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.
Pain sears down my arms and deep inside me where a well of power is opening its maw. The last time I wielded it was a moment of instinct. This time, its deliberate and I feel every heartbeat of its awesome destruction. Magic shears through my veins, corrosive and relentless, until my bones feel like hollow conduits for wildfire. Every heartbeat is a hammer strike. My vision tunnels into a single point: Lethara’s trembling flank, the egg beneath her ribs pulsing with terrified light.
My breath comes in ragged gasps. Rain hisses to steam around my hands. The world smells like scorched earth and ozone.
Another arrow lands beside us with a dullthunkand Lethara jerks, wings twitching. Her tail lashes, spasming uncontrollably.
More, I need to do more. This isn’t enough.
The bonds inside me wake in a panic to match the dam’s. I can feel them all. Logan’s, ragged and desperate, screaming my name without words, and Kai’s sharp-edged control fraying into terror. Kyrian’s cold dread pounds at the back of my skull. They are trying to syphon off the magic. They are begging me to stop, stop,stop.
I shut them out, grind my teeth and push harder.
You’ll kill yourself,a distant, unfamiliar voice says inside my mind, it’s pulse matching the racing heart of the dam I’m determined to save.
Maybe I will.
But if it saves Lethara and her egg, it will be worth it.
You cannot save me, little spark… stop. Too late. Too late for me.
Want to bloody bet?I yell back at her as I drag more power up from the pit of me. My knees hit mud. My back arches. Magic pulse-beats out of me in violent tremors, slamming against the auric drain, unraveling its hungry pattern thread by thread.
Something tears in my chest. Hot. Wet. Burning. My skin splits in thin, glowing fissures. White-gold light seeps out of them like I’m nothing but cracks holding back a star.
Kai’s bond flares against the shield’s I’ve raised—panic so sharp I almost drop the connection. Kyrian swears, ancient and guttural, reaching for me instinctively through the tether as if he can physically wrench me back from the edge. Logan tries to flood me with calm, but it skitters uselessly against the wildfire roaring through every inch of me.
Lethara’s massive eye finds mine, pupils blown wide with pain.
My throat is raw. “I did this. I will fix it.”
You cannot save me.
“I can try.”
It will kill you.
“Fair price to pay.”
The bonds howl. The alloy rallies. And then—then my mother strikes again.
A coordinated surge of power slams into Lethara and me from half a dozen directions, weaving together into a single, brutal pulse. It hits like a battering ram to my spine, flinging us both through the air—back, back, back—away from from the eggs and into mud and rain that smears across my vision.
I hit the ground hard enough to see stars. My lungs seize. My ears ring. I reach instinctively—blindly—toward Lethara but she is roaring with a kind of agony I’d never heard from any living being. Because twenty yards from the little egg, and she can’t move, and Eryndor soldiers are swarming around the youngling like ants over honey, shields locking, blades out, lifting the egg from the mud. Runes flash as they slam a containment lattice over it—cold and merciless.
“No—” The word cracks in half on my tongue. I lunge forward, limbs screaming.
A boot connects with my ribs, shoving me down into the churned earth. I taste blood and look up into my mother’s cold cold eyes. Her silhouette blots out the storm-light overhead, rain streaking down the edge of her sword as she wrenches it free of its scabbard with a single, ringing pull.
Around us,the battlefield stutters—shouts fading, steel clashing somewhere distant—as if even war knows to go still for a sanctioned execution.
“Rowan.” She spits, the warm saliva landing on my cheek. “You are a traitor. To your blood and your kingdom. You are an oath breaker and you are the deepest regret of my existence.” Her sword lifts, steady as her hatred. “Better no daughter at all than one who is you.”
I can barely lift my head. My magic is ash inside my veins. My arms tremble where they scrape against churned mud. Lethara’s cries fade to a wet rasp somewhere behind me. The egg is gone. I’ve failed everything.
My mother steps forward, sword leveled at my throat. Her expression doesn’t tremble—not with grief, not with doubt. She looks almost… relieved. As though this is a burden she’s been aching to set down.
