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tone. “Stay the hell away from Xaden Riorson.” The air rushes from my lungs. That name… “That Xaden Riorson,” she confirms, fear lacing her gaze. “He’s a third-year, and he will kill you the second he finds out who you are.” “His father was the Great Betrayer. He led the rebellion,” I say quietly. “What is Xaden doing here?” “All the children of the leaders were conscripted as punishment for their parents’ crimes,” Mira whispers
The ravine and its river below suddenly feel very, very far. How many wagons do they have waiting down there? Five? Six? I know the stats. The parapet claims roughly fifteen percent of the rider candidates. Every trial in the quadrant—including this one—is designed to test a cadet’s ability to ride. If someone can’t manage to walk the windy length of the slim stone bridge, then they sure as hell can’t keep their balance and fight on the back of a dragon. And as for the death rate? I guess every other rider thinks the risk is worth the glory—or has the arrogance to think they won’t fall.
He’s tall, with windblown black hair and dark brows. The line of his jaw is strong and covered by warm tawny skin and dark stubble, and when he folds his arms across his torso, the muscles in his chest and arms ripple, moving in a way that makes me swallow. And his eyes… His eyes are the shade of gold-flecked onyx. The contrast is startling, jaw-dropping even—everything about him is. His features are so harsh that they look carved, and yet they’re astonishingly perfect, like an artist worked a lifetime sculpting him, and at least a year of that was spent on his mouth. He’s the most exquisite
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Your mind already knows the answer, so just calm down and let it remember. That’s what Dad always told me.
“The Continent is home to two kingdoms—and we’ve been at war for four hundred years,” I recite, using the basic, simple data that has been
but the way the other riders all seem to move around him, like he’s a shark and they’re all fish giving him a wide berth.
A dragon without its rider is a tragedy. A rider without their dragon is dead.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up and a chill races down my spine as I cross the center of the rotunda, then my steps halt. Cadets move around me, but my eyes are drawn upward, toward the top of the steps that lead to the gathering hall. Oh shit. Xaden Riorson is watching me with narrowed eyes, the sleeves of his uniform rolled up his massive arms that remain folded across his chest, the warning in his relic-covered arm on full display as a third-year next to him says something that he blatantly ignores. My heart jumps and lodges in my throat. There’s maybe twenty feet between us. My
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The hairs on my neck rise, my body recognizing the imminent threat behind me.
“You don’t have to get used to it,” he tells us. “But you do have to function through it.
“Fascinating. You look all frail and breakable, but you’re really a violent little thing, aren’t you?”
His gaze locks onto the length of my braid where it falls over my shoulder, and I could swear he stops breathing for a heartbeat before he slides the remaining dagger into one of the sheaths at my ribs.
He looks at me like he’s trying to see through me, and ice prickles my scalp.
wide black mat, watching Rhiannon beat the ever-loving shit out of her
There’s no ignoring the prickle at my scalp, and I let my gaze shift to meet Xaden’s.
That voice. That tone. That prickle of ice along my scalp…
“Killing you wouldn’t be any trouble, Violence. It’s leaving you alive that seems to cause the majority of my trouble.”
My scalp prickles as each of our heads swivel in his direction. Xaden is leaning against the tree, his arms folded across his chest, and behind him, watching with narrowed golden eyes, her fangs exposed, is Sgaeyl, his terrifying navy-blue daggertail.
“I know exactly who and what you are, Violet Sorrengail.”
“They’re a mated pair, Tairn and Sgaeyl. The strongest bonded pair in centuries.”
I’m alive. I’m alive. I’m alive. I repeat the mantra in my head as Xaden wipes the blood from my dagger on the back of Oren’s tunic. “Yes. You’re alive.” Xaden steps over Oren’s body and two others, retrieving my dagger from the fallen woman’s shoulder before reaching my armoire. I don’t even recognize her, and yet she tried to kill me.
Now I know I’m in shock because I’m anything but precious to Xaden Riorson.
