-SIX
ragons,” Brennan says as we skip the path that leads to the
wardstone chamber and instead climb the one that leads to the top of
the hill with the other members of the Assembly, Xaden and Rhiannon
walking up behind us in the afternoon light.
The wind howls as storm clouds roll in above us. Even the weather holds
a sense of urgency, and if I’m wrong? If I missed a symbol? A meaning?
We’ll be fighting for our lives in the next few hours. But I can feel the
distinct, powerful hum of the wardstone from here, so that must mean I
have part of it right.
The time Dain, Xaden, and I have put in imbuing the wardstone has paid
off. It’s not creating wards on its own, of course, but it’s at least holding
power.
The chaos inside Riorson House bleeds onto the trail that leads to the
valley as riders and fliers alike hike for the flight field, armed to the teeth
with swords, battle-axes, daggers, and bows. My own daggers are sheathed
—all but the two I left in the cave with Solas’s body—and my pack is
strapped to my back. Most third- and second-years are headed to the
outposts along the Navarrian border, and then there’s me.
I’ll be with Xaden, since Tairn and Sgaeyl can fly faster than the rest of
the riot to confront the approaching horde. The last thing we want is to let
them get to Aretia.
If we hurry and the translation is accurate, we might get the wards
working just as the horde reaches the height of the cliffs. I try not to focus
on what will happen if I’ve translated wrong again, my heart racing in my
chest as we hurry up the path.
I glance over my shoulder at Xaden, his jaw clenched, eyes not quite
meeting mine. Maybe he and I keep having the same fight because we
never get to actually finish it. What in Malek’s name could his signet be if
he went that pale?
“Dragons,” I repeat to Brennan, pulling my attention back to my brother
and handing the journal over on the page I’d mistranslated originally. “That
line?” I point with a gloved finger. “It’s more loosely interpreted as political
power, not physical, which would be a lower placement on the symbol.
Dain caught that one. The stone needs a representative of each den.” Which
is exactly why Rhiannon is trekking up the path behind us with a stone-
silent Xaden. We need Feirge. “And it took reading the entire beginning to
know that once a dragon fires a wardstone, their fire can’t be used on any
other, and reading the entire end to know they created two wardstones. But
it doesn’t say why they never activated this one. It’s dragonfire that triggers
the imbedded runes, and they obviously had enough dragons, so why
wouldn’t they protect more of Navarre if they could?”
My entire body aches from today’s attack, especially my head and
shoulders, and I fight to lock the pain away so we can get this done. It won’t
matter if I’m hurting if we’re dead in the next few hours. Gently, I probe the
swollen knot on the back of my head and wince.
“Let me mend it,” Brennan says, worry creasing his forehead as he looks
up from the journal.
“We don’t have time right now. Later.” I shake my head and tug my
hood up over my head to ward off the cold.
He shoots me a disapproving look but doesn’t try to talk me out of my
choice. “Not only did you translate it, but you went back and did it again
when most people would have quit. I’m really impressed, Violet.” His
mouth curves into a smile.
“Thanks.” I can’t help but smile back with a little bit of pride. “Dad
taught me well, and Markham picked up where he left off.”
“Bet you disappointed the hell out of him when you stayed in the Riders
Quadrant.”
“I’m definitely his biggest failure.” Just a few more steps.
“But Dad’s biggest success.” He offers the journal back.
“I think he’d be proud of all of us. You should keep that.” I nod at the
journal as we finally reach the top. “It needs to be preserved.”
“Any time you want it, it’s yours,” he promises, tucking it into his jacket
for safekeeping before heading left toward where Marbh stands next to
Cath, his tail flicking as Dain waits in front of him, shifting his weight
impatiently.
Six dragons surround the top of the chamber, standing wing to wing, and
I make my way to Tairn, who stands beside Sgaeyl, as I would expect.
“How is Andarna?” I ask him, taking my place between his forelegs and
peeking over the stone-rimmed edge into the chamber where the wardstone
sits a hundred feet below. “She’s not responding when I reach out.”
“She’s been questioned by the elders, and her actions were found
justifiable,” he answers. “But to slay another dragon is a heavy mark upon
the soul, even when in defense of yourself or your rider.”
“That’s why you only took his eye instead of killing him.” I stiffen as
Xaden approaches, refusing to look his way as he moves into position with
Sgaeyl.
“I should have ended him then. I will not hesitate when faced with a
similar predicament in the future. She now suffers with a burden that should
have been mine.”
“I’m proud of her.”
“As am I.”
Rhiannon stands with Feirge, and Suri does the same with her Brown
Clubtail.
