More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
He’s just so…him. And yet he looks different from what I remember.
Does he look different because it’s been 6 years ago since she has seen him or because of something else?
He offers me a smile, and I’m struck again at how closely he resembles a softer version of Xaden.
She mentions a lot about how Bodhi and Xaden look alike
“And you’d be amazed at how fast you get promoted when everyone above you continues to die,”
Interesting
The city—now reduced to a town—has been silently, covertly rebuilding for years right under General Melgren’s nose. The relics, magical marks the children of the executed rebellion officers carry, somehow mask them from Melgren’s signet when they’re in groups of three or more. He can’t see the outcome of any battle they’re present for, so he’s never been able to “see” them organizing to fight here.
Info about the relics of the marked ones
My heart lurches into my throat, and I realize it’s going to take some time to get used to seeing Brennan alive. He’s somehow exactly the same as I remember—and yet different.
Again she mentions how Brennan is different
“No point increasing our numbers without a working forge to arm them with weapons.” Hawk Nose’s voice rises above the others. “We’re still short a luminary, if you haven’t noticed.”
A luminary is needed to forge new weapons that can kill Venin
but I’d bet Xaden is the most powerful in the room, given their silence. “For now,” Tairn reminds me
Tarin knows how powerful she will be
“You’re uncharacteristically quiet, Suri,” Brennan notes, glancing at the wide-shouldered brunette with olive skin and a single streak of silver in her hair,
The silver in her hair?
“Xaden has already taken responsibility for her.” Imogen sidesteps, moving slightly closer to me. “As brutal of a custom as it may be.” My gaze whips to meet Xaden’s. What the hell is she talking about? “I still don’t understand that particular decision,” Hawk Nose adds. “Decision was simple. She’s worth a dozen of me,” Xaden says,
How did he take responsibility for her? What “custom”?
It is the valley above Riorson House, heated by natural thermal energy, that is its greatest asset. For there lie the original hatching grounds of the Dubhmadinn Line, from which two of the greatest dragons of our time—Codagh and Tairn—descend.
The two biggest dragons come from above Xaden’s house
I glimpse a rune-shaped scar on his palm before he grips the edge of the table.
What does this scar on his palm mean?
“Naolin didn’t fail, but it cost him everything. I woke up on a cliffside not far from here. Marbh had been wounded, but he was alive, too, and the other dragons…” His amber-colored eyes meet mine. “There are other dragons here, and they saved us, hid us in the network of caves within the valley, then later with the civilians who survived the city being scorched.”
2 important things: he doesn’t say Naolin died. Also, other dragons saved and hid the people from the revolution. They were working with civilians from Aretia.
“How many?” I ask him. “Where are they making them?” “Do you mean hatching them?” “Making,” I repeat. “Don’t you remember the fables Dad used to read to us? They said wyvern are created by venin. They channel power into wyvern. I think that’s why riderless ones died when I killed their dark wielders. Their source of power was gone.”
They only learned about wyvern a few months ago? And didn’t know they were made.
Brennan was always a brilliant strategist, according to our mother.
“We think the iron box Garrick Tavis found at Resson is some kind of lure, but we had to destroy it before we could fully investigate. A box like it was found in Jahna, already smashed.” He glances my way. “But the craftsmanship is Navarrian.” I absorb that information with a long breath, wondering what reason Navarre would have to build lures besides using one to kill us in Resson.
Interesting…was this the box with Liam’s family crest on it?
We’ve never seen them organize behind a leader like they did at Resson, and Garrick told us that one got away.” “The Sage.” I shudder, wrapping my arms around my middle. “That’s what the one who stabbed me called him. I think he was her teacher.” “They’re teaching each other? Like they’ve set up some sort of school for venin? Fucking great.”
The Venin are quickly acting differently than anyone has seen them act.
“Not here,” he agrees. “Though funnily enough, Aretia has a dormant wardstone. At least, I think that’s what it is. I was never let close enough to Basgiath’s to compare the two in any detail.” My eyebrows rise. A second wardstone? “I thought only one was created during the Unification.”
Aretia could have wards
Something killed off the venin six hundred years ago during the Great War,
Hmm
Sgaeyl snarls at Brennan, baring her fangs and taking one threatening step in his direction, her claw fully extended in a series of sharp talons. “Hey! That’s my brother,” I warn her, putting myself between them. “She’s aware,” Brennan mutters. “Just doesn’t like me. Never has.” “Don’t take it personally,” I say right to her face. “She doesn’t like anyone but Xaden, and she only tolerates me, though I’m growing on her.”
Why does Sgaeyl not like Brennan? Because her last rider, Naolin, “died” trying to save him or because of something else? But “Never has” is interesting.
I stare at the sleeping dragon—who is almost twice the size she had been a few days ago—and try to get my thoughts to line up with what I’m seeing, what my heart already knows thanks to the bond between us. “That’s…” I shake my head, and my pulse begins to race. “Wasn’t expecting that,” Brennan says quietly. “Riorson left out some details when he reported in this morning. I’ve never seen such accelerated growth in a dragon before.”
How did Andarna double in size in three days? Stopping time to let Violet heal?
Captain Fitzgibbons, the scribe assigned to the Riders Quadrant, stares with wide eyes beneath his silver brows,
Silver brows?
