Page 27 of Elven Crown

And, of course, the deepest darkest parts of Rebecca, which might end up killing him now, if she’d taken it too far.

She held her breath too when Rowan stooped to delicately pluck the flask off the ground, like picking a flower from a field. He straightened and lifted the flask to eye level, studying its contents.

Rebecca didn’t want to watch this. She couldn’t look away.

Then she felt a new gaze settling on the side of her face—sharp, prickly, like someone brushing a thorny stem down her cheek instead of soft petals.

It was Bor. It had to be.

In her periphery, she saw his head turning slightly toward her, and she tried not to look at him. She couldn’t help it.

When she flicked her gaze toward the old giveldi on the stool in the corner, the knowing look he sent her with a raised eyebrow made her stomach flip on itself. Like he knew without a doubt that Rebecca had tampered with Rowan’s final task.

Her insides squirmed. Another hot flush swallowed her up and threatened to pull her down into some dark despair hiding just beneath the surface. She had to look away again to keep from succumbing to the shame of what she didn’t even know had happened yet.

He’d seen right through her before The Striving began, and Bor saw right through her now. Like he expected her to intervene. Or maybe he’d merely been looking for a reactionfrom her, some way to gauge both Shade’s new commander and its potential new initiate.

Like whatever else might have existed between them that hadn’t yet revealed itself in the light of day.

She shifted uncomfortably in her chair and cleared her throat, dreading what she would find when she looked at Rowan again seconds later.

Shehadto look at him. She couldn’t indicate that she knew this elf in the center of the casting circle, or that she cared about what happened to him, or that she was in reality far more invested in this particular Striving than any Shade commander should have been.

So when she returned her attention to Rowan one final time, hiding everything behind a mask of control and resolve and detached certainty she’d perfected over centuries, she thought the horror of it all might yank her right out of her own body and toss her aside into the void to roam, forever lost.

Rowan lifted the mouth of the flask to his lips, tilted his head back, and downed the whole potion in one quick, fearless breath.

The gym fell into the eeriest silence of all, each member remembering his or her own experiences with The Striving and this particular piece of it.

Only Rebecca knew what that potion would do to him. She’d specifically designed it to not be simple or easy for Rowan. Now, at the sight of that empty flask in his hand and the cocky smirk that never left his lips, she was very much regretting it.

He gently returned the flask to the floor, straightened again as he smacked his lips, and gazed up at a corner of the room as if trying to remember the words to an old song.

“Cinnamon,” he muttered. “Didn’t expectthat…”

Tentative chuckling filled the air as the spectators battled with their own uncertainty. Rowan’s casual ease and his clear lackof concern for what happened next unnerved more than a few magicals watching him.

Someone standing along the wall whispered to their neighbor, “Is this guy for real?”

Unfortunately, yes, Rowan Blackmoon was very real. This wasn’t an act. This was how he approached damn near everything, and Rebecca wished for his sake—not for the first time—that he could have learned to operate with a little more caution. But that just wasn’t him.

The waiting silence was unbearable. Rebecca flushed hot again but refused to wipe at her face despite the unnerving tickle of movement at her hairline. She could have been sweating beneath the tension, sure.

Or she was so uptight, she was imagining sensations now. Anything to distract her from what was happening.

Then Rowan met her gaze again, still as smug and self-confident as ever, and everything else in the room surrounding Rebecca in that moment ceased to exist.

All she saw was Rowan’s face. His casual, careless stance in the casting circle. The light in his eyes as he gazed up at her.

She could practically hear his voice as he applauded her for one hell of a show:“You’ve really gone above and beyond here with these people, haven’t you? Full points for impeccable acting.”

But it was all in her head.

The next second, a flicker of glowing blue appeared in Rowan’s eyes, radiated beyond his face and down into his skin. Then, almost as fast as blinking, the same bright, glowing blue light as the potion he’d just consumed surrounded the elf man from head to toe.

It began as little more than a glimmering aura around his body, but it grew steadily brighter, picking up speed.

In seconds, that light was almost blinding, intensifying like a new presence around him until it flashed and sputtered, strobing like a faulty electrical circuit.

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