“Let’s get this done.” Suri shoots a glare my way, obviously still angry
that I’ve hidden my discovery for the past week. I’m definitely not winning
any points in the trust department.
All six of us exchange glances and quick nods.
“It is time,” Tairn says.
The dragons inhale as one and then exhale fire into the chamber in six
separate streams, instantly warming the air around us. This is exactly why
they built it open to the sky—not as some kind of worship of the stars but
because the dragons needed access for this.
I look away, turning my head to the side when the heat triggers my
hypersensitive skin, still stinging from Solas’s assault. A heartbeat later, a
pulse of magic vibrates through me in a wave, dredging my power to the
surface with a feeling slightly softer than the one that had rippled out at the
emergence of Aretia’s first hatchling.
The fire ceases, and the blazing heat dissipates into the winter air,
leaving us all staring at the stone, at our dragons, at one another.
That leveled, anchored sensation I’ve only felt within the wards at
Basgiath has returned, and the wild, unleashed magic that’s crawled under
my skin since leaving Navarre seems to sit back, not weaker but infinitely
more…tame. I lean over the edge to look, but the stone looks exactly the
same as it did before.
Maybe the fire is more symbolic?
I glance over at Dain, and he smiles wider than I’ve seen in years,
nodding to me. My quick grin mirrors his, and my chest swells with
excitement. We did it. All the long nights and the cold days spent imbuing,
all the squabbles over translation, and even my initial failure are worth it for
this moment.
“Is that it?” Brennan asks, looking across the chamber’s opening at me.
“We don’t exactly have time to test it.” Xaden points upward, where the
drifts have already taken to the sky, then locks his gaze with mine. “Let’s
fly.”
airn has never flown faster, leaving Sgaeyl and Xaden behind as he surges
for the cliff with the best vantage point for spotting wyvern—the edge of
T
the high plains—usually a two-hour flight for Tairn, but this evening
we make it a few minutes under that mark.
“They’re fifteen minutes behind us,” he tells me as he sails over
miles and miles of agricultural fields, gradually descending until we land
fifty yards from the edge of the cliffs. “Use it to center yourself.”
“Don’t tell me you’re taking Xaden’s side of this argument.” I unbuckle
from the saddle and wince as I climb out of my seat. “I need to stretch my
legs.”
“I don’t take the lieutenant anywhere.” He chuffs. “As if I have nothing
better to do than listen to your romantic issues.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to jump to conclusions.” I navigate his spikes, and
he dips his shoulder.
“Though I do take offense at your insult,” he notes as I slide down his
leg.
“Insult?” My knee protests when my boots collide with the frozen
ground, but the wrap holds tight.
“You doubt your judgment as if I did not choose you for it.”
“But you weren’t listening. Right.” Rolling my shoulders, I walk toward
the edge of the cliff and summon just enough of my power that my skin
warms even though my breath puffs out in clouds of steam.
There’s a hum here, too, and I instinctively know that this is where the
wards end, twenty feet short of the cliff’s edge. This point is a four-hour
flight from Aretia for average dragons—if such a creature exists.
Would this be the natural border of Basgiath’s wards if they weren’t
extended by the outposts? That distance would leave Elsum, Tyrrendor, and
even most of Calldyr unwarded.
Gods, we’re not even shielding most of Tyrrendor if this is the
wardstone’s natural range.
“What’s the news?” I ask Tairn.
“The nearest riot of three is twenty miles to the north, and the same to
the south.”
“No sightings?” We don’t have the strength Xaden wants in each unit
tonight, but we can cover more of the border in groups of three, or in our
case, two. Deploying in smaller but closely spaced units gives the stronger
dragons a better chance at communicating as well.
Every bonded pair has been recalled from the lines across Poromiel to
defend the cliffs, but there’s no hope of those stationed in Cordyn, or
beyond at the border with the Braevick province, making it back in time.
“Not from the cliffs.”
“But beyond?” I look out across the darkening landscape, searching for
any sign of gray wings.
“I’d estimate we have a quarter hour.” He huffs a hot breath of steam
that billows past me. “Prepare yourself. Sgaeyl approaches.”
“Do you think he’s right?” I ask, folding my arms across my chest as
wingbeats break the relative silence of the night.
“I know he thinks he is.”
That’s helpful.
Sgaeyl lands close to Tairn, and I breathe in my last moments of peace
and prepare myself for the battle to come before the actual war reaches us.
It isn’t long before I hear his familiar footsteps coming my way.
“No sightings on this side of the cliff,” I tell him as he reaches my side,
keeping my shields firmly in place. “Tairn thinks we have fifteen minutes.”
