed themselves.
One echoing step forward, as one, and there they were. Hundreds upon hundreds of soldiers, maybe thousands, appearing from the darkness in every direction.
Delicately crafted chest plates and helms glinted on top of the bridge in the moonlight.
Elven steel sang of lethal power as blades were drawn from their scabbards, emerging from the shadows beneath the bridge and from around its base pillars on either side of the road.
Shimmering greaves paired together as their wearers stood at attention along the tree line all around the Shade teams, spear butts pounding into the earth and overgrown weeds.
Rebecca and her teams were surrounded in an instant and probably always had been. Not by Big Boss and his orcs. Not by Suit and his hodgepodge collection of magitek tinkerers with a soft spot for explosives.
This was an entire elven battalion straight from Xahar-áhsh.
They’d found her.
A single metallic ping echoed from the closest rail of the bridge several stories up, echoing over them all. Rebecca pinpointed the movement of another spear butt cracking down onto the iron railing. One movement, one commander.
With one voice that echoed down toward her again.
“Reveal yourself!”
The command meant several different things within several different layers, all of them delicately woven through the complex subtleties of everything this situation implied. The commands. The armed battalion of elite elven soldiers. The full reveal of their numbers against Shade’s.
Rebecca understood them all and knew exactly what was not only expected of her but required.
And she fucking hated it.
Because she had no other choice.
Still staring up at the commander on the bridge, she reached for the gold illusion cuff around her wrist. That was only the first step, but for now, it seemed to be all the commander wanted.
Maxwell stepped up beside her and snatched her wrist before she could undo the cuff’s simple clasp.
“Don’t,” he growled.
She turned toward him to see the same Maxwell snarl on his illusion’s face. The same shifter peering back at her as he held her wrist to stop her from undoing all their hard work for tonight.
A night that had become something entirely different in a collection of fleeting moments.
“If I don’t do this,” she told him, “we won’t make it through the hour. Everything will be okay. I promise.”
He searched her face, desperation, uncertainty, and admiration swimming together in the silver glow breaking through the gray-haired face that wasn’t his. With a sigh, he finally relented and released her.
Despite his frustration swimming through her with compelling intensity, she realized he must have sensed the truth in her as well. That she did have to do this.
That she knew far more than he did or could ever possibly know about what they faced in this moment.
She returned her attention to the bridge and slowly popped open the gold cuffs clasps around her wrist. A flare of silver light surrounded her, and when it faded, she was herself again.
Rebecca Knox, Roth-Da’al of shade.
Rebecca Bloodshadow, the Bloodshadow Heir.
An elf. A fugitive. A weapon. A leader.
All of them and none of them, and it hardly mattered anymore. She’d played her pieces as far as she could.
With a toss of her hand, the illusion cuff dropped into the road with a puff of dirt. Then she spread her arms, her true form revealed to those who could recognize it, and lifted her chin toward the commander looming too far above her to see his face. “Here I am.”
“On behalf of the Bloodshadow Court and the Agn’a Tha’ros Clans,” he boomed, “this battalion has been assigned to retrieve the Bloodshadow Heir. Will you surrender?”
Another heavy thunk rose from the dirt behind her, followed by another brilliant flash of silver light before Maxwell stepped forward to stand directly beside her, snarling at the soldiers on the bridge in their gleaming armor. “Just fucking try it!”
Shit.
Rebecca reached for the shifter to steady him, to call him back, but the damage had already been done.
The commander cracked his weapon against the iron rail again and thundered, “Then be taken by force!”
The spear he’d thrown at Rebecca erupted in a blinding flash black unlight, disturbing in its impossibility. The weapon disappeared from the dirt road and reappeared a second later in the helmed lieutenant’s hand.
Rebecca exhaled slowly, wondering if it would be her last.
“ Hal’a fri’tári !”
The entire battalion responded like a single automaton of pieces. Archers on the bridge knocked their bows and drew, the tightening of their pristine strings like a rise of mourning wails on the wind. Foot soldiers beneath the bridge and at the tree line surrounding Shade’s teams drew their weapons—long, lithe swords and intricately detailed battle axes and deadly twin blades. All of them prepared to move at single command.
The operatives around Rebecca and Maxwell looked nervously around, eyeing their perceived enemy, watching their Roth-Da’al and Head of Security to see what came next.
Rebecca couldn’t let their fear and uncertainty distract them. She couldn’t save them. Not the way they wanted.
This was the end.
No matter what she did, Shade lost. Her teams didn’t stand a chance against a battalion of elite Agn’a Tha’ros soldiers. They were out of their depths with a military force that shouldn’t have even been in this world.
Rebecca could have taken the battalion on her own, if she’d been on her own, but trying it now would only spur more violence. The battle would break out in the battalion’s attempts to subdue her, and every Shade operative standing with her tonight would die because of it.
Shade would lose either way, but now it was a choice between all their lives or simply their Roth-Da’al.
She had to give herself up to this commander, whoever he was. She had to surrender. Then, maybe , once her operatives were safely out of the way and no longer a part of this fight that wasn’t theirs, she could make her own escape.
“If this is your decision,” the commander bellowed, “so be it!”
The impulse to turn toward Maxwell again was too powerful to ignore. When she met his gaze—his real gaze, those silver eyes no longer dampened beneath the illusion of someone else—she wanted to tell him so many things.
She wanted to apologize. To explain why she had to do this. To assure him this was the only way any of their people got out of this alive.
But with so many hundreds of deadly weapons aimed at every operative on the road, each of them as lethal as its wielder’s honed precision, there was no time for any of it.
All she could do was try to find the core of him behind that silver glow before she murmured, “Forgive me.”
“No.” Maxwell snarled and tried to step in front of her, but she shoved him away. “No! You can’t just—”
“Stand down, Hannigan.” Somehow, when she looked him in the eye again, she felt the connection between them doing for the first time what she actually wanted it to do. To make him understand she had no other choice. To show him this was the only moment they had left.
To make him stay.
With a deep breath, she prepared to step forward toward the bridge and the elven commander shouting down at her with the full weight of old-world elven powers behind him. Ready to give herself up in exchange for Shade’s survival.
Ready to submit before everything she loved in this world was cut down all at once.
Just before her foot fully lifted from the dirt to step forward, another shout cracked across the dirt road.
A different command. A different intention. A different voice altogether.
“ Bai-shi’i !”
The single word seemed to echo forever around the battlefield Rebecca hoped to avoid.
The elven word for “hold”. The command to stop and wait.
Again as one, every soldier in gleaming armor responded and obeyed, lowering their weapons and falling back into a perfectly straight line. All facing forward, all standing at attention, each of them capable of mass slaughter with a single slash or loose of a bowstring.
Nobody moved.
“What the hell?”
“Who was that?”
“What do we do now?”
Her teams whispered these questions and more to each other while the thickening tension clung to every breath.
Rebecca caught movement on her right—a slinking through the shadows before rustling ferns and bushes gave way. A single figure emerged from the darkness to step into the wan light of the few sputtering lights on the bridge and the insufficient moonlight.
It was more than enough for Rebecca to recognize him. She would have known his shadow.
Rowan Blackmoon.