Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)

by Rebecca Yarros

I look over my shoulder, and sure enough, Liam stands with his chin raised in front of Deigh. It’s almost as if he expected this.

“Stop.” I put my hand on Xaden’s arm. “Xaden, stop. If you want me to go with you, I’ll go. It’s that simple.” His gaze shifts to meet mine and immediately softens.

“Thank you for trusting me,” Xaden says as I reach Tairn’s foreleg. “Always.”

“Keep looking at me like that and we’ll be stopped longer than a half hour,”

“I’m not scared, no one is hauling me, and believe it or not, Violet, sometimes my orders actually don’t revolve solely around you. I do have other skills, you know,” he teases with a grin, flashing a dimple as he hip-checks me.

“Worrying about you is ninety-nine percent of what I do.”

“Trust me, my motives aren’t altruistic, Violence. I’ll take any excuse I can get to put my hands on you.”

“I’m sorry about this morning.” “What?” He looks up at me, the sunlight catching the gold specks in his eyes, and arches his scarred brow. “We were in the middle of something, if you don’t remember.”

“I’m way too fucking greedy when it comes to you.”

He groans, one hand sliding to my ass.

“I’ve been yours for longer than you could ever imagine.”

Liam pins my arms to my sides with careful but unyielding strength. “I’m sorry about this, Violet.”

“Don’t say anything else,” Xaden interrupts. “You know that none of us can know the details or we put everything at risk. All it takes is one of us being interrogated.”

“You take a step toward that Sorrengail and you’ll be dead before you can even shift your weight,” Xaden says, his voice dropping lethally. “She’s not up for discussion.”

Garrick’s here. He’s a section leader, but he’s…here, not with any of the Flame Section squads. So are Bodhi and Imogen. That brunette rider with the nose ring is Soleil, I think, and that’s definitely a relic on her left forearm. The second-year from Claw Section? He has one, too.

“Were we ever really friends?” I whisper at Liam, searching for the strength to yell. “We are friends, Violet, but I owe him everything,” Liam answers, and when I glance up, he’s watching me with so much misery that I almost feel sorry for him. Almost. “We all do. And once you give him a chance to explain—”

“I know what you’re thinking,”

Literally

“Because the only thing that kills venin is the very thing powering our wards.”

“You love me, and—” “Loved,” I correct him, sidestepping so I can get some fucking space and then taking it. “Love!” he shouts, stopping me in my tracks and earning us a glance from every rider within hearing distance. “You love me.”

I never lied when I said I can’t live without you, Violence.”

Four hundred years of tomes and not a single one— Four hundred years. But our history spans over six. Everything is a copy of an earlier work. The only original text in the Archives older than four hundred years—around the time we fell into war with Poromiel—are the original scrolls from the Unification over six hundred years ago.

It only takes one desperate generation to change history—even erase it. Gods, Dad spelled it all out for me. He’d always told me scribes hold all the power.

“Venin,” Liam responds. My stomach drops. “You’re positive?” Xaden asks. Liam nods. “As sure as I can be without having actually seen them before. Four of them. Purple robes. Distended red veins spidering all around bright red eyes. Creepy as shit.” “Sounds about right.” Xaden’s weight shifts. “I liked it better when we just delivered the weapons,” Bodhi mutters. “Oh, and one guy with a giant-ass staff,” Liam continues. “And I swear to Dunne, one second the plain was clear and the next they were just…there, walking toward the gates.” His eyes are wide, his pupils blown as he uses his signet to see to the bottom of the valley.

“I knew you’d make the right choice,” Sgaeyl says, glancing toward where Xaden approaches with Liam, their footsteps dangerously close to the cliffside at my left. “He did, too. Even if he doesn’t like you putting yourself in danger, he knew you would.” “Well, he knows me a great deal better than I know him.” I lift a brow at her. She blinks. “You’re a far cry from the trembling girl who stood in the courtyard and tried to mask her fear after Parapet. I approve.”