It’s odd to imagine Xaden ever not being in control. Hell, I’d pay good money to see him lose it. To be the one he lost it with. Nope. I shut that thought down immediately.
“Any threat against you is a threat against me, and as we’ve already established, I have more important things to do than sleep on your
My scalp prickles, but I fight the urge to turn around.
asinine.
“Your bed?” His voice is like a crack of lightning.
“Damn it. Touching you was a bad idea.” “The worst,” I agree, but my tongue skims my lower lip. He groans and my core melts at the sound. “Kissing you would be a cataclysmic mistake.” “Calamitous.” What would it take to hear that groan again?
As though he can hear my thoughts, he kisses me harder, claiming every line and curve of my mouth with a reckless edge that makes my body sing. He’s just as needy as I am, and when he
A flash of light burns behind my closed eyes, followed by the boom of thunder. Thunder-snow isn’t uncommon around here, but damn does it summarize how this feels, wild and out of control.
“For now.” Rhiannon stares at me with intention, lifting her brows. “He’s the most powerful rider in our generation for now.” “What—”
As if he feels me staring, Xaden lifts his head, his gaze colliding with mine across the space with the same effect as a touch. My pulse skitters and my lips part.
Violet, he’s not the most powerful rider of our generation. You are.” She holds my gaze just long enough to let me know she means it.
scream as I’m shaken by an internal force I don’t understand, as though he’s forcing his own power into my body, shocking me with a thousand stings of vibrating energy. Now. If I don’t do it now, he’ll kill me. My vision is already darkening at the edges.
His sadistic grin and a red rim around his eyes are all I can see as he forces more and more power into my body, but his
“Old habits die hard.”
Her gaze skims the top of my head, and I know she’s looking at the silver-tipped braid she thinks marks me as cursed, the hair she told me I was better off cutting.
There is no stronger bond than that between two mated dragons. It goes beyond the depth of human love or adoration to a primal, undeniable requirement for proximity. One cannot survive without the other.
“You never considered that it was you I couldn’t stay away from?”
A ghost of a touch skims my cheek.
Eventually those closest to us become our enemies in some way, even if it’s through well-intentioned love or apathy, or if we live long enough to become their villains.
“Twenty-three,” he answers. “My birthday was in March.” And I didn’t even know. “Mine is in—” “July,” he answers with a ghost of a smile. “I know. I made it my business to know everything there was to know about you the second I saw you on the parapet.” “Because that’s not creepy.” I let the coffee warm my freezing hands. “Can’t know how to ruin someone without understanding them first,” he says quietly.
And there, swirling along the edge of the roofline, is a shadow of sparkling night. Xaden. Footsteps sound on the stairs, and we both look.
“Fuck, that stubborn, feisty look always makes me want to kiss you.” Xaden’s expression remains bland, bored even, but his eyes heat as his gaze drops to my mouth. “And you say this now, where people will see if you actually do.” My breath catches. “When did I ever give you the impression that I give a fuck what people think about me?” A corner of his mouth rises, and now it’s all I can concentrate on, damn him. “I only care what they think about you.” Because he’s a wingleader.
I am the sky and the power of every storm that has ever been. I am infinite.
“You might not like it, might even loathe it, but it’s power like yours that saves lives.”
“You walk into a room, and I can’t look away. I get anywhere near you, and this is what happens. Instantly hard. Fucking hell, I can barely think when you’re around.” He rocks his hips into my hand, and my grip tightens along with my stomach. “Wanting you is not the problem here.” “Then
“Well, then start there. Ground in your power and try to feel whatever it was you were feeling.” He goes back to his notebook. “Should I get the wingleader?” Tairn flat-out laughs in my head.
“Get stronger in wielding, and you’ll be able to do it, too. There’s nowhere in existence you could go that I wouldn’t find you, Violence.”
“I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if General Melgren ripped a mask off one day and revealed he was a terrifying venin. That man has always given me the creeps.”
