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“That venin by Jack’s cell had silver hair,” I mutter, setting my dagger to an apple and peeling it in one long ribbon. “That’s weird, right?”
The last time a shadow and lightning wielder fought side by side, they managed to drive the venin back into the Barrens for a few hundred years. We’ll figure out how to do it again.”
“You are hereby charged with high treason against the kingdom of Navarre!”
Holy Dunne, she wielded lightning. But venin aren’t supposed to have signets…let alone mine.
Theophanie,
“Now tell me, which chose you first? The one who gifted you the power of the sky? Or the irid?”
“What a prize you’ve won. Sometimes I forget just how short mortal memory can
“And when you come with him, you will remember that I let you live today and choose me, not Berwyn, as your teacher.”
It was hotter than rage, and sharper than fear, and cut deeper than helplessness, all because I couldn’t get to you.”
would have killed anything and anyone in that moment to reach you. No exceptions. I would have channeled every ounce of power beneath my feet without hesitation if it would have landed me at your side.”
“All I want is to lose myself in you, and I can’t. You are the only person in the world with the power to strip me of every ounce of my control, and the only person I can’t fathom losing that control with.” He lifts his head. “And yet here I am, unable to keep three fucking feet away from you.”
“Xaden, I think we’re wrong. I don’t think they’re limited to lesser magics. I think maybe…they have signets, too.” “I believe you.” He doesn’t so much as flinch. “What else did you leave out?”
“No.” I don’t bother telling him that he’s broken for Xaden multiple times already. “But I do think you want to live.”
“Ask me when I turned, how I turned. Ask why only initiates bleed.”
“And what’s to keep me from telling your favorite scribe that you’ve been feeding the enemy?” Jack’s smile widens. “Hard to talk about something you don’t remember.” Imogen steps into his space, and his grin slips. Four minutes later, we emerge from the staircase and find Rhiannon, Ridoc, and Sawyer waiting in the tunnel. “For fuck’s sake, can’t you four do anything by yourselves?” Imogen mutters.
“Do you guys think it’s short for iridescent?”
“My father. And all his research, the work he had yet to publish, is now really hard to access.”
“Hard to access like we need Dain to betray his father.” Which is highly unlikely.
You’ll have a rotating roster of professors to benefit from all signet types, and the Eastern Wing has temporarily loaned us their most powerful rider to start your instruction.”
Oh shit. Article Eight, Section One of the Basgiath Code of Conduct.
“I think our relationship just ended.”
“Don’t blame me. I didn’t write the Code.” Dain backs into the hall with his hands up. “Nor did I accept the job.” Xaden tenses.
“I live by you. When have I ever given a fuck about the Codex or the Code of Conduct?” He cradles my face and leans down, resting his forehead against mine. “I am yours and you are mine, and there’s no law or rule in this world or the next that will change that.”
“Just so you know who to hate,” I say over my shoulder once I’m in the hall, “Xaden didn’t kill Varrish. I did.”
“Agreed,” Xaden says. “That’s far too casual a term for what we are.”
“I can teach you to try, but there’s only one person capable of taking me down one day, and it isn’t you, Graycastle.”
“Do me a favor,” I say to Xaden, unfastening the conduit’s leather strap at my hip and hooking it over my wrist so the orb fits comfortably in my palm. Then I take three steps forward onto the mat and open the door to Tairn’s power with a hell of a smirk. “Don’t let me hurt you.”
“You have to learn the difference for both our sakes.” The bond surrounds me in the same instant that he wraps his arms around me from behind, and a stronger shadow—his—tilts my chin toward my shoulder and up. “Only you.”
“You need to be able to find me.”
“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
“Though I do remember Mira saying he’d been in a relationship with a rider a year or two older than him.”
“Lieutenant Tavis here is an incredibly powerful wind wielder—”
“Oh gods, just stop flirting and fuck already,”
“Oh yeah, you did,” I reply, patting him on his back. “Garrick’s going to blow you off the mat.” “Now that I might enjoy, depending on the method he chooses—” Ridoc winces. “I’m going to stop talking now.”
“He nearly took off your fucking head.” Xaden looks at Garrick in a way I’ve never seen, like his best friend has suddenly morphed into prey, and there’s that cold edge in his eyes that prickles the hair at the back of my neck.
“By Malek, I fucking love you,” Xaden
“And the only hair I remember is your professor’s covering your face when I walked in on her riding you. It was auburn, right?”
Shadows blast straight through the wards and hit Halden in the chest like a battering ram, sending the crown prince of Navarre flying backward—straight into the rock wall. Shit.
“I picked up on a lot of things he was thinking.” I blink. “That’s not how your signet—”
“You’re Xaden Riorson.” I rise up on my toes and press a kiss to his chin. “Shadow wielder.” Another at his jaw. “Duke of Tyrrendor.” My mouth brushes just beneath his earlobe. “Love of my life. You have nothing to be jealous of.”
He holds me as a more-than-willing captive while he kisses me over and over, a heady combination of urgency and demand paired with determined restraint.
“They can’t hear us,” Mira repeats, then clasps my shoulder as she walks by, heading to Grady and Henson.
“The only rank that matters out here is cadet, so with all due respect, fuck off.”
Blood gushes from the wound, but Aura’s scream is silenced as the wyvern drags her lifeless body into the sky. Not too far overhead, a dragon bellows.
“Remind me to never piss her off,”
“I am not a horse,”
“It really pisses me off when you guys act like my sense of humor somehow lessens my ability to show up for our squad.”
“Are you trying to tell me that you can freeze the water in someone’s body?”
Only go to war with those you trust implicitly.
