Page 84 of Elven Lies

Worst of all, if Rowan still didn’t take her seriously, she couldn’t let her guard down for even a second as long as he stuck around.

If he still didn’t believe she had truly changed enough to reject the Bloodshadow Court and Agn’a Tha’ros and evenhim, how many other things would he screw up for her before he realized Rebecca just wasn’t playing the game anymore?

And how long would that take?

Keeping him here as a member of Shade, as any part of her life in any capacity, would only keep dragging her down over and over until she finally released him.

Their little outing today had opened her eyes more than she’d expected. Rebecca couldn’t ignore the truth of things any longer.

Maxwell was right.

Rowan Blackman was a liability for her and her entire task force. He was completely out of touch with the way life worked in this world and the place of magicals in it, whether old-world Xaharí or Earthborn. He’d been here long enough to note the differences, and it still seemed his only priority aligned with the mind-numbing duty to which he and Rebecca had both been sworn to uphold.

All because of an age-old prophecy of bullshit to which she no longer ascribed.

The most difficult realization of all, though—what she hated to admit to herself but could no longer ignore—was that Rebecca just couldn’t control him anymore. She’d thought she could. She’d hoped it would be possible, but he’d proven her wrong today.

Never, under any circumstances for any reason, would she agree to return to Xahar’áhsh with him. But now, it was just as clear to her that she couldn’t let him stay, either.

It was time to admit Rowan was almost as dangerous for her and Shade as Aldous—just with a working brain.

When she and Rowan entered the underground parking garage together to make their way inside, her thoughts turned on her when they offered the most harrowing realization of all.

She stopped short, staring straight ahead because the shock of it was almost physically painful.

Rowan reached the base of the stairs leading up to the ground floor and paused to look over his shoulder at her. “Coming?”

“Yeah. You go ahead. I’m right behind you.”

With a flickering smile, he shrugged and disappeared up the stairwell.

Rebecca’s heart beat furiously in her chest, which felt crushed beneath the sudden weight impossible to remove. There was no denying that she’d just hit the full truth of it.

She’d thought Rowan wasalmostas dangerous as Aldous, but that wasn’t all of it.

Rowan was so much smarter, so much more capable, and far more determined to finish what he started, no matter what stood in his way.

All things considered, that actually made himmoredangerous than Aldous. It made him a kind of threat Shade as a whole—and Rebecca specifically—just couldn’t afford.

If she wanted any hope of successfully leading her task force into the future and protecting it in whatever ways necessary, Rowan had to go.

Maybe, in some small part of her heart, she’d expected to come to this conclusion eventually anyway. But she hadn’t foreseen how much it would break her heart to do what had to be done.

25

Rebecca sat behind the enormous desk in her second-story office, wondering why everything felt so out of place. So wrong.

The second her body registered the first tingling currents racing up and down her arms, her first thought was that she needed more rest. Especially with everything Shade now faced. But the sensation only grew, intensifying by the second, until it washed over her from head to toe and through her, seeping into every space of her awareness. Then she knew.

Maxwell was coming for her.

All her other thoughts and memories of him and all the confusion this sensation had instilled in her came rushing back in an instant.

By the Blood, she hadn’t spentanytime outside the compound without Maxwell at her side, and now, after only half a day walking across Chicago with Rowan and without the weight of the shifter’s presence right there beside her—that ever-presentpull drawing her in and beckoning her closer to the unknown—she’d forgotten all about it.

Now that it hit her again and she felt Maxwell approaching her office door without a sound, she realized how much she’d missed the sensation—like a separate entity between them, odd at first, but which had grown into a stabilizing, grounding certainty. A presence she could always rely on to be right there, as long as her Head of Security was there too.

And she’dmissedit.

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