A wet, rattling laugh. "Not with. Through. They're... tools."
My blade presses deeper. "Why?"
"The fae grow soft." Celeste says again. I’m not sure she is even aware that she’s talking to me. “Negotiations. Hesitations. Words." Her face contorts with pain and disgust. "We tire of waiting... a catalyst. That will set things right."
Understanding dawns, cold and terrible. "The egg."
She nods, eyes gleaming. "Once the humans take a draken youngling... there will be no more talk of words. No more brides. No more politics. Every clan, every riot, will rise as one. We will end them.”
"You would sacrifice a draken hatchling?" It’s too horrid to contemplate, even for me. And I contemplate many horrid things as a matter of course.
"Necessary sacrifice." Her breathing falters. She doesn’t have much lucid time left. "The humans will destroy themselves... when the full might of the fae is unleashed. We just needed... to wake everyone up."
“Who is we? Who else is here?”
Celeste grins.
“Tell me.” I shake her, but it’s no use. Her remaining eye has already gone glassy, fixed on nothing.
Still kneeling on the ground I close my eyes, letting my senses expand through the forest in search of others. Dark wolves. Humans. Anyone. For a wood that was supposed to be empty, it seems to be thoroughly crawling with vermin of every kind.
Except I needn’t have bothered to concentrate, because Rowan’s scream cuts through the canopy.
“Stop!” Rowan yells again.
I break into a run, barely having the foresight to open my mind to Ulyssus.
Chapter 30
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. Andnever 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.”
