Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)

by Rebecca Yarros

“Fascinating. You look all frail and breakable, but you’re really a violent little thing, aren’t you?”

“Going for blood today, are we, Violence?” he whispers. Metal hits the mat again and he kicks it past my head and out of my reach. He’s not taking my daggers to use against me; he’s disarming me just to prove he can. My blood boils. “My name is Violet,” I seethe. “I think my version fits you better.” He releases my wrist and stands, offering me a hand. “We’re not done yet.”

“Here’s the thing, Sorrengail. Hope is a fickle, dangerous thing. It steals your focus and aims it toward the possibilities instead of keeping it where it belongs—on the probabilities.” “So I’m supposed to what? Not hope that I live? Just plan for death?” “You’re supposed to focus on the things that can kill you so you find ways to not die.”

You want to know why you’re still alive? Because you’re the scale I currently judge myself against every night. Every day I let you live, I get to convince myself that there’s still a part of me that’s a decent person. So if you want to quit, then please, spare me the temptation and fucking quit. But if you want to do something, then do it.”

“Each time a dragon chooses a rider, that bond is stronger than the last, which means that if you die, Violence, it sets off a chain of events that potentially ends with me dying, too.” His expression is immovable marble, but the anger in his eyes leaves me breathless. It’s pure…rage. “So yeah, unfortunately for everyone involved, there’s now an us if the Empyrean lets Tairn’s choice stand.” Oh. Gods. I’m tethered to Xaden Riorson.

“It’s hard to love a second home as much as the first.” I swallow. “It’s easy when the second home is the right one.” And that is what the Riders Quadrant has become to me—the right home.

Is this who you really are at your core? Someone so enamored with rules that he doesn’t know when to bend or break them for someone he cares about? Someone so focused on the least I’m capable of doing, he can’t believe I can do so much more?”

“The reason we’ll never be anything more than friends isn’t because of your rules. It’s because you have no faith in me. Even now, when I’ve survived against all odds and bonded not just one dragon but two, you still think I won’t make it. So forgive me, but you’re about to be some of the bullshit that this place cuts away from me.”

“What changed?” Frustration tightens my grip on the mug. “When exactly did you decide not to ruin me?” “Maybe it was when I saw Oren holding a knife to your throat,” he says. “Or maybe it was when I realized the bruises on your neck were fingerprints and wanted to kill them all over again just so I could do it slowly. Maybe it was the first time I recklessly kissed you or when I realized I’m fucked because I can’t stop thinking about doing more than just kissing you.” My breath catches at his admission, but he just sighs, lets his head fall back against the wall. “Does it even matter when, as long as it changed between us?”

Everyone has a signet that isn’t just useful for battle. They’re tools for good in the world. And what the hell am I, Xaden? I’m a fucking weapon.”

I start to shake my head, but his eyes narrow on mine. “You might not like it, might even loathe it, but it’s power like yours that saves lives.” “By killing people?” I cry. If Sgaeyl is right, and signets reflect who we are at our core, then I’m exactly as Xaden nicknamed me…Violence.

You are not just a weapon, Sorrengail. You are the weapon. You train this ability, own it, and you’ll have the power to defend an entire kingdom.”

“I’m not sweet. Please don’t mistake any part of me for soft or kind. That will only get you hurt, and whatever you do…” He buries his face in my neck, inhaling deeply. “Don’t fall for me.”

There’s nowhere in existence you could go that I wouldn’t find you, Violence.” The promise should be a threat, but it’s not. It’s too damned comforting for that.

“There’s only you, Violence. Is that what you needed to hear?” I nod. “Even when I’m not with you, there’s only you.

“I watched my own father executed trying to help these people. I couldn’t risk you, too.” He leans into my space a little more with every word, launching my pulse, but I’m done letting my heart make my head’s choices. “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.” He backs away slowly, his lips curving in a sad smile. “And defenseless women have never been my type, remember?”

It only takes one desperate generation to change history—even erase it.

“One generation to change the text. One generation chooses to teach that text. The next grows, and the lie becomes history.”

“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.”

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, and I fell.

“That definitely wasn’t an accident, little sister,” he says from the doorway. I sigh and move to the side, watching Violet’s eyes widen as she sees him standing in the doorway. “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.”

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