“There’s no one else out here.” His words are clipped.
“Right. We’re the only pair.” I shift my weight, energy tingling in my
fingers, slowly filling my cells, saturating me in preparation instead of
drowning me as usual. “I know that goes against your full riot—”
“That’s not what I mean.” He shoves his gloves into his pockets, leaving
his hands bare and ready to wield, the perfect picture of composure and
control. “There’s no one within miles to hear us.”
My eyebrows shoot up, and I turn toward him in sheer incredulity. “I’m
sorry, are you suggesting that the reason you didn’t answer my question
back in Aretia was because you don’t trust your own sound shield on our
room?”
“There is always someone better at something than you, including
wards.” He winces. “And maybe that wasn’t the entire reason.”
“Spare me from whatever bullshit you’re about to impart.” My stomach
twists, and I lower my voice into my best Xaden impression. “‘Ask me.’” I
shake my head. “Yet, the first real question I pose, you duck out the door
like a coward.”
“It never occurred to me that you’d ask about a second signet,” he
argues.
“Liar.” I whip my gaze forward, studying the sky for movement and
fighting the scalding anger that tests the Archives doors of my power. “You
wouldn’t have told me that Sgaeyl bonded your grandfather if you never
wanted me to know. Whether it was a conscious or unconscious choice, you
made it. You knew I’d figure it out. Was it just another one of your ask me
tests? Because if so, you failed this one, not me.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” he shouts, the words coming out
strangled, like they had to be ripped from his throat.
The admission earns him my full attention, but his outburst is quickly
smothered by his self-control, and we fall into strained silence as he stares
off into the distance.
“Sometimes I feel like I don’t know you.” I study the harsh lines of his
face as his jaw flexes. “How am I supposed to really love you if I don’t
know you?”
I can’t, and I think we both know it.
“How long do you think it takes for someone to fall out of love?” He
studies the skyline. “A day? A month? I’m asking because I don’t have any
experience with it.”
What the fuck? I fold my arms to keep from giving in to the impulse to
jab him with the sharp point of my elbow.
“I’m asking,” he continues, his throat working as he swallows, “because
I think it will take you all of a heartbeat once you know.”
Apprehension slides up my spine and knots in my throat as I slightly
lower my shields just enough to feel ice-cold terror along my bond with
him. What the hell could his signet be that I wouldn’t love him?
Oh shit. What if he’s like Cat? What if he’s been manipulating my
emotions this whole time? I swallow back the bile inching its way up my
throat.
“I would never do something like that,” he retorts, sending a sideways,
wounded glare at me as he continues to watch the sky.
“Shit.” I rub my hands over my face. “I didn’t mean to say that out
loud.”
He doesn’t respond.
“Just tell me what it is.” I reach for him, curling my fingers around the
back of his arm. “You said that you trust me to stay because even if I don’t
know your darkest deeds, I know what you’re capable of, but I don’t if you
won’t tell me.” Somehow, we’re right back where we were months ago,
neither of us fully trusting the other.
His mouth opens, but he snaps it shut, as if he was going to talk, then
thought better of it.
“Signets have to do with who we are at our core and what we need,” I
think out loud. If he won’t tell me, then I’ll figure it out my damn self. “You
are a master of secrets, hence the shadows.” I gesture at the ones curled
around his feet. “You’re deadly with every weapon you pick up, but that’s
not a signet.” My brow furrows.
“Stop.”
“You’re ruthless, which I guess could have something to do with an
ability to shut off your emotions.” I shift my weight and study his face,
watching for even the most minute sign that I’m onto something, and keep
guessing, trusting Tairn to spot the wyvern before we do. “You’re a natural
leader. Everyone gravitates toward you, even against their better judgment.”
That last part comes out as a mutter. “You’re always in the right place—”
My eyebrows rise. “Are you a distance wielder?” I’ve only read about two
riders in all of history who could cross hundreds of miles in a single step.
“There hasn’t been a distance wielder in centuries, and don’t you think if
I was one, I would have spent every night in your bed?” He shakes his head.
“But what do you need?” I ponder, ignoring the tense set of his jaw.
“You need to question everyone to make your own impressions. You need
to be a quick judge of character in order to know who to trust and who not
to in order to have run those smuggling missions at Basgiath for years.
More than anything, you need control. It’s woven into every aspect of your
personality.”
“Stop,” he demands.
I ignore the warning completely, just like I ignored Mira’s warning last
year to stay away from him. “You need to fix— Never mind, if you could
mend, you wouldn’t have brought me to Aretia. Let’s try eliminating signets
instead. You can’t see the future, or you never would have led us to
Athebyne. You can’t wield any element, or you would have done so in
Resson—” I pause as a thought pushes past the others. “Who knows?”
