Onyx Storm (The Empyrean, #3)

by Rebecca Yarros

To the ones who don’t run with the popular crowd, the ones who get caught reading under their desks, the ones who feel like they never get invited, included, or represented. Get your leathers. We have dragons to ride.

Securing Basgiath and the wards has come at great cost, including General Sorrengail’s life.

It’s too late to save Mom, but I’ll be damned if I let Xaden get himself killed.

“She would have already slain your lieutenant and been confident in her choice,” Andarna answers. “Your sister is an act first, ask questions later kind of rider.”

“I am as unknown as he is, and you still trust me,” she says. “I will not be another battle you have to fight.”

“Even you don’t get a say in which parts of us are taken first, Riorson.”

“But do not mistake my unflinching support of you, my mate, and Andarna for any form of faith in him.”

You might be angry when you realize I didn’t wake you to say goodbye. But it’s only because I no longer fully trust my ability to walk away. —Recovered Correspondence of His Grace, Lieutenant Xaden Riorson, Sixteenth Duke of Tyrrendor, to Cadet Violet Sorrengail

Upon failure of three exams, Jesinia Neilwart has been removed from the adept path and stripped of all its responsibilities and sacred privileges as of January 15. Under protest, I transfer her command to Professor Grady at his over-authoritative request. —Official Records: Scribe Quadrant, Colonel Lewis Markham, Commandant

Xaden leans against the wall to the left of the door, his shoulder resting along the frame of a painted rendering of the First Six’s dragons. But not seven.

“Xaden didn’t kill Varrish. I did.”

“I’m either completely in love with your boyfriend or utterly terrified of him,” Ridoc says under his breath. “Not sure at the moment.”

“Because you’re the only one capable of killing me.”

My brightest light, I meant to prepare you but only had time for half the lessons you need, half the history, half the truth, and now time runs short. I failed Brennan the day I watched him walk the parapet, failed Mira when I could not stop her from following, but I fear my death will fail you. Your mother and I trust no one, and neither can you. —Recovered Correspondence of Lieutenant Colonel Asher Sorrengail to Violet Sorrengail

“Let’s get three things straight, Your Highness. First, I have remarkable hearing thanks to the shadows at your very feet. Second, I don’t control Violet. Never have. Never will. But third, and most importantly—” He lowers his voice. “She really, honestly hasn’t thought about you. At least not since the second she set eyes on me.”

Only go to war with those you trust implicitly.

She knees him straight in the groin.

She won’t understand why you’ve kept her in the dark. You left too soon, left too many of your plans unfinished. Now we can only hope the bond between our daughters is strong enough to endure the paths they’ve chosen. They’ll need each other to survive. —Recovered, Unsent Correspondence of General Lilith Sorrengail

The most useless word in the language of aristocracy has always been and will forever be: love. Marriage is a necessary evil to secure the line. Nothing more. Save love for your children.

In the first twenty-four hours of removal from source magic, the subject—an asim—presented as even-tempered. But withdrawal quickly revealed the subject’s true nature, requiring the subject’s immediate transfer to stage two of the study.

Sometimes diplomacy is best served at swordpoint.

“There is no cure for me.” He presses a kiss to my forehead. “That’s why you have to become better than me. There’s only you.”

We didn’t find the irids; they found us.

“She is the criterion.”

I just fought with every weapon in my arsenal, and it wasn’t enough.

But Xaden isn’t in power. He is power. And he’s slipping.

I exist for Tairn, but I live for Xaden.

It was not without risk that the first dragons bonded humans, for though they clearly hold the power, their bonded riders made them the one thing they could not tolerate: vulnerable. Many dragons suffered the loss of their bonded riders in the name of self-preservation.

“Pull from the excess you feel in me, and push to the deficit in him. You’re not a weapon of destruction. You’re not venin. You’re the artery power chooses to flow through. You’re life.”

The only thing more stubborn than a dragon is its rider.