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“Tell my parents it was worth it. I’m glad it’s you with me. Parapet to Malek’s own doorstep. I’m so sorry I have to go first this time.” Her breathing garbles. “And you should tell him, Gen. Tell him, and you find some happy.”
“My mom will take care of you. And Katrina, too.” My mouth quivers. “She’s a little bossy, but she’ll be thrilled to have another little sister. I talk about you all the time. They’ll know who you are. Don’t be scared.” Her next breath is strained and watery. “They’ll know me.” I nod. “They’ll know you and they’ll love you. It’s impossible not to love you.” “Imogen,” she whispers, and her eyes flutter shut. “I’m right here,” I promise,
“We made it a good one.” She falls limp, and when I lift my shaking fingers to her throat, there’s no pulse. She’s gone.
Hi! I’m Quinn Hollis. I’ve decided we should be friends. That’s what she said to me as we climbed the turret on Conscription Day. You do realize we’re about to cross the walkway of death. Well, then it might be a short friendship, but we’ll make it a good one.
“She’s dead.” Saying it doesn’t make it feel any more real. His face falls. “I’m so sorry.” He glances down the staircase. “But we have to go. There’s half a dozen of them with their hands on the city walls, draining the life out of the stone. It’s time to go.”
“I can’t. Just leave.” “I am with you. You may not die,” Glane growls. Garrick’s square jaw flexes. “You have to. We have to go, or they’ll drain us, too.” “I’m not leaving her!” “I’m not leaving you!” He leans in and slides his hand behind my neck. “I’m not leaving you, Imogen,” he repeats, softer this time. “We’ll take Quinn, but we have to go now. Let me have her.”
“Tell every rider within the walls to get over here and disarm. It’s the only way we’re living through this.”
A gift from one servant of Dunne to another. I must warn you—only those touched by the gods should wield their wrath. I will pray to Her that she need not use it to avoid reacquainting herself with the other who curries her favor. Her path is still not set. —Recovered Correspondence of High Priestess Deservee to His Royal Highness, Cadet Aaric Graycastle, Prince Camlaen of Navarre
Riders don’t run. We fight.
A roar of unfettered agony fills my head, so loud it vibrates my bones and shrill enough to pop my ears. “Sgaeyl!” Tairn bellows, his wings losing their rhythm, and my heart skips a series of beats. Oh Malek, no. I hurl myself at the bond, but the wall of ice doesn’t just stand firm; it repels me with brute force. Dread nails my stomach to the floor as we lose speed—
I hear the snap a second before the shadow falls over us. No, not a shadow. A massive net with weights the size of desks attached along the edges. Tairn roars and banks left, but it’s no use. “Tairn!” I scream as the net hits, smashing my torso downward onto the pommels and covering every scale I can see. He’d be able to bear the weight of it easily on his torso, but it smothers his wings, and the weights… Oh gods. “Tuck your wings or they’ll break!”
Andarna. Xaden. Sgaeyl. Mira. Brennan. My friends. They slip through my mind in a whirl of pictures I can’t grasp on to, flickering too fast to fully feel. All I can do is ease off the pommels, lean right to spare the inevitable impact to my abdomen as the thick rope of the net digs into my back. “You have been the gift of my life,” I tell Tairn. “It is not over!” he shouts.
For when you lose yours. Strike in the dark, Violet. What the fuck? The fall has broken the wax seal,
“How easy it was to catch the pair of them.” The pair? The scream. “They have Sgaeyl, too.” Tairn’s rage washes over me like acid.
“If I burn out, so be it, but she won’t touch you,”
“Tell me, do you miss Unnbriel?” Her eyes flare, and she startles.
“Do you?” she counters. “Or are you immune, having only been touched, but not dedicated?”
Touched. Shit, the priestess in Unnbriel had said that, too. So had the note wrapped around Aaric’s gift.
“Why serve a god when you can be one?” Theophanie snarls.
Putrid fear consumes the bond, followed by another roar that nearly buckles my knees. Sgaeyl. My head jerks upward, my heart lurching against the cage of my ribs as Tairn snarls, his talons furrowing in the forest floor. “Don’t!” Terror clogs my throat as I shout for Xaden, but he can’t hear me.
Shadow spreads like a ripple on a lake, devouring the field in the fury of an onyx storm and sweeping toward us at a speed that squeezes the hope from my chest, then outright shatters my heart. The pain hits like a physical blow to the center of my chest. He’s terrifyingly powerful with Sgaeyl, but not like this. This is the kind of force that ends worlds. And it’s almost here.
“I love you,” I whisper down the bond, and the ice cracks, but it’s not enough to halt the approaching wave of darkness.
“Use the darkness!” Tairn orders. My heart stutters. Use the very thing that’s taking Xaden from me? I never dreamed that taking every possible path to cure him would lead to his choice. The fire devouring me from the inside out threatens to consume my very bones, and for a second, I debate letting it. I couldn’t stop my mother, and I can’t stop Xaden. I can’t save him.
Wait. Strike in the darkness. That’s what Aaric’s note said… Like he knew this would happen.
