Page 87 of Elven Shadow

It didn’t have any magical properties of its own, nor would it have been of any value to anyone else. The only power contained within the tiny wooden box existed in its sentimental value—a powerful reminder of where she’d come from and who she used to be.

Of who she could never let herself become again.

She really should have left it behind in her old life, along with everything else, but now just wasn’t the time to start complaining about it. She had to find the box and get the hell out of here before the rest of her private room caved in on itself.

Two more seconds of rifling through brightly colored t-shirts stuffed into piles of neat rolls produced exactly what she was looking for.

A simple, beautifully carved wooden box with a hinged lid, lacking design or embellishment.

The staccato crack of automatic gunfire—or someone else’s fun rendition of battle-magic blasts launched on repeat—filled the air.

Still, Rebecca had enough time for this.

She cracked open the box’s lid, caught a glimpse of dark silver and a wink of crimson inside, then quickly snapped the box shut again and stuffed it into her other jacket pocket.

That was all the reassurance she needed.

It was still safe.

Now it was time to get the hell out of here.

She didn’t bother to shut her dresser door or pick her way carefully across her room. Some unseen battle waged on the second story, directly above her, which might have seemed odd and perhaps even slightly coincidental—if she’d been anywhere else.

At this point, though, everything inside the Shade compound was fair game right now. Clearly.

Rebecca leapt across her room toward the door, stumbling again when another explosion wracked the foundations of the building. She skidded to a halt and scowled up at the ceiling.

This one didn’t come from directly above her like last time. Normally, she would have considered that a major plus, but at the moment, she suspectedit meant there was more than one battle taking place within this repurposed factory building.

From the sound of it, though, whoever was fighting upstairs stood a decent chance of handling themselves.

Every member of Shade could handle themselves, which was what had gained each of them membership in the first place. It had also kept them alive before, during, and after some of the worst missions executed at Aldous’s command.

At least,mostof them were still alive.

Just because they could handle themselves didn’t mean Rebecca was automatically exempt from involvement in this anonymous attack. False identity or no, she was one of them. She was Shade.

Despite having been on the run and in hiding for at least the last half of her long life, despite refusing to step into the role in which she’d always been told she had no choice, Rebecca Bloodshadow wasn’t a fucking coward. And when she gave her word—whether that came from a Bloodshadow Elf or from someone calling herself Knox, she always kept it.

After the final rattles of the last explosion settled, she regained her footing, threw open the door, and almost ran headfirst into the opposite side of the hallway when another bucking rumble nearly tossed her off her feet.

She slapped a hand against the wall to catch herself and instantly spun to head back across the compound, glancing down every other branching hallway and through every open door in case anyone had guessed staying inside was the safer way to go with this one.

They would’ve guessed wrong.

Instead of bolting straight across the building and through the common room on the ground floor, she stuck to the hallways and corridors winding around the compound’s perimeter. If anyone else was stuck in a room, or frozen in indecision, or still unsure what the hell was happening, she’d find them.

Plus, moving through narrow hallways made her a much more difficult target.

Most of the time.

When she made it past the smaller ground-floor armory marking just a few more minutes down this hallway until she could get down to the underground parking garage with everyone else, Rebecca also realized how close she was to Zida’s infirmary.

Full of damaged, wounded, recovering Shade members.

Who probably had no idea what was happening right now, and everyone else…

Everyone else, as far as she could tell, had already made it to the garage.

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