Page 174 of Elven Shadow

If that happened, Rebecca would be entirely out of options.

The troll cocked back his blue-tinted fist, that single orange eye blazing with its own internal light, and time slowed.

It was now or never. Her only chance.

Rebecca’s limbs felt like they were about to give out at any second. Like she couldn’t lift her arms to shield herself or even to fight back. Like her legswouldn’t respond to her commands and would give out beneath her, even when she demanded they move.

No.

She refused to go down like this. She still had too much to do. There was still too much at stake.

The troll bore down on her, and Rebecca swung upward with her right hand, trusting her Bloodshadow magic to do the rest because every other part of her right now was fading too quickly.

With a searing gasp, she stared into the troll’s glowing orange eye, which widened like it was about to pop out of his head.

Her attacker froze mere inches in front of her, his fist still cocked back almost behind his head.

Then his jaw dropped in shock, and the impossibly slow-moving moment sped back up the second he looked down to see the end of Rebecca’s spear protruding from the center of his chest.

Slowly, soundlessly, he sank to both knees in the grass, still gaping at the glinting silver spear made of power far beyond what any true metal could possibly wield.

Panting to catch her breath, Rebecca clung to her spear and let her most primal magic do the rest of the work for her.

She felt everything within the troll’s flesh. His sputtering heartbeat. The blood pulsing through his veins in quick, terrified bursts. The recent buzz of nicotine zapping at his neurons. The fear darkening it all while her Bloodshadow spear glowed and pulsed with its hungry dark-silver light.

If she’d been any slower, the scream bubbling up along the troll’s tongue would have alerted the entire base to her presence. But Rebecca was already hovering over him, already desperate for his spark of life, already fueled by ravenous hunger for his magic and the life force that sustained him.

Instead of a scream emanating from the troll’s gaping mouth while his single eye bulged in his head, a blinding golden-white light appeared at the back of his throat instead.

With the tip of her spear still buried in the center of his chest, Rebecca didn’t let go. She leaned forward, focused only now on that ball of golden-white light climbing up his throat, coming ever closer.

Her hunger intensified, burning through her.

The light of his spark appeared at the back of his open mouth, rolling over the top of his tongue on a soundless scream until she opened her mouth too now and inhaled.

The troll’s spark burst into glittering shards of light, coiling and twisting and merging with dark, smokey tendrils of mercurial silver as RebeccaBloodshadow breathed him in. Every particle of light and powerful magic wove together, snaking through the air out of the troll’s gaping mouth and into hers.

Her impossibly long inhale continued until she'd drawn in every last thread of the troll’s spark. His entire essence—the fabric of who he was, who he had always been, and who he might yet have become—all of it drew into her open mouth and down her throat to pierce through and settle within every fiber of her being.

By the time she swallowed the last of it and jerked her spear out of his chest, the troll was already dead.

His body slumped onto the grass with a hollow thump.

Rebecca tilted her head back and closed her eyes.

Oh, By the Hakali Threads, was thatgood…

With her next deep inhale, a new surge of energy, vitality, life, magic—everything that had been seeping out of her over the last several days—came washing back into her in one hell of a rush.

She felt better than she ever had. She felt like she could—

Two quick, hacking coughs made her think twice about her rate of recovery.

She was better, sure. Just not all the way. She still had work to do.

But now, after one troll, she’d regained enough of herself to make the next kill a hell of a lot easier.

“Tulio!”

---