Chapter 44
Symond
Symond slouched against the back wall of the renovated classroom, arms crossed over his chest as he watched chaos unfold.
Two boys—neither older than ten—darted between the desks, knocking scrolls to the floor and giggling like they’d discovered some revolutionary form of entertainment.
Their assigned alchemy texts lay abandoned on the front table, pages fluttering in the breeze of their passing.
Rowan stood at the front of the room, hands raised in what Symond assumed was meant to be an authoritative gesture. It looked more like surrender.
“Kaleb, Tanner, please return to your seats,” Rowan called, his voice drowned out by the children’s laughter. “The properties of binding agents won’t learn themselves.”
The boys whizzed by again, one close enough for Symond to feel the breeze of his passing. His fingers twitched, but he kept his arms crossed. Not his circus, not his monkeys.
Rowan’s shoulders slumped a fraction. He drew himself up, chest expanding as if gathering enough air might somehow translate to authority.
“That’s enough! You need to—” Rowan began, then faltered as both boys skidded to a stop, blinking at him with exaggerated innocence.
The taller one—Tanner—cocked his head to one side. “Need to what?” His voice dripped with mock politeness, eyes glittering with the certainty of victory.
Rowan’s authority collapsed, his posture folding in on itself like a tower of cards in a sudden breeze. “Just... try to focus. Please.”
Tanner caught Kaleb’s eye, lips stretching into a grin that revealed a missing front tooth.
Kaleb’s answering smile was all the signal they needed.
In the next instant, Tanner hurled himself sideways, arms splayed dramatically as he disappeared behind a desk with a theatrical “Aaargh!” Not to be outdone, Kaleb dropped to his belly and army-crawled across the floor, making explosion sounds with each inch gained.
Rowan’s shoulders curved inward as he abandoned the front of the classroom.
His footsteps shuffled along the floor until he collapsed into the empty seat beside Symond.
The wooden chair creaked under his sudden weight as he hunched forward, palms pressing against his eyes before sliding up to grip fistfuls of hair.
His words emerged muffled through his fingers. “This is hopeless. I’m just... not cut out for teaching.”
Symond watched the boys vault over a desk, sending an inkwell clattering to the floor. Black liquid pooled across the ground, and neither child paused to acknowledge it.
“Florence is wrong about me,” Rowan continued, not looking up. “I should be learning, not pretending I know enough to teach anyone.”
Symond could remember Rowan bent over ancient texts in the library’s amber lamplight, his fingertips following each illustration as if touching something sacred.
The constant whisper of turning pages. The endless stream of “but why?” and “what if?” that spilled from him.
That insatiable hunger for knowledge—it reminded Symond of Elora, though he’d never admit it aloud.
Kaleb let out a shriek of victory as he caught Tanner by the sleeve, and Rowan winced at the sound.
“I always wanted to be a field medic at Mahōamorah.” Rowan’s voice was barely audible over the chaos. “Not to heal—I mean, yes to heal—but mostly just to see the god tree. Can you imagine standing beneath something that ancient? Something that powerful?”
The wistful longing in his voice sparked something in Symond’s chest. He reached for the slate hanging from his belt, chalk scraping against the smooth surface as he wrote two simple words.
Why not?
He turned the slate toward Rowan, tapping it twice with his finger to draw attention.
Rowan stared at the question, mouth slightly open, as if Symond had suggested they could just sprout wings and fly there. “What do you mean, why not?”
Symond pointed at the chaos unfolding before them.
Tanner stood atop a desk, arms thrust skyward, fingers splayed.
“KABOOM!” he shouted, his voice cracking with the effort.
A streak of black ink ran from the corner of his mouth to his ear, like war paint applied by a trembling hand.
Beside him, Kaleb leapt from desk to desk, landing with heavy thuds that made the wooden legs creak in protest. Neither boy seemed to notice—or care—that they’d knocked over yet another inkwell.
The truth was plain enough: Rowan wasn’t cut out to be a teacher.
He wanted to learn, to discover, to absorb knowledge like a desert plant finally given water.
Why trap him here dealing with unruly children when his talents clearly lay elsewhere?
The Empire would hunt them regardless of what they did.
Surely there was some way Rowan could pursue what actually mattered to him.
