Page 106 of Elven Lies

Rowan was supposed to stay back behind the warehouse to give her the perfect reason to banish him from Shade for sitting out the entire battle. No one was supposed to get hurt.

Maxwell wasn’t supposed to get hurt.

How could this have all possibly gone so fucking wrong?

Oblivious to the battle raging all around her, Rebecca reached for Maxwell, then froze and withdrew her hands.

Ancestors help her, this was bad. What had she done?

31

When Maxwell sucked in a rattling breath and turned his head toward her, a flare of hope burst in Rebecca’s chest.

It died the next second as he coughed with a wet, spluttering sound and a spray of blood erupted from his open mouth. He gasped for air again, and groaned. “I…”

“Stop.” She finally brought herself to reach toward him again. “Don’t talk. You’ll just make it worse.”

“I don’t think it can get any—” Maxwell coughed again, the blood now speckling his lips and dribbling from the corner of his mouth.

“Stop talking, Hannigan,” she snapped, almost feeling like she’d regained her wits and control of her own body so she could deal with this. “That’s an order.”

The light in his silver eyes sputtered as he gaped up in her in surprise. She hoped it wasn’t in pain. After what she’d just watched, Rebecca couldn’t imagine his nerves were working the way they were supposed to. Pain receptors experienced thenumbing effect of shock, just like the mind, but if he wasfeelingit…

She couldn’t think like that. Not here. Not yet.

With no idea where the worst of the damage was, Rebecca settled her hands gently over his chest and hoped it was the right place. “Just hang in there. I can fix this. You hear me? I’m gonna fix this.”

Like she knew he would, her Head of Security obeyed her orders even now and didn’t say a word. But the way he stared at her, the light in his eyes already fading and his mouth slackening more by the second, told her what his words didn’t have to.

He didn’t believe she could fix this. He was ready to give up.

Rebecca refused to entertain the idea he’d already seemed to have accepted. Not while there was still something she could do about it.

Weapons fire continued all around them, though the constant rapport had lessened, the sizzling crackle of conjured magic and spent attacks having faded in the air. Rebecca ignored it all, even as vehicles screeched and groaned, Shade operatives shouted at each other, and the air filled with terrified cries and wails of agony.

The only thing in her awareness now was Maxwell lying beaten and bloody and broken on the ground in front of her.

She had to fix this, She had to save him. She would accept no less.

Centering her focus on his body beneath her outstretched palms, she called on her Bloodshadow magic to help her do what she couldn’t on her own.

Maxwell’s chest rose and fell in short, wheezing bursts with the telltale wet crackle of fluid caught between each inhale and exhale, and still, he stared right up into her eyes. Unblinking. Unflinching.

As if she could still pull him back from the brink and it would be as if nothing had happened.

Her Bloodshadow magic flooded through her, shooting from her core and racing down into her hands before the deep golden light of her special brand of healing came to life in her palms. Then came the heat—the searing burn of her lineage doing what it did best to eat away at the damage and the death as if that were what sustained her.

But the rest of it never came.

No crackling stench of burning flesh beneath her hands. No charred skin. No agonizing pain of death and decay giving way to repurpose itself into new life and vitality.

In mere seconds, the golden glow in her palms faded and sputtered out.

“No…”

This couldn’t be it. There had to be more. Sheknewthere was more.

She’d tapped into it once before, and those wounds had been far deadlier than Maxwell’s.

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