“He’s a fucking precog,” I whisper in awe. A real one—not like Melgren, who can only foresee battles. If Aaric wields true precognition, he saw this, and he gave me a weapon made of the fractured temple—a temple Theophanie can’t step inside. I don’t believe in oracles, but I do believe in signets.
The continuous strike lights up our surroundings and branches out through the shadow, revealing Theophanie’s back. She stumbles to her feet and whirls toward me, her eyes flaring wide, and she dives left, smacking into an invisible wall and falling backward. A wall that snarls.
Andarna.
“How?” Her eyes flare, and she topples to her knees. “Stone doesn’t kill venin.” “You were never just venin,” I reply. “Dunne is a wrathful goddess to high priestesses who turn their backs on Her.”
Wrath courses like a current under the ice I willingly skate onto, cutting my emotions free like the burdens they are so I can be the weapon she needs.
She was the first to choose me, to elevate me above all others, the first to see every ugly side of me and accept it all, and every single person in this fucking canyon will die before they remove a single one of her scales.
But because I. Can’t. Kill. Him. I could no more raise a blade to his throat than I could Violet. The bond between Violence and me is the kind of magic that has no explanation. The bond between Berwyn and me is the kind that should never exist, and now that my Sage has another sibling he can use against me…I’m screwed.
I glance past Berwyn, past Sgaeyl and the venin, to my new brother and the unconscious dragon lying in the valley beyond the canyon, guarded by seven wyvern. How could he do this? Choose this after watching me stumble and fall over the last five months. How could he willingly walk the path I’ve fought like hell to leave? He’s the last person I ever would have expected to turn, and yet here we are.
“This is not what we agreed to!” Panchek shouts, stumbling backward toward his own shrieking, netted dragon.
I don’t bother looking in their direction. Fucker deserves to suffer for selling us out. Whatever the Sage—what Berwyn—does is of no consequence to me. How much information has he sold to the enemy? Certainly enough to lure us all to Draithus. How many times did he give them Violet’s location? He dies. The decision is made without debate.
“Do not lose yourself,” Sgaeyl warns, thrashing against the net that has her pinned to the rocky ground twenty feet in front of me. “You have not turned as a result of his pl...
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“Were you watching? Because that’s exactly what’s about to happen to yours.” He turns to me and saunters toward Sgaeyl as she thrashes futilely under the net. “You’ll have to channel deep to replace the loss of her power.” He lifts the blade, and I don’t just skate over the ice. I become it. “Stop!” Sgaeyl roars, blowing back Berwyn’s robes. “Do not do this to save me!”
“I love you.” Violet’s voice cracks the cold, and a silken thread of warmth wedges itself in the opening before it seals shut, locking it in place. No. Wait. I grab for that thread with desperate hands, clawing to keep her as more of my pieces are blown away, lost to the void. She is warmth and light and air and love.
power burning at the feeling’s edges, and I know if I take it any further, it will be the next and final piece to float away. I bare my teeth and yank my hand from the ground, gasping for a full breath as my heart thunders.
“Will you forsake me now?” I ask, walking over Berwyn’s unconscious body. I’d kill him if I could. Fuck, I thought I had. I wonder how many initiates feel the same about their Sage? At least one that I know of. But beyond the physical impossibility of it, he has something I need. And I’m no longer an initiate.
“You cannot mean to—” “You saw what happened. It is the only way.” She glances over her shoulder. “And you think she’ll help?” “She loves me.”
“She’ll help.” It comes out with a hell of a lot more certainty than I feel. “She promised.” “Even if she agrees, no one will—” “Someone owes me a favor.” “He’ll never let you near her.” Her tail flicks. “Especially while she lies in a vulnerable state.”
What even am I? Hers.
“We will ask,” Sgaeyl finally says, flexing her claws in the rocky soil. “And her decision will determine our fate.”
While cadets are strongly encouraged not to form romantic attachments while studying in the quadrant, lieutenants are permitted to marry whomever they choose upon graduation. —Article Five, Section Seven The Dragon Rider’s Codex
“I will not let them burn you,” Andarna vows. “What?” My head whips her way. “Why would my brother burn me?” And why in Dunne’s name would I be sitting on gravel in the courtyard? My thoughts are…slow. Something’s off. Something’s wrong.
“And so far, the tally is at six missing eggs from the hatching ground, but they’re double-checking.”
Xaden. The wall of shadows… My heart sinks. What the fuck is happening? How did I get here? Why is my head so hazy? Am I concussed?
My left arm is splinted, and a beautiful gold ring with an emerald the size of my thumbnail sits on my hand. Oh gods, I know that stone. It matches the others from the Blade of Aretia upstairs on Xaden’s nightstand. Is it the missing one?
nod, gawking at the ring. It’s not just any ring on any finger. It’s the finger. But how? I was in the field battling Theophanie this afternoon, and then she desiccated and I burned myself straight into unconsciousness. Now it’s three a.m. and I’m in Aretia, and there are murdered dragons and riders, missing riders and missing eggs? Xaden wouldn’t do that.
The storm of shadows. My blood chills. How far had he gone? I fling myself down the bond, but there’s nothing there. It’s gone.