Page 107 of Elven Lies

But she hadn’t managed it alone that first time decades ago, and she couldn’t do it alone now. Even for Maxwell. The damage was too great. A shifter’s inherent healing alone could never work quickly enough to undo all this in time. She needed more.

“Rowan!” she screamed, still hovering both hands over Maxwell’s chest and fighting desperately to bring up the Bloodshadow healing she knew could set this right. “Rowan! I need Rowan! Somebody fucking find him,now!”

“Rebecca,” Maxwell wheezed, the words muffled through thickening blood bubbling at his lips as he held her gaze.

“I told you to shut up,” she barked, far more harshly than she’d intended, but she would hurt the shifters’ feelings and his pride a thousand times over if it meant saving him from this.

She couldn’t lose him. Not now.

“Rowan!” she screamed again while more golden light sputtered beneath her palms but failed to do what she wanted. Failed to be enough.

Pounding footsteps approached her from behind, followed by a sharp, hissing inhale.

“That was a mistake,” Rowan blurted. “I never meant to—”

“Help me,” she snarled, refusing to pull away from Maxwell’s gaze for fear it would be the last time he ever looked back at her. “He won’t make it if you don’t help me!”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course. I’m here.”

Fighting back the tears she knew would come if she let herself think of anything beyond the very small chance she still had to make this right, Rebecca took a deep breath and steadied her hands over Maxwell’s chest, refusing to look away from his silver eyes already fading dangerously while Rowan knelt in the dirt behind her.

Then she felt the heat of Rowan’s chest pressing up against her back before his arms snaked around her waist on both sides, but he didn’t hold her. No, that wasn’t the point of this.

Instead, he stretched his hands out along either side of her until the gentle grounding and unbearably powerful weight of his palms settled atop the backs of her hands.

Powerful and unbelievably tempting, the heat of his palms and his arms around her promising something that could no longer be hers and hadn’t been for over a century.

When Rowan finally stilled around her, she knew he was ready.

She called on her Bloodshadow magic again, tapping into it deeper and more powerfully than she ever had but for the one time she and Rowan had worked together just like this. To save a life.

The Bloodshadow Heir’s unimaginable force strengthened, fueled and intensified by the Scion of the Blackmoon Clan. Twostarkly contrasting powers unifying as one to create what neither of them would ever be capable of creating on their own.

The first stage of that damned prophecy that had sent all the elders of the Tha’rossa Clans into a zealous frenzy when they realized its fulfillment in their youngest generation. In Rebecca Bloodshadow and Rowan Blackmoon together.

The power only Rowan had surged around Rebecca and through her, his chest now like a furnace against her back, his palms on her hands like blazing coals.

He gave her everything she needed for this, and she took it without hesitation. Without shame. Without resentment of the past or fear of the future.

This was the only way, and she wanted nothing but for this to work the way she knew it could for Maxwell. To save him.

She was nowhere near ready or willing to let him go.

With no more than a shift of her thoughts turned toward her Bloodshadow healing, the deep golden glow returned to Rebecca’s palms, lighting up Maxwell’s unevenly rising and falling chest as he struggled to draw breath into his failing lungs.

She wouldn’t look away from him. She couldn’t.

She couldn’t let him go. She wouldnotsee the cost of her failure.

She watched him like this, holding his gaze as her magic—mingled with Rowan’s to be strengthened by it tenfold—coursed through her and into the shifter.

Her hands grew unbearably hot as their golden glow brightened to an almost blinding degree, illuminating the outline of Maxwell’s body until it grew beyond even that, rendering him invisible beneath the blazing glare.

Then she felt her healing magic pouring into him, burning away the brokenness that could never be undone. But itcouldbe pulled away to reveal and call forth the newness and the life beneath.

Maxwell grunted, his eyelids fluttering. Then a low growl escaped him as the heat in her hands continued to build until it was now on his flesh. Burning into him, layer by layer, to strip away shredded muscle and shattered bone. All of it burnt and flaked beneath Rebecca’s power until the shifter’s growl morphed into a vicious snarl.

And still, Rebecca kept going.

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