Page 102 of Elven Crown

No one would miss her much. As far as the Bloodshadow Court was concerned, Rebecca wasn’t even a person. These days, her family had given up attempting to intercede on her behalf. To prove the Court wrong.

Her family didn’t even involve themselves with her anymore.

Her family were the ones responsible for all of this.

Theywere the ones who’d recognized her potential, her power. The first of its kind in a hundred generations at least. And they were the ones who meant to use it for themselves.

That only made her daydreams of giving up here and now that much more tempting. If Rebecca stopped fighting, if she stayed here and never got back up again, her family could never use this power inside her they sought for themselves.

No one could ever use it. All her problems would be solved, just like that.

And all Rebecca had to do was absolutely nothing.

For an indeterminate length of time, she lay there where she’d fallen, perfectly still, and wondered how long it would take for her inevitable end to finally come for her. The night was so dark, the stars barely visible from where she lay in the shadow of the mountains.

No, lying here forever wouldn’t be that bad at all.

Within the silence, she heard a new sound disrupting her final moments. Footsteps crunching across the shale and occasionallysliding down with a soft clatter of stones following in the wake of those footsteps.

Someone was coming.

Someone was coming toward her, and soon, they would see her here. Rebecca Bloodshadow, beaten and bloodied and mutilated by her own shameful failure to live up to her potential. To be what everyone was so sure she was meant to be.

And then what?

She didn’t know. It seemed impossible to conceive of anything worse than this.

When the footsteps drew closer, her instincts toward self-preservation kicked in.

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Rebecca scrambled desperately to push herself up off her back, at the very least.

By the time the owner of those footsteps came into what remained of her vision with one eye swollen shut and the other intermittently seeing colored sparks instead of shapes and movement, the pain of seeing almost made her cry out.

She bit back the scream and tried her best to make it look like she’d chosen this place to sit down and rest for a bit.

As if this hadn’t been the very same spot where she’d fallen and confirmed to Theodil and herself her own inexcusable failures.

When she recognized Rowan’s profile in the scant starlight as he navigated his way closer, part of her was relieved. If anyone in Agn’a Tha’ros were to see her like this without judging her and thinking the worst of her for it, it was Rowan Blackmoon.

The rest of her, however, still struggled to let down her defenses. She refused to look at him, pretending not to notice his approach.

He hadn’t even tried to be silent.

When he stopped a few feet away, she wished he would leave. She wished he would stay with her forever.

A heavy sigh escaped him, as if he’d been carrying some enormous load. “Oh,Kilda’ari...”

“What’s wrong?” Rebecca muttered through her swollen lips, the words hardly recognizable. “You’ve never seen someone get beaten half to death before?”

“Not at all.” Rowan closed the few feet between them before slowly lowering himself to the earth, sitting at the bottom of the embankment with her. “I’ve seen it plenty of times, though I’d say this is a lot more than halfway to death. The problemIhave is that I keep seeing it with the same elf, over and over again.”

Though she still couldn’t see, she tried to breathe evenly through the pain flooding her every cell. Rebecca could still feel him gazing at the side of her face. It was so easy to visualize his bright, illuminated hazel eyes, she didn’t have to see him at all to know what kind of look he fixed her with now.

She didn’t want his pity.

He wasn’t giving it.

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