Page 81 of Elven Shadow

Now, clearly, her involvement with this organization had become anything but safe.

After sleeping in until just shy of noon the next day, Rebecca almost felt like a brand-new elf.

Despite how risky it had been to whip out her Bloodshadow magic last night—whether or not Maxwell had shown up to spoil all the fun—the use of her darkest magic didn’t come without its own benefits.

Namely its surprisingly restorative effects after the fact. Just one more item on the list of things that made her so useful and damn near invaluable in the field of battle, which she’d been trying to avoid altogether for decades.

She intended tostayoff the battlefield for as long as possible, no matter what shape it took, or who fought on opposite sides of it, or even how many other players thought they could reach out and grab her to join them when the time came.

Like Shade’s little rebellion brewing in secret library meetings, where everyone else seemed to be in on the plan but no one had told Rebecca a damn thing.

That was how she preferred to keep it.

Could she have drummed up a detailed plan for executing crucial objectives like overthrowing Aldous from Command so the rest of the task force could turn this ship around before it wrecked itself on stony shores? Absolutely.Thanks to a lifetime of extensive training in practical warfare and tactical strategy.

But that was Rebecca Bloodshadow,notRebecca Knox.

Offering a professional, actionable plan to dozens of insurgent magicals wanting to overthrow their current commander as soon as possible would give her away more than anything else she could have.

Solitary, displaced Elves with nonexistent backgrounds roaming across Earth and popping into different magical fringe groups when it suited them just didn’t have the kind of knowledge Rebecca possessed.

They didn’t come with centuries of Xaharí history embedded in their memory or generations of Bloodshadow magic coursing through their veins.

Rebecca couldhave helped. She could have stepped up to be the ringleader for this rebellion, which she was pretty sure Leonard and Diego had singled her out for anyway in the library.

Hell, she could have done exactly what she’d suggested during that meeting in a moment of aggravating tension and losing her nerve.

She could slit Aldous Corriger’s throat in his sleep any time she wanted, and then Shade’s internal threat would be gone. Not to mention another threat to Rebecca’s maintained anonymity.

With Aldous out of the picture, she wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not his threatened “shadow” truly existed or how far he was willing to go to make her retrieve the Darkspawn for him—which she was almost positive didn’t exist beyond the legends.

But shechosenot to lift a finger.

For everyone’s benefit.

If Shade put her in a position of leading their rebellion against Aldous—plus everything else that entailed—Rebecca wasn’t sure she could successfully play the part.

She wasn’t sure she could separate who she truly was and what she’d been created to do from the regular, everyday vigilante elf on Earth dedicated to picking up the slack on magical crime where more official agencies couldn’t quite reach.

To do so would have been far too exhausting.

She couldn’t think like the Bloodshadow Heir who’d been taught to think this way. She’d have to plan a rebellion from within the mindset of the random, out-of-place elf who’d shown up on Shade’s doorstep alone six months ago and passed all the organization’s initiation tests and challenges shortly thereafter.

She’d have to lead this thing like someone whodidn’tpossess ancient hidden knowledge capable of toppling worlds or recreating them from the ground up.

Like someone who could both start wars and end them with the magical equivalent of snapping her fingers.

Sure, she’d had plenty of experience planning magical heists, breaking into highly secure and heavily warded locations, and working with a team. None of that was new.

But staging a coup against an already powerful magical simply for the title he held and the friends he’d made in and around Chicago, all without making it abundantly clear thatshewas the mastermind behind it all?

Thatwasnew. And damn near impossible.

Operating on the fringes and beyond the confines of any magical law was so much easier. It kept things tight. Small. Personal. Contained.

A coup with this level of publicity, simply because of Aldous’s connections, was political.

Rebecca didn’t do politics.

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