“Do you remember how I told you I realized it was a gift, not a curse?” “Yes.” Back when I was in his bed. “Just trust me—because of this, Melgren can’t see a fucking thing.” My lips part, remembering Melgren saying he liked to lay eyes on Xaden once a year. “Any other secrets you’re keeping from me?” “Yes.” He cups my neck and leans into my space. “Stay alive, and I promise I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.” The simple confession makes my heart clench. As angry as I am, I can’t imagine a world without him in it. “I need you to survive this, even if I hate that I still love you.” “I can live with that.” A corner of his mouth lifts as he drops his hand and turns away from me, heading toward Sgaeyl.

“Watch out. Deigh says that building on the other side of the road has a crate of something marked with Liam’s family crest,” Tairn tells me as I fire off another blast that lands nowhere near the venin. “He says it’s highly…unstable,” he finishes, pausing as he relays the information.

Liam flies for the gryphons above us, wielding spears of ice into the injured

Sgaeyl is on the west side of the outpost, and my heart crawls into my throat when she flies low and Xaden does an impressive running jump off her back, landing with a roll onto the street below. Almost immediately, shadows pull in every direction

“Xaden!” I scream out loud, but he’s already noticed the wyvern, throwing a rope of shadows high above the buildings in a perfect lasso around Sgaeyl’s head, and she yanks him up off the ground and out of the

“And I know you feel betrayed, but Xaden needs you. And I don’t just mean alive, Violet. He needs you. Please hear him out.”

“Deigh,” Liam pleads in a strangled whisper, turning his head toward Xaden. “I know, brother.” Xaden’s jaw flexes and our gazes lock above Liam as tears overflow my eyes. “I know.” He leans forward and lifts Liam into his arms, then stands, carrying him. “I’ll take you.”

Seconds later, his soundless, soul-rending scream fills my head with such force that my heart shatters like glass against a stone floor. I don’t need to ask. Liam is gone.

“Liam told me to tell you that there are two riders with that horde.” “Why would he tell me and not—” An anvil sits on my chest. “Because he knew I’d have to be the one who holds off the wyvern as long as possible.” He studies my face like he’ll never see it again. “And I’m the one who can kill them all.”

Violence. There are dozens of wyvern and one of me. I have to be as strategic as Brennan and as confident as Mira. I’ve spent the last year trying to prove to myself I’m nothing like my mother. I’m not cold. I’m not callous. But maybe there is a part of me that’s more like her than I care to admit. Because right now, standing near the dead body of my friend and his dragon—all I want is to show these assholes exactly how violent I can be.

But it was the third brother, who commanded the sky to surrender its greatest power, who finally vanquished his jealous sibling at a great and terrible price. —“The Origin,” The Fables of the Barren

“Such untapped power. No wonder we were called here. You could command the sky to surrender all its power, and I bet you don’t know what to do with it, do you? Riders never do. I’m going to split you open and see where all that astonishing lightning comes from.” She waves the other dagger at me, and I realize she’s playing with me. “Or maybe I’ll let him do it. You’ll wish for death if I hand you over to my Sage.”

Riderless wyvern. Created by venin. And they all died because I killed one venin. That’s what Liam was trying to tell me. When a dragon dies, so does its rider. But apparently when a venin dies, so do the wyvern they created. All of them. That’s how we can save everyone on this battlefield.

Xaden screams through the barrier in my mind, and the sounds of his anguish and fear are nearly more than I can bear.

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.

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.

My cheek falls against his shoulder, and I swear I feel him brush a kiss over my forehead, but that can’t be right.

“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.

“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. He can yell at me all he wants as long as her heart’s beating.

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.

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

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, and I fell.

Or maybe it was when she threw her knives at Barlowe or when jealousy ate me alive seeing Aetos kiss the mouth I’d dreamed about countless times. Looking back, there were a thousand tiny moments that pulled me over the edge for the woman asleep in the bed I always pictured her in. 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’...

Drawing back the covers, I untie the robe covering the short nightdress I changed her into that first evening and slowly lift the hem above the silken skin of her hip, preparing myself for the black tendrils that discolored her veins during the flight but receded slowly since we arrived.

“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

“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.