My mother locks eyes with me for one heartbeat, a side of her mouth tilting upward in an expression I’m almost scared to call…pride, before she quickly masks it, resuming the professional distance she’s maintained impeccably for the last year. One heartbeat. That’s all it takes for me to know that I’m right. There’s no anger in her eyes—no fear or shock, either. Just relief.
This shows her mother’s love but need to maintain her role as General
“Maybe you’re more like me than I gave you credit for.”
After three consecutive deaths of prisoners during his interrogations, it is this command’s opinion that Major Burton Varrish should be reassigned from an active wing until further notice. —Missive from Lieutenant Colonel Degrensi, Samara Outpost, to General Melgren
Ohhhhhhh
“Guys, maybe now isn’t—” Rhiannon starts.
She’s very perceptive
You only have to have the guts to start asking the questions you actually want answers to.
“Ask the right questions” part 1
but Varrish’s new position only answers to Panchek.”
So how is Panchek a problem too?
“Do be careful who you share your war stories with, Violet. I’d hate to see your mother lose either of her daughters.”
Threat
“You’d have thought your mother would have held off the storm last year, considering you were crossing.” “Clearly you don’t know my mother.” She wouldn’t call the storm to kill me like a coward, but she sure as hell wouldn’t stop it to save me, either.
So it was her mother…and other people know.
“He’s friends with my father.”
Garish is friends with Colonel Aetos 🤔
He’s taller than Dain but shorter than Xaden, with a muscular build and strong chin, and though his sandy-brown hair is shorter than the last time I saw him, I’d recognize those features, those eyes, anywhere. “Cam?” What the hell is he doing here? His green eyes flare with surprise, then blink with recognition. “Aaric…Graycastle.” His middle name I recognize, but the last? “Did you just make that up?” I whisper at him. “Because it’s awful.” “Aaric. Graycastle,” he repeats, his jaw flexing. He lifts his chin with the same arrogance I’ve seen in every single one of his brothers and especially
...more
His EYES are his defining feature, which look like his father’s and brother’s.
“King Tauri’s third son.” “Oh shit.” She looks over her shoulder at the parapet. “Pretty much. And I can guarantee his father doesn’t know what he’s doing.” Not with how he felt after Aaric’s older brother died during his Threshing three years ago.
3 years ago would have been Xaden’s first year too…so this older son probably knows him
“Ciaran,” she whispers. “Ciaran’s dead.” Gravity, logic, whatever it is that keeps me grounded shifts. There’s no way that was…intentional, is there? “Imogen—” “Don’t say it,” she warns, glancing around us.
Solas targeted one of the riders who was in the fight
“If Solas comes near you again, he knows I will devour his human whole and let him rot within me while his heart still beats, and then I’ll take the eye I so graciously left him.”
I love Tairn!
And in the mountains of the Steelridge range, the green dragons of the Uaineloidsig line, known for their keen intellect and rational countenance, offered their ancestral hatching grounds for the good of dragonkind, and the wards of Navarre were woven by the First Six at what is now Basgiath War College.
His walk is so similar to Xaden’s stride that I almost do a double take.
Comparison #3
his silver eyebrows knitting.
Silver eyebrows?
Devera glances sideways at Markham. “We also don’t usually give you the answers.” Markham chuckles and dips his head. “My apologies, Professor Devera. I must not be at my best today. Too little sleep in the last few days.”
Why is Markham getting little sleep also?
She shakes her head. “Since when do a few broken bones wreck a mender?”
Wait…if they are JUST NOW exhausting Nolon to fix Jack…this would be months after the mountain fell on him right? Where has he been this whole time?
“Secrets die with the people who keep them,” he whispers, bringing his nose an inch from mine. His eyes are light brown but rimmed in red as though he’s on some kind of drug. Aetos.
He’s a Venin assassin working for Aetos. Is Aetos Venin?
“Wanting you to ask what you want to know isn’t a game.
Ask the right questions part 2
perpetually tagging along a step behind.
Is that bad?
My gut tells me I can trust her,
She talks about her gut and trusting people a lot…is this a signet/intuition thing?
“It’s ironic, don’t you think?” Varrish asks, retreating one step at a time. “From what Colonel Aetos told me, your father was writing a book on feathertails—dragons which hadn’t been seen in hundreds of years—and then you ended up bonded to one.” “Coincidental,” I correct him. “The word you meant to say is ‘coincidental.’” “Is it?” He seems to ponder, backing away and passing by Bodhi. My stomach turns. “Is it?” “I know nothing of your father’s research,” Tairn promises.
Did her father know something?
I counter, shaking off the feeling of wrongness that sinks further into my bones with every wingbeat. From experience, I know it’ll pass once we’ve been out beyond the wards long enough for my senses to adjust.
She can feel the dragon magic…in the wards and blades. Can everyone?
You’re not the only one with bad dreams, you know.”
He’s having bad dreams too
“Some of us do not bow to the whims of our dragons. In fact, we influence them.”
How is he influencing his dragon?
pulled that through the wall! I thought you couldn’t do that yet!” “I can’t!” she rebuts. “Well, couldn’t, I guess. Not until right now. Not until I thought whatever this is had a chance of getting you killed from the look you gave me.”
How was Rhi able to do something she typically wouldn’t be able to do?
Maybe keeping his distance works for Xaden, but I need my friends.
Blond hair and icy-blue eyes appear above me, and my heart plummets with the assassin’s body. Jack Barlowe.
First: what happened to his red eyes? Second: why did he save Violet?
