Chapter 30 Rowan
Rowan
The unit freezes, arrows aimed squarely at my chest and Collin’s remaining eye opens wide. He’d been the last one to see me before the fae took me away. The one I’d tasked to carry the truth about who took me back to Eryndor.
It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.
My mother doesn’t lower her bow. Doesn’t even blink.
Though her eyes flash with a mix of surprise and what looks oddly like a moment of relief.
“Rowan.” The moment of warmth in her voice disappears as quickly as it had come, and her words are an order from the commandant of Spire East and the Eryndor’s greatest general.
“Get behind me. Take one of Collin’s bows and listen for my orders. ”
My body nearly starts moving on trained instinct. The notion of disobeying her is foreign to every fiber inside me. And truthfully, if mine was the only life on the line, I probably would fold and do as I’m told. But it’s not, and I can’t.
“No.” Stars. I’ve never said that to her before. My heart pounds. My mother is taller than me, and looks like perfection made flesh. She exudes power and competence. I exude faint the image of a drenched rat. “You need to order the bows lowered. There is nothing here that threatens you.”
"You know nothing of what’s here. Get behind me. Now, cadet.”
“I know that if you start firing those auric steel arrows into the sky and one happens to hit a draken, you’ll unleash more suffering than you know—and on the heels of that, will come retribution.
Against Eryndor. If that alloy touches a draken, you won’t be taking out a flying mount—you’ll be igniting a greater war still.
” I say it all on one breath, desperate to get the words out before I either lose the courage or the audience.
But now that I’ve managed to get started, I feel tendrils of power giving me courage.
This moment, right now, may be the most vital ones in the war. In the elusive peace.
None of the soldiers behind my mother move a single muscle.
I take a step closer to them, my palms raised in the air. “We got it wrong, Commandant. The draken—they're not animals. They're intelligent beings with bonds to their riders. They communicate, and feel and think. But when the auric alloy gets into their blood -”
"—it paralyzes them,” she finishes for me with annoyance. "Just as it does the shifter’s animal form. Yes, we're well aware. This isn’t the time for that conversation."
The air leaves my lungs. "You... knew?"
Something flickers across her face—disappointment, perhaps.
As if I've failed some test she never told me I was taking.
"Rowan, do truly imagine that we've spent decades developing weapons and somehow forgot to test their properties? Or that the snot-nosed cadets are read in on all of Eryndor’s intelligence? You were told what you needed to know to make you at least marginally effective in the field.”
The words slide under my skin like cold knives. The leadership knows the truth. It’s always known the truth. And never told me what kind of torment I was really forging. I take a step back. Then another.
My mother’s eyes narrow. “Stop with this foolishness. You are an alchemist and an Ainsley. Your duty is to Eryndor.”
“You lied to me. To all of us.”
She lets out an irritated humph. “You’ve been shielded from the sensitive details, but you’ve always known the core truth: Eryndor is fighting for survival.
Humans cannot stand against immortal fae without magic.
And relying solely on born-enchanters would have doomed us ages ago.
We need magic to survive and that magic is not free. ”
Nausea crawls up my throat as pieces snap together into a horror-filled mosaic. “The draken,” I whisper. Of course. The Spire’s insistence we view them as cattle, the retrieval teams sent for every fallen beast. “Is Eryndor… stealing draken magic?”
“Not stealing.” Her smile is sharp and proud. “Harnessing. Refining. The draken’s blood, breath—their very existence—overflows with magic. Properly extracted, it can be channeled. Shaped with auric alloy, it’s the key to humanity’s future. To our survival.”
My gaze drags to the rune-inscribed box the soldiers carried, and the nausea almost wins. “The egg. You’re here for the egg.”
Her smile widens and for the first time in my life, I see approval behind my mother’s eyes.
Approval and excitement. “Yes. A newly formed draken. Malleable. Untapped. Pure potential. Its magic can be shaped from birth, before centuries of resistance form. It will usher in a new era for humans. And as an alchemist and an Ainsley, you, Rowan, will be part of it. An architect of humanity’s salvation. ”
Words escape me. My mother steps forward and holds her hand out to me. Another first. Which makes the punch of my final realization hit even harder.
