Page 158 of Elven Crown

All this could have been entirely avoidable. All this back and forth. The hiding. The wondering when another weapon would fire toward her face and from which direction.

Dammit, it would have been so much easier to respond to something like this if she’d been here alone, without an entire team of magicals for whom she was responsible.

If she’d been here on her own, she could have taken out every single enemy on the second floor of both buildings in five minutes. Ten, tops, if they moved from room to room.

But she wasn’t alone, which meant she could only rely on firing back across the fake main street outside, attempting to hit something that moved so it never got up again.

The shuffling clink of shattered glass distracted her from the firefight long enough to see Rowan picking himself out of a pile of broken liquor bottles and brown-glass growlers.

“This is sofrustrating,” he said with a grunt as he plucked individual shards of glass off his shirt to chuck them over his shoulder. “If I’m gonna throw myself into a bar for safety, the least they could do around here is make sure the bottles aren’t empty.”

A larger explosion wracked the main-street strip, drowning out all other noise and making the buildings shudder and tremble around them before everything finally calmed down again.

But only enough to differentiate between the booming explosion from someone’s weapon and the rapid-burst rapport of automatic magitek weapons fire.

Rebecca spun to fire three more quick shots at a dark shape she could barely see moving across a second-story balcony on the opposite side of the street. Then she pivoted back into the store before thumping her back against the wall.

Seconds later, a brilliant streak of strobing blue light hurtled toward the storefront out of the darkness and smashed into the building’s facade. More shredded wood chips and decades of gathered dust rained down around.

The rest of the Shade team shouted enemy positions to each other, trying to work together while trapped just beyond various doorways, and the fight continued.

Rebecca turned toward Rowan again, expecting to see him at least somewhat prepared to return fire at her side—or at the very least to stave off a much more close-quarters attack, should the enemy attempt to join them in this room either via the staircase in the back or through the open doorway facing the street.

He wasn’t.

Instead, he hung back by several feet. Having found at least one liquor bottle that hadn’t broken during his dive for cover, he now upended the bottle over his open mouth, scowling when it produced nothing.

“What are youdoing?” Rebecca hissed.

He shrugged and tossed the bottle over his shoulder. It shattered against the rear wall, but he hardly seemed to notice as he strode casually toward her, glancing through the open doorway like nothing more interesting than an annual neighborhood parade took place just outside.

“Please,” he said with a scoff. “This is child’s play compared to what you can actually do.”

Technically, he wasn’t wrong. But the middle of a deadly engagement before they were anywhere close to completing tonight’s mission was not the time for this sort of discussion.

“So you decided it was better to get comfy and look for leftover booze while the rest of us handle the threat?”

Another bottle shattered after Rowan chucked it over his shoulder. “What threat? Seriously, just take them out already, and this will all be over.”

Rebecca squeezed off several more shots into the dark main street lighting up with brilliant bursts of purple, green, pink, and yellow magical energy from augmented weapons and outstretched hands alike.

“Honestly,” Rowan continued blandly, “I really don’t know what you’re waiting for.”

A massive bolt of roiling purple flame barreled in her direction. Rebecca pivoted back inside the store before shouting at him, “Ican’t!”

“AndIdon’t believe you.” When something crashed and thumped around above them on the second story, Rowan paused his casual perusal of their current location and gazed up at the trembling ceiling.

His first true acknowledgement that anything was actually happening right now.

“Unless you performed some kinda Shattering on yourself without me picking up on it, don’t tell meyou can’t, Rebecca.”

She’d almost aimed her weapon through the doorway again to return fire, but his words made her stop. Then she faced Rowan with a deepening scowl.

“Don’t joke about something like that,” she snapped. “It’s not funny.”

“No, you’re right.” He nodded. “It’s hilarious. Ripping out your own magic just to fit in? That’s one of the more entertaining premises I’ve picked up on in this world, I’ll tell you what.”

“I used to know someone who did that.”

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