Page 132 of Elven Shadow

“Oh no, no, no, no!” she shouted, hobbling after Rebecca and shaking a crooked finger. “You think you can just get up and walk out of here?”

Rebecca huffed out a laugh before immediately regretting it when a surge of blinding pain lanced through her head. “You stood there and watched me get dressed. Obviously, I’ve been planning on leaving.”

“Well, yeah, but I wanted to see how far you could get on your own. Honestly, I’m surprised you didn’t kick it again. But now that you’re this far, I can’t let you leave my infirmary on your own. I refuse to allow it.”

Dipping her hand into her jacket pocket for the slight bit of reassurance she got from the feel of that small wooden box at her fingertips, Rebecca turned around and nodded at Zida. “Which is why you’re coming with me.”

Few things seemed to surprise the old healer, but this was clearly one of them.

She gaped at Rebecca a moment longer before snorting out a violent bark of a laugh. “Oh,really? Already giving commands, eh? Why, exactly, am I coming with you, Roth-Da’al?”

The old Xaharí word with no literal translation—but meaning something close to “chief”, “boss”, or “commander”—sent a pang of bitter nostalgia and distaste through Rebecca’s core. She tried not to let it show.

Zida couldn’t possibly have known what a word like that had once meant to someone like Rebecca. She sure as hell wasn’t going to broach the subject now.

She stopped at the door and rested her hand on the handle, more for added support in standing than the desire to open the door, but she could force herself to do both.

“To call a meeting,” she finally replied, then met the healer’s beady black gaze again and tilted her head. “There’s obviously been a serious mistake here, and we need to correct it.”

“Both of us?”

“You heard me.”

Zida raised her almost non-existent eyebrows, then shrugged and hobbled toward the door to open it for her current patient, who wasn’t anywhere close to recovered enough for this fun little outing. Clearly, she knew just as well as Rebecca did that a bit of unhealable sickness at the moment wouldn’t be enough to stop Rebecca from calling this meeting for the entire task force to attend.

Waiting any longer would only make what Rebecca had to do that much more difficult.

She had to convince all the operatives who’d voted for her in the huur-akíl that they’d made a mistake and that someone else needed to be chosen.

Because if she took this job as Shade’s new commander, her chances of flying under the radar within Chicago’s magical underground would practically disappear. That was one more risk she really couldn’t afford, now more than ever.

Not when any number of different factions, clans, and organizations were already hunting for the Bloodshadow Heir. If any of them were to find her like this, which would be infinitely more possible with her shining a magicalhoming beacon onto herself as Shade’s commander, it would most likely mean death for every single magical who’d voted for her in the first place.

And it would absolutely mean something even worse than death for her.

33

As Rebecca hobbled through the open doorway into the common room—one hand trailing along the wall to steady her—the dozens of murmured conversations ranging from secretive whispers to marginally subdued arguments that could have turned into all-out brawls if given enough time came to a complete standstill.

The silence was as powerful and violent as a smack to the face. In a matter of seconds, everyone was staring at her, and everyone was on their feet.

Including Bor, who took it all a step further by lifting a fist, pounding it against his chest, and letting out a solid bark of, “Roth-Da’al!”

Immediately, the rest of the task force followed suit. Dozens of fists thrust into the air in Rebecca’s direction before thumping down on dozens of chests while dozens of voices all echoed the salute.

“Roth-Da’al!”

Rebecca stared, frozen stiff beneath her surprise and the debilitating weight of seeing with her own eyes that Shade really had taken it this far. Inhername.

Her cheeks burned with a heated flush at all the attention focused on her at once, though she tried to convince herself it was from the homunculus poison surging through her instead.

In those first few seconds, she almost lost her battle against the urge to turn right back around and run from the compound—from Shade, from literally everything her life had become now as Rebecca Knox, because this was far more than she wanted right now.

It was far more than she could handle, and there was no foreseeable way out of this that wouldn’t get her or everyone else killed.

She didn’t get farther than trying to remove her hand from the wall, only to be instantly reminded of her pathetically frail physical state, before another rush of intensifying dizziness swarmed back into her awareness. She almost toppled over right there in front of everyone.

What were they alldoinghere like this?

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