She needs me.
“What you did in the Spire, creating the perfect auric formulation—that was just the beginning,” my mother continues, curling her hand in a come hither motion.
“With the draken hatchling and your abilities working in concert, we could finally equalize the playing field against the fae. Perhaps even surpass them. We will make Eryndor safe for all human children.”
My heart pounds inside a too tight chest. I look at her beaconing hand and… and I step away. “No.”
“What did you just say?” my mother asks quietly.
“I said, no.”
The word is a spark dropped into dry tinder.
The carefully groomed civility my mother wears like armor cracks straight down the middle, revealing the raw, pulsing fury beneath.
Her face doesn’t simply harden — it sharpens, outrage carving into every flawless line.
Her chin lifts, eyes narrowing to slits of power as her composure fractures in a way I’ve never witnessed.
The commandant standing before me isn’t all cold dominance, but hot, venomous fury.
Power gathers around her like a storm called to heel.
“Enough coddling.” Her voice drops, sharpened by command and betrayal. “Rowan will stand with us as an ally… or as a prisoner.” She thrusts a hand toward the warded nest. It’s not graceful, not precise, but fueled by a terrible certainty that she is right.
Power detonates from her palm in a vicious, rippling wave.
The wards scream. And fracture, light shattering outward in shards that dissolve before they ever touch the ground. In a blink, the protecting veil is gone and the nest stands naked and exposed.
Lethara reacts instantly.
The massive draken crouches low, wings mantling wide as she curls her enormous body around the egg, rain beading and rolling off the obsidian-dark scales.
Her talons dig deep furrows in the earth, teeth bared in a warning snarl that vibrates the entire clearing yet the lightning exposes the primal terror in her gold-ringed eyes.
The commandant lifts her chin, and without hesitation — without humanity — calls her next order. “Archers. Loose.”
The air sings with auric-tipped death.
It all happens so fast. Ilian and Pherix sprint forward with shields to intercept the arrows, their draken taking to the air to attack from above.
A cry echoes overhead—answering draken voices, distant but approaching.
More humans erupt from the forest, pouring into the clearing like a river, forming ranks. Raising bows.
A shadow drops beside me—Kai—mud splattering across my shoulder as he lands in a crouch. His chest heaves, blood streaking his arm, rain plastering his hair to his jaw. His eyes meet mine, wild and furious and terrified.
“You,” he snarls—relief cracking the word. Then he’s pivoting, blades out, intercepting the first soldier who charges us.
“Loose!” my mother calls again and more auric steel whistles through the storm.
If the first volley had slammed into Ilian and Pherix’s shields, the second veers right past them in an arch that must be aeromancer-guided.
It’s fast, and high, and precise. And it spears Lethara’s flank, right in the sensitive spot at the crease with her wing.
She screams in agony and terror. Agony. Her wings spasm, collapsing inward. Another arrow strikes her shoulder, anchoring through muscle. Greenish light pulses along the exposed metal as the alloy arrow heads drink her magic like starved leeches and inject her with poison.
“No—no, no, no—” My voice rips out of me raw as I sprint toward her, boots sliding in churned mud.
Pherix is right beside me, and then he isn’t, an arrow lodged in the back of his neck.
Soldiers shout—orders, warnings, I can’t tell.
I only hear Lethara’s keening and the faint, frantic thud of wings under her massive body as she curls tighter around the egg, trying—gods, failing—to stay upright.
A soldier’s sword catches my arm as I sprint past—Kai intercepts, blade locking with theirs. He shouts something after me, but I’m already sliding under Lethara’s trembling wing, skidding through mud toward the egg.
Rain streaks her scales. Her breath rasps, shallow, slowing.
The auric alloy is poisoning her magic. My alloy.
“Rowan!” Kai roars again. “Don’t—!”
I yank out the arrows protruding from Lethara’s hide, then shove both palms against the bleeding gashes.
It’s my alloy, damn it. My auric steel. Power detonates outward from my palms in frantic pulses, hot and jagged, spiderwebbing across Lethara’s scales.
The alloy fights back immediately, fighting for its survival. Eager to dig its claws into its host.
I don’t let it.