Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)

by Rebecca Yarros

“Xaden, you have to drop the shadows. It’s the only way.” “Tairn!” Sgaeyl shouts, fear edging her tone in a way I’ve never heard. “Don’t ask that of me.” Even Xaden’s voice shakes. Those shadows are coming down whether or not he wants them to. He’s approaching burnout. “If you’ve ever trusted me, Xaden, I need you to do it now,”

“Once I’ve taken the rider out, that only leaves one, Xaden. Just kill that one and the rest of the wyvern will fall.”

“I don’t have to,” I tell him. “Didn’t you hear what the venin said? I can command the sky to surrender all its power, but I’m going to need every ounce of yours to do it.” I unleash my signet and strike once, missing the wyvern, then again, missing once more.

“I need more, Tairn!” “You will burn out, Silver One!” he growls, dodging a flame Xaden misses. “You already walk the edge.” My arms shake as I lift them again. “This is the only way I can save them. I can save Sgaeyl. You just have to decide to live, Tairn. Even if I don’t.” “I will not watch another rider die because they do not know their own limitations. One more strike could be your last. I feel your waning strength.” “I know exactly what I’m capable of,” I promise as energy fills my body once again,

and my heart jolts, struggling to find the right rhythm. Hot. I’m so damned hot, I feel like I could burst into flame myself. I’ve taken too much power. “I’m not Naolin.”

“Let me help!” Andarna shouts, and my heart swells even as it stutters from the energy flowing through my veins. I don’t have time to look to see where she is—I only hope she’s still in the outpost. “Only what I need,” I say to her. I swallow hard, my good hand clutching the blood-tipped dagger as we fly toward the wall of wyvern. I reach for her golden power, and it spreads down my spine and explodes through me, time pausing around us.

Tairn flares his wing, bringing us to a hover as the wyvern move toward us inch by precious inch, fighting against Andarna’s magic with their own. I have to want to kill that venin, and gods help me, I do. “Now!” I push my arms toward the venin and command lightning to split the sky, and

it does, branching out in every direction, but I only need to control one of its silver-blue veins. I focus on the one closest to the venin, bringing it down in slow bursts that defy time. My arms vibrate, and I feel Tairn’s power push the boundaries of my body as I yank the branch sideways in its descent, inch by inch with the last of my strength, positioning it over the venin. “More, Tairn!” He roars and lightning itself rips through me, sizzling my lungs and charring my very breath as Andarna’s gift ebbs. I don’t have to be near her to feel her fatigue, her strength ebbing. But I only take ...

Finally dragging the lightning down into place as my skin sizzles and burns, I release

time and hold myself upright long enough to see it strike true, killing the venin at the first touch of its energy. As if time were still frozen, his body slowly topples from the top of his wyvern.

In the event that you come across a poison you do not recognize, it is best to treat with any and every antidote. Either way, the patient will die, but at least this way you would have learned something. —Major Frederick’s Modern Guide for Healers

I think I might die today. Air rushes by and my stomach feels like it’s somewhere above me. Because I’m falling. Endlessly falling. Tairn roars, and it’s the panic, the pitch of that bellow that forces my eyes open just long enough to see him diving for me, but I can’t feel him in my head, can’t feel my feet on the Archives floor, can’t access my power. I’m cut off, no longer grounded.

My back slams into something, knocking the breath from my lungs, slowing my descent but not stopping it, and shimmering gold rises and ebbs around me. Wind stills, the cries of mayhem and destruction pause, but the burn inside rages on, consuming me with fiery teeth. Time. Andarna has stopped time with what strength she has left.

I’m on her back, falling…because she isn’t strong enough to carry me, but she’s brave enough to fly into this battle. Now my eyes are burning, too. She shouldn’t be here. She should be tucked away in the outpost, safe from the wyvern three times her size. Are there any wyvern left? Did we get them all? When time starts again, wind whipping at my exposed skin, I slip from her back and am gathered close by strong human arms. “Violet.” I know that deep, panicked voice. Xaden. But I can’t move, can’t even force my lips apart to scream wi...

But what poison could paralyze...

physically but magically? “I’ll take care of you. Just…just live. Please live.” Of course he wants me to live. I’m integral to his survival. It takes all my strength, but I manage to lift my eyelids for a second, and the blatant...

“Did you see the way she whipped that lightning straight at that venin’s head?” someone asks.

“Not now,” Bodhi practically growls. “She saved your fucking life. She saved all our lives.”

