Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)

by Rebecca Yarros

You’re all cowards. —The last words of Fen Riorson (redacted)

It’s been three fucking days, and Violet hasn’t woken up. Three never-ending days I’ve spent in this armchair, walking a knife’s edge between sanity and madness, studying every rise and fall of her chest just to be sure she’s still breathing. My lungs only fill when hers do, and the time between my heartbeats is filled with sharp, all-consuming fear.

“I should have done a lot of things differently.” What I shouldn’t have done was fought my feelings for her. I should have grabbed on to her after that first kiss the way I wanted and kept her at my side, should have let her all the way in.

My eyelids scratch like sandpaper each time I blink, but I’m fighting sleep with every bone in my body. Sleep is where I hear her heartbreaking scream, hear her cry that Liam died, hear her call me a fucking traitor over and over.

She can’t die, and not just because there’s a chance I won’t survive. She can’t die because I know I can’t live without her even if I do. Somewhere between the shock of our attraction at the top of that turret to realizing she risked her own life by giving up a boot for someone else on the parapet that first day to her throwing those daggers at my head under the oak tree, I wavered. I should have realized the danger of getting too close the first time I put her on her back and showed her how easily she could kill me on the mat—a vulnerability I’ve allowed no one else—but I brushed it off as an undeniable attraction to a uniquely beautiful woman. When I watched her conquer the Gauntlet, then defend Andarna at Threshing, I stumbled, stunned by both her cunning and her sense of honor. When I burst into her room and found Oren’s treacherous hand at her throat, the rage that made it so easy to kill all six of them without batting an eye should have told me I was headed for a cliff. And when she smiled at me after mastering her shield in mere minutes, her face lighting up as the snow fell around us, I fucking fell. We hadn’t even kissed, a...

She’s awake. She’s alive. She’s…smiling? That must be a trick of the light. This woman likely wants to set me on fire.

“I thought I was going to lose you.” The confession comes out strangled, and maybe it’s pushing my luck after all I’ve put her through, but I can’t keep from leaning forward and brushing my lips over her forehead, then her temple. Gods, I’d kiss her forever if I thought it would keep the coming argument at bay, keep us in this one pristine moment where I can actually believe that everything might be all right between us, that I haven’t irrevocably fucked up the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

“Violet?” I keep my shields up, trying to respect her privacy as I walk to her side, but gods, I need to know what she’s thinking.

Gods, I want to haul her into my arms and love her until she forgets everything except how good we are together, but I’m sure that’s the last thing she’ll ever want again.

“I’m not afraid of hard work, especially not when I know just how sweet the rewards are. I would rather lose this entire war than live without you, and if that means I have to prove myself over and over, then I’ll do it. You gave me your heart, and I’m keeping it.”

“Told you I knew better poison masters,” I tell her softly. “You weren’t healed. You were mended.” “Brennan?” She stares at her brother in open-mouthed shock. Brennan just grins and opens his arms. “Welcome to the revolution, Violet.”