Page 28 of Elven Crown

The smirk and haughty confidence coating Rowan’s features morphed. First in the surprised widening of his eyes, then in a confused crease of his eyebrows drawing closer together as he pursed his lips.

He had no idea what this was, no idea what was happening. Of course he didn’t.

Then realization struck.

Rowan’s mouth fell open, as if he were about to comment on the unfairness of the experience, or the unexpectedness of such an underhanded change within the potion.

When a flash of glowing blue light streaked with ominous veins of dark gray and glistening black rushed across every inch of Rowan’s skin, making him look like a glowing blue statue instead of a living being of flesh and blood, Rebecca was certain he knew.

He recognized the difference. The personal touch she’d left just for him. He understood who had meddled with the potion, she was sure of it.

His eyes widened again, though they moved lazily now as he searched the gym, like he’d just woken from the deepest sleep.

Or like he’d been drugged and the effects were just now kicking in.

His glassy hazel eyes found Rebecca on the dais once more, and for the first time in centuries, since they were kids, the only thing Rebecca saw behind his eyes and flooding through his expression was fear.

Oh fuck…

What did shedo?

If she’d taken this too far, if her change to that potion was too much for him to handle before the night was over, she might have just marked herself as the highest-priority target on Earth.

The elven traitor who’d duped and murdered not only a scion of the Blackmoon Clan but her best friend.

11

Time froze as Rebecca and Rowan stared at each other across the training gym. Her heart thudded in her chest, pulse pounding through her while her guts soured and twisted with guilt and the kind of fear for someone else’s well-being and survival she hadn’t felt in ages.

She’d killed him.

It only got worse when the look in Rowan’s glassy hazel eyes intensified her helplessness, like he was silently calling out to her to fix this. To make it right. To change it before it was too late.

Like he was blaming her and condemning her for this.

Even if she’d been able to do something, there wasn’t any more time.

Then Rowan’s eyes rolled back in his head. His entire body grew rigid and dangerously stiff.

The silence permeating the gym felt as though, any moment now, something would puncture through the tension and thedeafening lack of sound and the collectively held breath to remind them all that this wassupposedto happen.

Only it wasn’t.

Rowan didn’t scream. He didn’t move an inch once his eyes had rolled to show only their whites. Then his body tilted backward, picking up speed, and he careened to the floor, stiff and unmoving as a plank of wood.

His back thumped against the floor before his skull followed suit with a gut-churning crack.

No one said a thing. No one moved.

Rebecca didn’t even breathe as she willed Rowan to fight through this, to succeed, to overcome this final challenge the way he overcame everything else.

No more than two hours ago, she’d been secretly plotting the best way to keep him from victory.

It was all a mistake. He had to move again, didn’t he? He had to…

She silently begged him to move, her vision blurring with the hot sting of oncoming tears that never arrived, because she couldn’t let them. She had to hold everything back.

She had to watch and wait and pray to gods she did and didn’t believe in and everything in between that she hadn’t just killed him.

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