Chapter 26 Rowan
Rowan
The weather is miserable. Rain lashes sideways, needling my face and trickling down my neck, cold as guilt.
Thunder rolls so close and so often that it feels like the sky’s breathing down my spine.
My cloak’s plastered to my skin, heavy enough to drag at my shoulders.
If misery builds character, I’ll be a national monument by sundown.
And I’m not the one about to go into battle.
Everyone from the war camp is gone, marching and flying to intercept the Eryndor army two miles west, luring the battle to the terrain Kyrian’s soldiers have scouted and molded to their best advantage.
To be as far away from the draken field and the young egg as they can manage.
My being left behind in the same pocket of anonymous safety was a foregone conclusion not subject to debate or democracy.
The draken field isn’t much of a field anymore—just churned mud and glimmers of drowned grass trying to breathe through the water.
There are five of us here—six, counting the egg, which is so gorgeously iridescent that it seems to glow beneath its mother’s wing despite the gloom.
Me, the dam Lethara and her mate Rhaegor, Rhaegor’s rider Pherix, and another draken pair who stayed behind to provide security.
All of us jammed into a space maybe a hundred yards across, including the rocky overhang where Lethara and her youngling roost.
Under different circumstances, a hundred yards might feel generous. But when you share it with three draken who hate that you’re breathing and two riders who aren’t much fonder, it feels about the size of a broom closet.
The clouds shift, letting in a single ray of sunlight before closing again.
The ray hits the egg, which changes color for a moment, like a purring cat.
I can’t look away. There is magic in that egg.
Maybe there is magic in all new life, but I can’t imagine it being as potent and precocious as the energy of this little one.
“He’s perfect,” I whisper.
Lethara crouches over her egg and exhales a torrent of smoke. Lightning flares just as the steam spills from her nostrils, the heat of it licking the rain to vapor.
“I didn’t mean…” I shake my head. “I guess there is nothing I can say to make this better, is there? To be fair, I’d not want me here if I were you either.” Stars, I already don’t want anyone who might bring danger around the egg, and I’ve only met it today.
Lethara just watches me in answer, unblinking, as if weighing whether to roast or dismember me first. Her mate, a blue-black bull that’s the largest of the three draken, pierces me with a slitted golden gaze and snaps the air.
I show the pair my palm and step back from the dam and her egg.
I’d go farther, but where? And to do what?
The draken are staying put on either side of the dam, and their riders—Pherix and Ilian—are fussing with foliage just outside the ward parameter Autumn has set up.
Between one set of males and the other, the only thing I’m sure about is that I’m the least needed near the draken.
“Stars take me, she’s good,” Ilian says, squinting past the shimmer of Autumn’s illusion wards. Whatever he’s looking at, I can’t see it. From here, it’s all mud and miserable grass.
Pherix crouches, rearranging branches in some pattern that apparently matters, then hauls one thicker limb a few paces to the left.
“What—” I start
Pherix glares at me.
I shut my mouth and survey the tree line.
I wonder if I’ll know when the battle starts.
Whether the bonds inside me will pull or flare or just shift about to let me know that the males on the other end of the tethers are now in mortal peril.
My stomach churns. I don’t want the males hurt.
And I don’t want them to hurt anyone either.
I’ve people I care for on both sides of this battle and there is nothing I can bloody do to stop them from trying to decimate each other.
A sharp red flare streaks up through the western sky, cutting through the gray. It burns bright for only a breath before the rain eats it, but that’s long enough for me to know that my question of moments before has just been answered.
“That’s an Eryndor signal,” I say, though the males probably know as much already. "There's an open engagement starting.”
Pherix straightens. Ilian swears softly under his breath. Then both riders resume their frantic landscaping, moving with urgency that says there is more work than time. But what’s the work exactly?
“I have hands and can help,” I offer. This mission at least, the one of keeping the egg safe, I can get behind. “Tell me what you need done.”