But I didn’t. Soleil and…Lia...

“Her blood is fucking black,” Xaden snaps and his arms tighten, hol...

“That’s a twelve-hour flight.” Xaden’s voice rises. “And I’m pretty sure her arm is broken.” I’ll be dead in twelve hours. The promise

“There’s somewhere closer,” Xaden says quietly, and I feel his fingers skim over my cheek. The motion is unnervingly tender.

“You can’t be serious.” Someone’s voice lowers to a hiss. “You’ll put everything at risk,” Garrick warns as sleep tugs at me, the only escape from the searing pain. Tairn bellows so loudly, my rib cage

vibrates. At least he’s close.

“I wouldn’t say that again,” Imogen mutters, “or he’ll probably eat you. And don’t forget, if she dies, there’s a damn good chance Xaden does, too.” “I’m not saying he shouldn’t, just r...

“No need for orders, man. We’ll save her.” That’s Bodhi. I think.

“Live up to your nickname and fight this, Violence,” Xaden whispers against my ear. Then he says louder, to someone farther away, “We have to get her to him. We ride.” I feel the shift as he begins to walk, but the agony of movement against the wound is too much, and I fade into blackness.

A steady rush of wind at my face and the rhythmic beat of wings tells me we’re flying, and it takes all the energy I have to lift a single eyelid as we pass over the Cliffs of Dralor. The thousand-foot drop is unmistakable. It’s what made the Tyrrish rebellion not only possible but nearly successful.

Even the irony that I’m going to die by poison, something I have unparalleled knowledge of, can’t make me muster the energy to speak, to offer any thoughts on an antidote. How can I when I don’t even know what’s been used on me? Until a few hours ago, I didn’t even know venin existed outside fables, and now there’s

nothing but pain and death.

“He basically said that he’ll cook me alive if I fail,” Xaden replies, holding me closer.

“You have to fight, Vi,” Xaden whispers against my forehead as we move. “You can hate me all you want when you wake up. You can scream, hit, throw your fucking daggers at me for all I care, but you have to live. You can’t make me fall for you and then die. None of this is worth it without you.” He sounds so sincere that I almost believe him.

“Xaden?” a familiar voice calls out, but I can’t place it.

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

XADEN

Sgaeyl’s

chose me for the scars on my back and the simple fact that I am the grandson of her second rider—the one who didn’t make it through the quadrant.

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.

her lips pale and chapped, the ends of her hair duller than their usual bladelike hue.

What does that mean her hair duller

For three days, everything about her has felt as though the life was leached from her body, only a shadow of her soul left beneath her skin.

“You should have told her about the venin. I waited for you to impart the information, and now she’s suffering,” Tairn growls. The dragon is the living, fire-breathing embodiment of my shame. But at least the bond that links the four of us is still in place, even if he can’t communicate with her—which means Violet’s alive.

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 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.

And I never told her. Not until she was delirious with poison. Why? Because I was scared to give her power over me when she already held it all? Because she’s Lilith Sorrengail’s daughter? Because she kept giving Aetos second and third chances? No. Because I couldn’t give her those words without being totally, completely honest with her, and after the way she looked at me at the lake, the utter betrayal—

“You aren’t going to lose me.” She gives me a puzzled look, smiling like I’ve said something peculiar. Then she leans in and kisses me. She still wants me. The revelation makes my heart fucking soar.

“Don’t panic. Everything is fine. Andarna

isn’t quite the same, but she’s…her.”

The windows that look out over the mountain this fortress is built upon down to the valley below and its line of charred trees marking where the earth was scorched all the way to stone and the quiet town—which used to be a city—of Aretia beneath us.

“Where are we? And don’t you dare lie to me,” she says. “Not again.” Not again. “You remember.” “I remember.” “Thank gods,” I murmur, shoving my hand into my hair. It’s a good thing, proving that she’s truly healed, but…fuck. “Where. Are. We?” She bites out every word, her eyes narrowing on me. “Say it.” “The way you’re looking at me says you already know.” There’s no way this brilliant woman doesn’t recognize that temple. “This looks like Aretia.” She gestures to the window. “There’s only one temple with those particular columns. I’ve seen the drawings.” “Yes.” Brilliant. Fucking. Woman. “Aretia was burned to the ground. I’ve seen those drawings, too, the ones the scribes brought back for the public notices. My mother told me she saw the embers with her own eyes, so where are we?”