Page 184 of Elven Crown

Then the coughing started. The seizing burn in her chest. The pressure that felt as though it would never let up. Not soon enough to catch her next sorely needed breath.

Her coughing grew more strained by the second, chest squeezing, throat constricted, the unwavering dizziness making it impossible to move, or think, or even try to help herself.

The entire awful, debilitating experience was all too familiar. As Rebecca lay on her side on the balcony, struggling to breathe, fighting back the panic threatening to overtake her again, other lights within the theater hall that hadn’t been in use before her team’s arrival now surged on with a brightening glow and a crackling buzz.

They illuminated the auditorium, top to bottom.

And here she lay, alone, shielded by the lip of the balcony, with no one there to help her. No one to even notice her struggle in what she was now sure were her last moments.

No, no, no, no…

Her racing heartbeat thudded in her ears like an overzealous war drum. How had she been so wrong? How had she failed to completely heal herself that night at the Old Joliet Prison, when she’d risked far more than she could afford to rid herself of the homunculus poison that had taken her down just like this?

How could she have missed the last traces of it that had clearly been lying dormant all this time, waiting for the moment she pushed herself just a little too far so it could finally take her out for good?

No other explanation made any sense.

Rebecca had miscalculated by epic proportions. She had doomed herself in her fights against Hector Faad’s homunculi, irrevocably changing her magic. And now, every time it was necessary to use it the way she’d used it now, it would fail her just like this.

She had failed to foresee the single weakest point in all her secrecy and careful planning, and now, the poison she’d thought she’d eradicated had returned with a vengeance, intent on wiping her out and rendering her useless.

Rebecca was done for.

If these resulted from using her Bloodshadow magic every time her only choice was to break her promise to herself and use it anyway, she couldn’t use it at all after this.

Now her vision faded, darkening and blurring not just at the edges but everywhere and all at once. The pounding of her heartbeat in her ears grew fainter, drowned out by constant ringing that eventually became the only sound.

Then she realized the inevitable truth.

She had tried so hard to be something she wasn’t, and in doing, so she’d killed herself.

And now no one would ever know the truth of what had happened.

48

Somehow, over the rush of Rebecca’s growing panic, and the pounding of her pulse in her ears, and the burning in her chest threatening to consume her and drag her down into the darkness forever, she heard other sounds throughout the theater hall.

Gasps and groans in multiple voices. Grunts of effort and heavy breathing. Staggered footsteps. The click of weapons being picked up off the ground or set aside for the moment.

Someone hissed, followed by a short-lived scuffle, two zapping magitek rounds fired, and a final squawk of surprise and defeat before two more heavy thumps hit the ground.

Clearly, Rebecca hadn’t takeneveryspark fromeveryenemy combatant in the building. She just hoped whoever had been the target of those final shots wasn’t one of her operatives she’d been trying to protect.

More groans and thumps, coughing and sniffing, then Rebecca could hear nothing over the sound of her own wracking coughs when another fit of desperate breathlessness overcame her.

Maybe her coughing echoed across the theater hall from the balcony, or maybe it merely echoed in her mind. Other than her rising panic at the realization that she’d just endangered her own life with last-minute recklessness. Again.

For someone who couldn’t breathe and had surely just killed herself by using her own secret magic, though, she still managed enough breath to keep coughing without asphyxiating.

“Someone give me a headcount,” Maxwell called down below.

A multitude of different voices barked out responses Rebecca couldn’t decipher, her vision still darkening, her lungs burning, her chest as heavy and tight now as if someone had set the magitek bomb right down on the center of it.

“Praise the Shadowed Seat...” Rowan murmured.

It was a rough translation from old-world Xaharí, but the meaning was still perfectly clear.

Still, the Shadowed Seat had nothing to do with their mission tonight. This had all been Rebecca and no one else.

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