“I need for there to not be an Eryndor blood heir drawing Eryndor’s wrath right toward Lethara’s egg.” Pherix moves another branch, squints, and moves it again. “In fact, I need there to be no one near here who might inspire Eryndor to heroics.”
“Lovely. I can go hide in the trees, if you’d like. I don’t think I’ll be in any more danger there than here.”
“She stays with us,” Ilian calls. “Prince Kyrian’s orders.”
Pherix grunts. “You heard him. Stay put.”
The wind shifts, blowing straight from the west and carrying a draken’s roar to us.
I move toward the ward line.
“What are you doing?” Pherix demands.
“Helping you with whatever you are doing. If I stand still, I’m a problem. If I move, I’m a different problem. At least this way I get to pick which kind.” Giving Pherix a vulgar gesture, I step across the ward.
For a moment, the air hums with faint magic, a thrumming tension that makes my teeth ache and then…
then me and the two fae males are suddenly the only living being on the field.
The draken, the overhang, Lethara and her egg--all the things that I know perfectly well are only a few feet away—are just gone, replaced by an untouched sweep of sodden meadow and empty forest. Just storm and rain and the relentless gray of the world.
“This is… impossible.”
“No. It’s skill,” Ilian says.
I want to ask where the nest and draken disappeared to exactly, but then realize the grass at my feet matches the grass on the other side of the wards. The scattered logs, the contours of the mud, the shallow puddles—they all echo each other.
The field inside the ward isn’t gone, it’s mirrored.
“Kyrian’s orders are to tolerate your presence, not rescue you from your own stupidity,” says Pherix. “Don’t expect our help if you get yourself in trouble out here.”
“Honestly, I don’t expect your help in there either.”
Pherix shrugs.
“Look, fortifying the protection around the nest is currently in both our interests. So you want to keep hating me or get over yourself for the thirty seconds it will take you to tell me what needs to be done?”
“I’ll keep hating you,” says Pherix.
“The illusion does best when it has unique input to work with,” Ilian injects. “The raw muddy ground is too repetitive for it to hold under strain. We are giving it more texture. Look for where the marriage breaks down and add more input to the source.”
Right. Obviously. Pushing my hood back, I survey the ward encasement. Honestly, it looks damn good—at least until the next flash of lightning, which reveals half a raised draken wing for a heartbeat before the illusion snaps back into place. “That’s unsettling.”
Finding the matching spot on the ground where I think the illusion is drawing its source from, I start gathering branches and wet reeds to break up the monotony of mud.
Building a narrative arc for the illusion ward.
It feels surprisingly good to be moving about. To be doing something physical. Useful.
“How much time do you think we have?” I ask.
Pherix gives an irritated sigh. “I don’t know. I hope all the time in the world, if your princelings are doing their job keeping your extended family occupied elsewhere.”
“Eryndor soldiers don’t actually want to hurt draken, you know,” I lay down an armfull of wet bark I just hauled in and start arranging the rain slicked pieces in the mud. “They just don’t know the draken are intelligent. Intelligent in a people way, I mean.”
Pherix’s head tips to the side and he snorts a moment later. “Rhaegor says comparing draken to people is an insult to draken, but he expects nothing more from primitive beings.”
“Tell him I said I admire his humility and restraint. Quietly. From far away.”
“I think that does it,” Ilian calls. “Let’s get inside.”
Pherix surveys our work carefully before nodding. “Agreed.”
“Wait,” I pointed to a spot farthest away from the ward-line. “I don’t like how uniform it is just there. I’m going to grab one last piece.”
“Get inside,” Pherix orders. “No one is coming out to get you whether you sprain your ankle or get mauled by dark wolves.” He steps over the invisible barrier and the temperature seems to drop a degree, as if the illusion takes a tithe in heat. Or maybe that’s just my courage.
“Understood. I’ll be a minute,” I call over my shoulder as I turn toward the forest and the freedom that lays beyond it. The trees breathe in and out with the storm, and I match my steps to their rhythm. One. Two. Three. Go.
It’s ironic that after all the worries over how impossible the escape from the fae would be, the reality has come down to the opposite.