Page 37 of Elven Shadow

She’d known big bad leaders in her lifetime—the kind that made Aldous Corriger look like a schoolyard bully in comparison. The only thing making this changeling noticeably dangerous was how fervently he believed his own bullshit.

Unfortunately, given his position in Shade and the backing he already had through the organization’s alliances with several other underground magical crews, there were marginally powerful people out there who didn’t want to see him lose his position, either.

Nyx hadn’t been entirely wrong earlier when she’d said someone wanted Aldous sitting in the command chair and calling all the shots for Shade. That he’d been put in that chair for a reason.

Anything Rebecca tried from here on out would inevitably be met with a certain level of resistance, either from the members of Shade itself who allegedly believed in the changeling and what he was doing—like the shifter Maxwell Hannigan, for instance—or from those who supported Aldous in his current position because of the inherent benefits of it for themselves.

She wouldn’t get any support from outside contacts, either, even if she’d had them. Rebecca had cut ties with all her powerful friends and acquaintances over the years, simply to keep them from getting to know her well enough to threaten the safety of her secrets.

No, Maxwell wouldn’t help her in this; that was perfectly clear. He might not actively try to stop her, but she couldn’t bet on that.

The others, though? The Shade members who’d been with her on this last bungled mission, not to mention at least half a dozen others who’d been personally screwed over by Aldous’s ineptitude in all its various forms? They could probably be trusted. Eventually.

All Rebecca had to do was plant a few more seeds in a few more minds and patiently wait for those seeds to take root and sprout into full-fledged ideas—until the other Shade members came to believe they’d come up with the idea entirely on their own and that Rebecca had had nothing to do with it.

Thenshe could make a lasting, impactful change within the organization. Clean out the dead refuse. Pull it up by the roots. Help Shade move on.

After that,shecould move on.

The tricky part was in just how crafty she’d have to be about it from the start. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d had to scheme with her eyes wide open at every moment, waking or otherwise.

Still, she’d have to work quickly in the next few days, because as far as Aldous knew, hismandatoryoffer was still on the table. If she took too long, he’d assume she’d refused his demand for the Darkspawn, and then he’d inadvertently expose her when he tried to kill her for insubordination.

If she moved too soon and Aldous caught wind of it, he’d expose her and jeopardize everything she’d worked so hard for anyway.

There was only one logical and obvious solution to this entirely new problem of hers.

Rebecca didn’t necessarily mind the promise of violence and dissension. She just had to pull it off without implicating herself along the way.

Because if anyone knew who she really was and where she’d really come from, it would all be over for her in the blink of an eye.

She stripped off her black jeans and long-sleeve black shirt worn specifically for the latest Shade mission gone wrong and climbed onto the luxurious mattress squeezed against the far wall of her private room.

Time to be a team player and the mastermind pulling the strings behind the curtain all at the same time, and she’d have to work quickly.

Fortunately, the kind of subterfuge and political intricacies required to successfully pull something like this off had been such an ingrained part of her childhood, it would probably end up being second nature even here.

As long as she hadn’t been pretending for so long to be someone else that she’d forgotten how to play the biggest, grandest, deadliest game of them all.

That was, in fact, what Rebecca had been born and bred to do from the beginning.

No one in Shade had any idea who she was or what she was capable of. Hell, Chicago was oblivious. So was the rest of the country and most likely this entire human-populated world. Assuming, of course, that Rebecca had laid her foundation correctly, and she usually did.

That should have made all this easier.

But now, thanks to Aldous, she’d have to work so much harder than usual to get the job done. And even then, unfortunately, nothing was ever guaranteed.

Excluding the certainty of being discovered, abducted, tortured, and then used as a weapon of mass destruction if she failed.

10

The second Rebecca entered the common room, meaning to watch Shade’s members at the start of their day while better formulating her plan, she paused.

The room was practically empty.

It was never this empty.

Which meant something was very wrong here this morning, with no visible reason why.

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