Page 176 of Elven Shadow

The only one like her.

By the Blood, this was infinitely better than even the blindingly intoxicating rush of manufactured energy from Zida’s emergency sniffy vials.

She could have stood there on the far side of the utility vehicle, barely hidden in enemy territory, her head tilted back beneath the light of the stars for minutes or hours or mere seconds. Time ceased to exist.

When she finally opened her eyes, however, it was clear not enough time had passed for the rest of the security detail to have noticed two of their own missing and forever removed from the existence they had once led.

She couldn’t have been herethatlong.

Rebecca reached for her left bicep and gave it a tentative squeeze. Sensation responded immediately, crackling across her flesh and through her muscles, even padded by her light jacket and the bandages still around her left forearm and wrist.

Everywhere she touched in a quick search from shoulder to fingertips erupted with as much detailed sensation as she’d known before.

Including the lancing pain of a sliced forearm from Aldous’s blade and the burning, gnawing tightness of the homunculus handprint seared into the flesh of her wrist.

Yes, she had her full magic back, but that didn’t mean shit if she didn’t use it.

After shoving up her jacket sleeve, she struggled to rip Zida’s bandages off her wrist. She even considered tearing the rest of the gauze off with her teeth before she finally got the wrappings to slide down over her hand.

That cement-gray handprint was still there, now darker than ever before. Almost as if a new homunculus hand were materializing right there in her own flesh. And it hurt like a bitch.

At least she couldfeelit again.

Drawing a deep breath, Rebecca centered herself and her concentration on the healing she hadn’t been able to perform since poisoning herself like an idiot, but now she had the chance.

Hovering her other hand over her injured wrist didn’t make her cough, didn’t squeeze around her chest like a giant fist, didn’t send instant pain flaring through every part of her body.

She could heal herself again. Just like this.

A shout from the other side of the prison yard jerked her back into the present.

“Lem! What the hell are youdoingover there?”

Crouching behind the vehicle, Rebecca glanced at the empty corpses on the ground.

Tulio and Lem, huh? Where did these Earthborn magicals come up with their names?

Rebecca didn’t have a whole lot of time left. Someone would come looking for the missing troll and warlock, and if she wanted to be at her best, she needed to heal the rest of what ailed her.

The warmth of her magic tingled through her limbs as a golden glow rose in the center of her palm hovering above her wounded wrist.

“Lem! Akskashirim curse you and your secret little trades.” Footsteps clomped closer.

Her Bloodshadow magic burned away the rest of the homunculus’s darkness branded into her wrist—and burned her hardened, gray, stonelike flesh away with it.

“When I call for a status update and you don’t answer, you better pray to the Dalu’Rázj you’re either dead or—”

The new guy stopped when he rounded the back of the vehicle and found the fallen corpses of both Tulio the troll and Lem the warlock. With a snarl, he dropped to one knee to feel both bodies for a pulse he wouldn’t find.

On the other side of the vehicle, facing the east side of the prison’s perimeter fence, Rebecca crouched low to the dirt. While the first few layers of her skin blackened and charred, purifying themselves beneath her magic and burning furiously in a way she’d come to welcome and appreciate, she watched through the space beneath the utility vehicle’s undercarriage.

How had she not noticed a half-ogre stationed out front with everyone else?

As far as ogres went, he was runtish in size, but compared to every other magical of more moderate humanoid-adjacent stature, he was fucking huge.

Rebecca hadn’t planned to fight anyonethatbig tonight.

But then she remembered it didn’t matter anymore. She was restored. She was whole, more or less. She could have taken on three pureblood ogres all at the same time. This would be a piece of cake.

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