“Because this is what Florence wants us to do,” Rowan finally answered, as if that settled everything.
Symond frowned, erasing part of the slate with his sleeve.
Why?
Rowan’s brow furrowed. “You know why. Because we have Empire knowledge that Hive alchemists and enchanters don’t. The responsibility falls on us.”
Symond’s jaw tightened. He picked up the slate, stared at it for a long moment, then deliberately dropped it back into Rowan’s lap without changing a thing.
Rowan sighed, head falling back against the wall as he stared up at the ceiling. “We wouldn’t be alive without her,” he said quietly. “Besides, I don’t want these kids to be subjected to what we were just for an education.”
The words hung between them, heavy with memories neither wanted to revisit. In the background, Kaleb shrieked with laughter as Tanner pretended to cast some dramatic spell, arms flailing wildly.
The classroom door slammed shut with enough force that the hinges groaned. Every head snapped toward the sound, the children’s game forgotten in an instant.
Elora stood framed in the doorway, one hand still gripping the handle, her back to the room.
Her shoulders rose and fell with rapid breaths, like she’d been running.
Her dark hair had escaped its usual neat arrangement, falling in waves around her face.
Footsteps echoed down the corridor, growing fainter.
She leaned forward, pressing her forehead briefly against the door.
The classroom fell silent. Kaleb’s foot remained suspended mid-air above a desk. Tanner’s mouth hung open, the word “kaboom” dying on his lips. The inkwell they’d knocked over continued to drip, each splash echoed through the stillness.
Elora’s shoulders stiffened mid-rotation when she caught sight of the children.
“Shit,” she murmured, her voice faint. Her fingers trembled slightly as they swept her hair back from her face, tucking strands behind her ear.
The corner of her mouth twitched downward before she squared her jaw and lifted her chin a fraction higher than necessary.
“Elora?” Rowan’s voice broke the silence, weary but tinged with concern. “What are you doing?”
Silence hung in the air while she examined the children. They froze beneath her gaze, suddenly statue-still. Whatever wildness had possessed them moments before evaporated like morning dew, replaced by a wariness no amount of Rowan’s begging had ever managed to instill.
Symond pressed his back harder against the wall, muscles tensing with a familiar wariness that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with awareness.
She was deliberately avoiding looking in his direction, keeping her attention fixed on Rowan and the children, her body angled just enough to exclude him from her field of vision.
The rumors had been circulating for days. How she’d reached the tower before anyone else. How she’d found Gerard. How she’d left him in pieces. Most dismissed it as exaggeration, the kind of story that grows with each telling, fueled by shock and relief and the need to make sense of violence.
Symond knew better.
He’d seen what she’s capable of. Back in the moonlight of the barn in Ravenpoint, her sharp fangs snapping an inch from his face.
Her eyes had burned gold, pupils narrowed to slits, rage radiating from her in waves that seemed to distort the very air between them.
He’d purposely provoked her then, pushing and pushing until she snapped.
Now here she was, avoiding his gaze like she was the one who had something to be ashamed of.
Why would she save him?
The question had burrowed deep, taking root where he couldn’t dig it out. It made no sense. After everything he’d done to her—the years of torment at The Institute, the targeted cruelty, the pleasure he’d taken in her fear—why would she risk herself to reach him first? To face Gerard alone?
“What are you doing here?” Rowan asked again, his voice steadier this time as he rose from his seat.
Elora’s shoulders stiffened. “Nothing,” she said, her tone clipped. “I thought this room might be empty.” Her eyes scanned the chaos before fixing on the exit, fingers already curling around the brass handle.
Kaleb leapt from the desk with a thunderous landing that rattled the floorboards. “Everyone says you got wings!” he shouted, eyes wide with wonder. “That you can fly!”
“They’re saying you—” Tanner pushed forward, leaving inky fingerprints across the wooden surface as he scrambled closer, voice dropping to a thrilled whisper, “—that you tore apart the man who hurt Symond. With your teeth.”
The children crowded around her; their earlier mischief transformed into wide-eyed fascination.
Elora’s hands half-raised in a defensive posture as the children swarmed around her.
“I didn’t—” She cut herself off, struggling to maintain composure as Tanner’s fingers brushed against her robe. “Don’t touch me.”