Page 103 of Elven Crown

She sighed and let herself relax until her head dipped toward her chest in exhaustion. “Pretty much every day now.”

“Look at you.” His voice was so tender, filled with so much compassion and concern, the last of Rebecca’s strength almost broke down.

Unable to see him through her swollen eye, she still felt Rowan reaching for her, his hands rising toward her face, as if simply touching her cheek might heal the crippling wounds she’d sustained.

She wanted to let him touch her. To know, maybe even for the first time, what it felt like to be held tenderly. To feel a gentleness in someone else instead of the simple brutality of her training.

No matter how badly she might have wanted it, she still shied away from his outstretched hand, her body reacting for her.

Rowan paused, his fingers inches from her face. Then he sighed again and lowered his hand into his lap. “They could have at least sent you a healer afterward.”

She had to turn her head abnormally far to look directly at him through her one good eye, frowning despite the pain pinching at her face. “You know that’s not the point.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it.”

Rebecca dropped her gaze to her mangled hand resting in her lap and recited the very same justifications drilled into her self-sufficiency. “They’re testing meandmy magic to our limits. Moving beyond them. Once I manage that, I won’t need anyone ever again.”

He scoffed and shook his head, his gaze settling on the loose shale at their feet. “Some people have their priorities all wrong. They’ve got you, and their goal is to build you into this weapon that never needs anything from anyone. It shouldn’t be that way,Kilda’ari. That’s no life.”

“For everyone else, maybe,” she murmured.

Those words hung between them as they sat in silence. Rebecca was aware of how much it sounded like she agreed with her trainers and her family, her masters, the entire Bloodshadow Court.

But it was all she knew, and she’d given up trying to escape this life that was no life at all.

For the Bloodshadow Heir, it was everything. This was all she knew.

Rowan didn’t have to like it, but that wouldn’t change her reality, and they both knew it.

“I should get on this.” Rebecca lifted her mangled hand in front of her and turned it beneath the dim starlight. The pain in her broken fingers and twisted knuckles made her grit her teeth. “The longer I wait, the worse it’ll be.”

“Right.” Rowan stared at her hand. “But let me help you.”

“If you brought me something for the pain, I won’t—”

“Of course you won’t take it,” he said. “I wouldn’t have offered it to you anyway, but you don’t have to go through this alone every time.”

It was an odd statement to ponder. She knew he meant well, but everything Rebecca did, she did on her own. Even when she sat next to Rowan. Even when training with Theodil and wondering if today was the day he would finally end her.

Even when surrounded by the Bloodshadow Court, by all the dignitaries of the elven clans, by her own flesh and blood.

Rebecca was always alone.

When Rowan unstrung his belt, folded the thick strip of tanned hide, and handed it to her, she didn’t refuse him. Rebecca bit down on the belt, holding it in place between her teeth, and gave herself three seconds of mental preparation for what came next.

After a night like tonight with Theodil, the worst of it was still ahead of her. She still had to do it all on her own.

There was nothing Rowan could do beyond sitting with her at the base of the loose embankment while Rebecca summoned the power of her Bloodshadow magic. Not to attack or destroy or consume but to heal.

Any bit of creation, however, was by necessity preceded by destruction and pain. An ending to give way to a new beginning.

Rebecca had put herself through more endings than she could count.

She started with the crunched and twisted fingers of her right hand, hovering her left hand over them until a deep golden-orange light bloomed within the center of her palm, focusing her Bloodshadow healing on the first of many targets.

In seconds, her broken hand burned with healing fire, the cleanse of her Bloodshadow legacy accepting the sacrifice of her own flesh to fuel the healing process. Her skin blackened into charred flakes. Her mangled fingers twisted even more into an agonizing cluster with little similarity to a hand at all.

Her magic wormed its way deep into her bones, disintegrating them, burning the weakness away, taking what it was owed for her failure tonight.

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