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Dain smiles as the king takes his leave, then glances over his shoulder, meeting my gaze and heading our way. He grins, and it’s all too easy to remember how many events just like this we’ve attended together over the years. His touch is gentle when he cups my cheek. “You look beautiful tonight, Vi.”
Get your hands off her. I don’t trust you.
“Xaden.” My heart thunders.
Thunder booms, shaking the paneled glass in Xaden’s windows.
I’m not going to survive this. I’m going to die right here in this bed. “Then I’m going to die with you,” he promises, kissing me. I’m so far gone, I didn’t even realize I said the words out loud, and then I remember that I don’t have to. “More. I need more.”
I’m pretty sure anytime they talked purposely it’s been in italics except I think HE messed up here.
I think their tattoos give them more signet powers.
He turns to each wingleader, giving out orders, but glances in our direction—no doubt looking for Dain—before he turns toward Xaden. Something about the way his smile slips for a heartbeat makes the hair rise on the back of my neck.
“Five whole days? This is going to be so much fun,” Heaton exclaims with terrifying glee, running their hand over the purple flames dyed into their hair. “We’re going to pretend war.” “Yeah,” Imogen adds quietly. “I think we are.”
She knows. She knows. She knowwwowwwws.
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.
“You doing all right with whatever is going on there?” Liam asks, startling me. “And if I tell you I’m not sure?” I give him the same answer, my lips curving. “I’d think you got yourself in over your head.” The look on his face is anything but teasing now. “For someone who said he owes Xaden everything, that’s not a glowing recommendation.” I drop my pack to the ground and roll the tense muscles of my shoulders. “Don’t turn into Dain on me.”
Liam probably doesn’t like all the secrets they have from vi.
“It’s not that.” Liam grimaces. “It’s just that I know his priorities.”
You mean you know his secrets
“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. “I’ve never once forgotten how amazing you are, Liam.”
What are your other skills? 🤨
“I’ve been yours for longer than you could ever imagine.”
This is where I think 1. They knew eachother before the parapet and she’s forgotten, or 2. Brennan has told him so much about her that he was already gone for her. 🧐 not sure which way I want to lean.
Then he passes me to Liam. Passes me. Like I’m a damned rucksack.
A very dainty thing to do, huh? 🙃
In his last days of interrogation, Fen Riorson lost touch with reality, railing against the kingdom of Navarre. He accused King Tauri, and all who came before him, of a conspiracy so vast, so unspeakable, that it does not bear repeating by this historian. The execution was swift and merciful for a madman who cost untold lives. —Navarre, an Unedited History by Colonel Lewis Markham
“You and Andarna lied to me, too.” The treachery of it is too much, and my shoulders dip from the weight of it. “You knew what he was doing.” “We both chose you,” Andarna says, like that makes it any better. “But you knew.”
It really sucks when you find out all the people you are surrounded by left you out of something big like this. I feel for you Voilet.
“Did you ever once stop to think that sometimes you can start out on the right side of a war and end up on the wrong one?”
“Fine. Were I to believe venin exist and roam the Continent wielding dark magic, then I’d also have to believe they never attack Navarre because…” My eyes widen at the possibility’s logical conclusion. “Because our wards make all non-dragon magic impossible.” “Yes.” He shifts his weight. “They’d be powerless the second they cross into Navarre.”
“Because the only thing that kills venin is the very thing powering our wards.”
I’m convinced it’s Liam’s family that plays a huge part in this.
He nods. “The material is forged into weapons to fight the venin. Here, take this.” Raising his right arm, he takes a black-handled dagger from the sheath at his side. I’m brutally aware of every move, horrifyingly aware that he’s been able to kill me whenever he wants, and this moment is no different. Though it would have been a swifter death if he’d simply used one of the swords strapped across his back. He moves slowly, extending the dagger as an offering. I take it, noting the sharpened blade, but it’s the alloy embedded into the rune-marked hilt that makes me gasp. “You took this from my
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“Because it hurts to think we’re the kind of kingdom that would do this. It hurts to rearrange everything you think you know. Lies are comforting. Truth is painful.”
