Page 20 of Elven Shadow

Without waiting for responses from the other survivors of tonight’s disastrously ineffective operation, Rebecca headed across the dark garage toward the underground entrance leading into the rest of the old factory Shade called home.

Everyone else finished collecting themselves from the van before following her. No one had a whole hell of a lot to say after that, and why would they?

They’d just had their asses handed to them on what was supposed to have been a quick in-and-out retrieval with maybe a few magical shots fired, zero casualties, and a severe lack of the blatant idiocy with which Aldous had led them.

Rebecca should’ve known it wouldn’t actually work out.

She’dwantedto believe Shade’s current deficiencies with the changeling in charge would improve. She’dwantedto be optimistic. Maybe she’d even wanted to grab some of Nyx’s unfounded hope for herself.

And look where it had landed them all.

For six months, nothing had changed. If Rebecca hadn’t been there on this operation tonight, who knew? The team might not have even made it out at all. Only Rebecca had considered seizing a literal open-door opportunity to draw the firefight to a close, even if it meant destroying the weapon Aldous wanted to get his hands on.

She couldn’t have cared less about the weapon. She just didn’t want to be involved in anything directly related to the deaths of magicals who just didn’t deserve it.

All part of why she’d moved across the country, searching for something like Shade in the first place. Secreted away from the pointless battles and the sacrificing of lives like living game pieces on a chess board.

Honestly, Rebecca actually preferred the game of chess to its Xaharí counterpart from the old world known to her kind aseeifte’í—or, directly translated, “little slaughter”.

But no, so much about Shade as an organization had turned out to be nauseatingly similar to what she’d left behind—what she wouldcontinueto leave behind indefinitely, if she had her way.

That would never happen if someone didn’t do something about Aldous’s baffling incompetence and the fact that such a royally ignorant asshat was still in charge of the entire organization.

Which was exactly why she’d wanted to keep a low profile, keep her head down, do what she was ordered, not make any waves, and maybe take down a few bad guys in the process.

After what she’d done tonight against Edwardo and his griybreki gang, though?

Yeah, she might’ve just blown the door on her anonymity wide open, and that was only going to make shit worse from here on out. Especially for her.

After a shower to wash out the dust and debris of so many explosions and a light meal—which amounted to whatever the hell Bor felt like whipping up in the kitchens that didn’t instantly make her feel like she’d had a five-pound bag of cement in her stomach—Rebecca found herself doing something she didn’t normally do after missions.

Or before them. Or any time in between, really.

She sat in the common room with those from her team and the handful of other Shade members who either hadn’t been a part of the epic fuckup tonight or had managed to avoid multiple weeks of necessary recovery time after disastrous missions of their own.

Normally, Rebecca preferred to stay in her private room, away from prying eyes.

And, most importantly, away from any possibility of someone else assuming she was available for conversation, or advice, or opinions, simply because she existed.

None of that felt like a possibility tonight, though.

No, tonight, an entirely different mood hung in the air within Shade’s headquarters.

She felt it growing the second Maxwell had parked the van in the garage and gotten out before anyone else to be the first back inside.

Everything else after that had only reinforced what Rebecca already knew.

She’d seen it coming for weeks now.

Certain changes were finally slithering their way through the hallways of Shade’s headquarters like poison slipping through a network of veins. Potentially dangerous changes, sure, if shit got too tense.

The promise of it had existed in everything around her, growing stronger and more palpable by the day.

The most surprising difference for her personally was that Rebecca actually felt like being among the others tonight, studying their interactions, analyzing bits of overheard conversation, and making bets with herself as to which one of these misunderstood do-gooders would be the one to step up and make the biggest change for all of them.

Or at least light the fire under Shade’s ass to get things moving, becausesomeonehad to.

She sat on one of the old leather couches that had at one time been a deep, chocolaty-brown but had since grown worn and dried-out, stretched and cracked and sunken to more of a sickly, non-existent gray. The only pockets of color the couch did contain were from several old stains of who only knew what spilled across the fabric over the years.

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