Iron Flame (The Empyrean, #2)

by Rebecca Yarros

“How many?” I lower my flight goggles and blast the question down the mental pathway that connects the four of us as I climb into my saddle. “Hundreds,” Sgaeyl answers.

Sgaeyl answers???

“I love you,” Xaden says as the wyvern closest to me banks away from the wards, falling into a turning dive, only to gain speed and climb again, leveling out behind the lead two before flying straight for us. “Even if you believe nothing else I ever say, please believe that.” “Do not speak to her as if death is a possibility,” Tairn snaps, slamming his own shields around us both, an impenetrable wall of black stone, blocking out Xaden and Sgaeyl.

BFF GOALS

A half hour—and some creative knife work on Mira’s part—after locating the pair of wyvern bodies, Mira draws back a polished chunk of what appears to be onyx marked with a complex rune I couldn’t even begin to replicate.

Onyx storm?

You’re my gravity.

“Perhaps I will be the eldest of my own den.” Andarna arches her neck, tracking a flock of birds in the sky. I follow her line of sight, then quickly look away when the brightness of the sun stings my eyes, burning into my vision for a second and making her scales look a shiny, sky blue before I blink the spots away.

An adolescent black dragon will raise human suspicion at Basgiath. Hide among our kind until it’s over.” “What if you need me? Like last time? I can stay hidden right at your side.”

“The Vale,” I remind her. “I will be where I am needed,”

Though there is some debate, it is greatly believed that turning venin heightens one of the dark wielder’s senses. It is this scholar’s belief that the one responsible for the death of King Grethwild developed keener eyesight. For not even the best of His Majesty’s royal fliers could see through the darkness the venin hid within to slay our beloved king. —Major Edvard Tiller’s Unaccredited Study of the Venin Property of the Library of Cordyn

Why they want xaden

Hundreds of feet below, in front of the gates of Basgiath, my mother waits upon Aimsir, with her personal squad, including Mira and Teine, slightly behind her. She’s in front of us all, her three children and the place she’s sacrificed us—and her very soul—for.

Huh????

A shape moves in the cliff behind the dark wielder. No, not a shape; part of the cliff itself; a giant…boulder? A boulder with slivers of golden eyes. It springs forward from the cliff like a projectile, expanding, changing colors, sprouting wings and claws and black scales.

“You looked like a part of the cliff.” I stare at Andarna like I’ve never seen her before. Maybe I never have. “I told you I could hide.” She blinks at me.

Even a slow breath won’t calm my racing heart. “Your scales aren’t really black.” “No.” Even now, her scales are changing, taking on the grayish hue of the stone around us. “But he is, and I so badly want to be just like him.”

“If you didn’t figure it out, you weren’t worthy of knowing.” She huffs. “I waited six hundred and fifty years to hatch. Waited until your eighteenth summer, when I heard our elders talk of the weakling daughter of their general, the girl forecasted to become the head of the scribes, and I knew. You would have the mind of a scribe and the heart of a rider. You would be mine.” She leans into my hand. “You are as unique as I am. We want the same things.”