Xaden turns on me, and the look in his eyes is anything but welcoming. “What did Dain say to you before we left? He leaned in and whispered something.” I blink, trying to remember. “He said something like…” I search my memory. “I’ll miss you, Violet.” His body goes tense. “And he said I was going to get you killed.” “Yes, but he always says that.” I shrug. “What would Dain have to do with emptying an entire outpost?”
“Did you tell him about my trips here?” Xaden questions, his eyes hardening. “No!” I shake my head. “Unlike some people, I never hid anything from you.” He draws back, his gaze shifting left and right as he thinks before settling on me again and widening. “Violence,” he says softly, “did Aetos touch you after I told you about Athebyne?”
Xaden’s face drains of all color, and he crumples the missive in his fist before looking at me. “It says our mission is to survive if we can.” Oh gods. Dain read my memories without my permission. He must have told his father to where they’ve been sneaking off. I’ve unknowingly betrayed Xaden…betrayed them all.
“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.
“Wyvern. Fables say venin created them to compete with dragons and, instead of channeling from them, channel power into them.”
If there’re four down there…” She shakes her head. “They’re after something, and they’re going to kill every single person in Resson to get it. Take your riot and go home while you can.”
Liam steps forward so he stands at my side. “We watched as our parents were executed because they had the courage to do the right thing. I’d like to think my death would be just as honorable.”
Like, I almost think he is a seer, ya?
And as for Mom… The dagger on her desk means she knows and has done nothing to stop it. Guess I’ll be the second child she sacrifices to keep the existence of venin a secret.
My eyes flare. “Speaking of knowing you’ll win fights, General Melgren will know what’s happened here. He’ll be able to see the outcome of the battle even now.” He shakes his head slowly and points to his neck, to the rebellion relic snaking around his throat. “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.”
I think it gives them extra signet powers. Yup yup.
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.”
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“Dragons can speak to gryphons?” My eyebrows shoot up. “Naturally. How do you think we communicated before humans got involved?”
“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.
THIS is why I’ve been focusing so much on Liam this reread. Now that I’ve read through this, I almost feel like he can’t die and he’s got to have a way to be in the next book. Not sure what it will be though. I dunno. Wishful thinking, me thinks.
Tairn puts us into position, hovering about twenty feet aboveground as Liam flies for the gryphons above us, wielding spears of ice into the injured wyvern’s throat. Blood streams as the wyvern falls from the sky with an ear-piercing cry.
This is what I remembered, why is he wielding ice??!
“Violet!” Liam shouts over the wind, and I rip my attention from the gruesome battle alongside us as we spiral downward. “We have to take out the riders.” “I know!” I reply. “We will!” He just needs to hang on. They both do. “No, I mean that’s the—”
He walks slowly across the gravelly terrain to Deigh’s body, saying things I can’t hear from where I kneel, the rocks digging into my knees through the fabric of the leather as I watch Xaden say goodbye.
“Violence!” Xaden grasps my shoulders, determination lining his features. “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.” It will kill me to wield that many times, but I’m the best shot we have. The best shot he has to survive.
“There is no me without you,” he says against my skin.
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
“Or maybe I’ll let him do it. You’ll wish for death if I hand you over to my Sage.”
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.
She’s never looked fragile to me, but she does now, lying in the middle of my bed, her lips pale and chapped, the ends of her hair duller than their usual bladelike hue.
Did it actually change color????
“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.
Is the bonds or signet power?
“Is…” Her shoulders stutter as she inhales. “Is Liam really dead?”
I take from my pocket the palm-size, freshly finished carving of Andarna Liam had been working on.
Garrick’s dragon is remarkably sensitive to runes, which allowed them to locate and retrieve the small iron box beneath the rubble of the clock tower.
I’d forgotten what it felt like to be loved, really, truly loved—it’d been so many years since Dad died. And Mom… Not going there.
Venin mom?
