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“You want to know something true? Something real? I love you. I’m in love with you. I have been since the night the snow fell in your hair and you kissed me for the first time. I’m grateful my life is tied to yours because it means I won’t have to face a day without you in it. My heart only beats as long as yours does, and when you die, I’ll meet Malek at your side. It’s a damned good thing that you love me, too, because you’re stuck with me in this life and every other that could possibly follow.”
“But he didn’t break you, Violet,” Liam says softly from the corner of the room,
“I would have come sooner if I’d known,” my mother says, her voice softening along with her eyes. “I didn’t know, Violet. I swear it. I’ve been in Calldyr for the last week.”
“Because you think less of the scribes,” I answer. “Bullshit. The love of my life was a scribe.”
“I put you into the Riders Quadrant so you’d have a shot at surviving, and then I called in the favor Riorson owed me for putting the marked ones into the quadrant.”
“It was a simple transaction. He wanted the marked ones to have a chance. I gave him the quadrant—as long as he took responsibility for them—in return for a favor to be named at a later date. You were that favor. If you survived Parapet on your own, all he had to do was see that no one killed you outside of challenges or your own naivete your first year, which he did. Quite a miracle, considering what Colonel Aetos put you through during War Games.”
if you want to confine her, question her, then it’s me you start with. I bear the responsibility for her and any decision she makes. Remember?”
Gravity shifts as I stare at that thin silver line and its precise edges. It’s…gods, it’s the same length as the ones on his back. Xaden isn’t responsible for just the marked ones anymore; he’s responsible for me. Responsible for my choices, my loyalties—not to Navarre, like the marked ones, but to Aretia.
“Can you carry a luminary?” “That question insults me.” “Can you carry a luminary while insulted?”
“So what are the Sorrengail siblings going to do now that you’re all reunited?”
“We’re going to beat the shit out of our brother,” Mira answers with a smile.
“It would be a pity to kill her now. I’m hunting ten minutes away and I’d miss the show,” Tairn says.
“But it’s possible to be angry while still madly, wildly, uncontrollably in love with me.”
Distended red veins branch out from bloodshot eyes.
What the !!!!!!!
“It’s you,” the dark wielder says over the growing noise of the storm. “The one who commands the sky.” His eyes widen in eerie excitement. “Oh, how I’ll be rewarded when I return with you.”
“I will devour anyone who makes a move against you. My patience has ended.” Tairn’s wings beat slower as we approach the patio.
“If you ever want to have words about why I severed that alliance, then you come for me. Violet is beyond your reach. If you so much as look her direction with anything but the utmost kindness and respect, I’ll kill you without a second thought and let Syrena take her place as your heir. Do you understand me?”
“You’re wounded. You know that, right?” Dain questions me, glancing at his belt. “And you’re a memory reader.” His gaze narrows. “Oh, were we not stating obvious facts?”
“You’re faster than they are, right?” Fear licks down my spine. “Don’t insult me when we’re headed into battle.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me how brilliant that idea was?” Tairn scoffs. “I chose you last year for that brilliance, and now you’d like to be congratulated like it’s something new? How odd.”
“Scratch her eyes out,” Andarna suggests. “Really. The eyes are the softest tissue. Just jab your thumbs in there—” “Andarna! Use some common sense,” Tairn snaps. “The kneecaps are a much easier target.”
“My house. My chair. My woman.”
“I chose you, and dragons make no mistakes.” “What’s it like to go through life so self-assured?” “It’s…life.”
“It’s already snowing up the pass. I bet we get seven inches tonight.” “Maybe more if you’re good.”
The breath of life of the six and the one combined and set the stone ablaze in an iron flame.
“You’ll tear down the wards yourself when the time comes.”
“Can you—” Tairn growls in response. Point made.
“I could torch him if you would like,” Tairn offers. “But you do seem attached.”
“You have the heart of a rider but the mind of a scribe, Violet. I’m trusting you not only to protect yourself, but to protect Mira and”—she swallows hard—“Brennan.”
“You’re capable of hurting me in ways I’m not sure you’ve even begun to fathom, Violet. I might be skilled enough to land a death blow, but you alone have the power to fucking destroy me.”
“Jack’s turned venin. Somehow, he managed it within the wards.”
You’re going to love Violet. She’s smart and stubborn. Reminds me a lot of you, actually. You just have to remember when you meet her: she’s not her mother.
“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.”
“You are not a black dragon, or any of the six that we know of. You’re a seventh breed.”
“I chose you not as my next, but as my last, and should you fall, then I will follow.”
“Me,” he whispers, a faint, almost indistinguishable red ring emanating from his gold-flecked onyx irises. “You should be scared of me.”
Whatttt
Welcome to our fucked-up family. Guess we’re brothers now.”