“Stop before you go somewhere we can’t come back from.” Shadows
move across the inches that separate us, winding up my calves as if he
thinks he’s going to have to fight to keep me at his side.
“Who knows?” I repeat, my voice rising with my temper. Not that it
matters. There’s no one else for miles, and there are no sound-seekers in
Aretia capable of hearing across miles of distance like Captain Greely in
General Melgren’s personal unit, hence why our communication times lag.
“Do the marked ones know? Does the Assembly? Am I the only person
close to you who doesn’t know, just like last year?” My hand falls away
from his arm.
It’s impossible to have a signet that no one has detected, no one has
trained. Has he played me for a fool again? The space between my ribs and
my heart shrivels and shrinks, my chest threatening to crumple.
“For fuck’s sake, Violet. No one else knows.” He turns toward me in a
move so fast it would intimidate someone else, but I know he’s incapable of
hurting me—at least physically—so I merely tilt my chin and stare up into
those gold-flecked eyes in blatant challenge.
“I deserve better than this. Tell me the truth.”
“You’ve always deserved better than me. And no one knows,” he
repeats, his voice dropping. “Because if they did, I’d be dead.”
“Why would—” My lips part, and my pulse jumps as my head starts to
swim.
He has to have full control. He has to make snap character judgments.
He has to intrinsically know who to trust and who not to. In order for the
movement to have been as successful as it was within the walls of Basgiath,
he has to know…everything.
Xaden’s most pressing need is information.
Tairn shifts, angling his body toward Sgaeyl instead of beside her.
Oh gods. There’s only one signet riders are killed for having. Fear
churns in my stomach and threatens to bring up what little I’ve had to eat
today.
“Yes.” He nods, his gaze boring into mine.
Shit, did he just—
“No.” I shake my head and take a step backward out of his shadows, but
he moves as if he takes the step with me.
“Yes. It’s how I knew I could trust you not to tell anyone about the
meeting under the tree last year,” he says as I retreat another step. “How I
seem to know what my opponent has planned on the mat before their next
move. How I know exactly what someone needs to hear in order to get them
to do what I need done, and how I knew if someone remotely suspected us
while we were at Basgiath.”
I shake my head in denial, wishing I’d stopped pushing like he’d
demanded me to.
He crosses the space between us. “It’s why I didn’t kill Dain in the
interrogation chamber, why I let him come with us, because the second his
shields wavered, I knew he’d had a true epiphany. How would I know that,
Violet?”
He’d read Dain’s mind.
Xaden is more dangerous than I ever imagined.
“You’re an inntinnsic,” I whisper. Even the accusation is a death
sentence among riders.
“I’m a type of inntinnsic,” he repeats slowly, like it’s the first time he’s
ever said the words. “I can read intentions. Maybe I would know what to
call it if they didn’t kill everyone with even a hint of the signet.”
My eyebrows jolt upward. “Can you read thoughts or not?”
His jaw flexes. “It’s more complicated than that. Think of that breath of
a second before the actual thought, the subconscious motivation you might
not even be aware of in your mind, or when instinct drives you to move or
you’re looking to betray someone. The intention is always there. Mostly
they come across as pictures, but some people intend in really clear
pictures.”
Tairn growls low in his throat and lowers his head at Sgaeyl as a rush of
something bitter and sick floods our bond. Betrayal. I slam my shields up,
blocking him out before I’m lost to his emotions, already struggling with
mine.
He didn’t know.
Another rumble of anger vibrates his chest scales, and my heart lurches
with pangs of sympathy.
Sgaeyl draws back in retreat, shocking me to the core, but holds her
head high, exposing her throat to her mate.
The same way Xaden just metaphorically exposed his to me. All I have
to do is tell someone—anyone—and he’s dead. A soft roaring fills my ears.
“There are some secrets even mates can’t share,” Xaden says, his eyes
locked on mine, but his words are meant for Tairn. “Some secrets that can’t
be spoken of even behind the protections of wards.”
“And yet you know everyone’s secrets, don’t you? Everyone’s
intentions?” That’s why inntinnsics aren’t allowed to live. The implications
of his signet hit me with the force of a battering ram, and I stagger
backward like the blow is a physical one. How many times has he read me?
How many pre-thoughts has he eavesdropped on? Do I actually love him?
Or did he just say what I wanted to hear? Do the things I needed in order to
—
“Less than a minute,” Xaden whispers as Sgaeyl moves toward him—
toward us. “That’s how long it took for you to fall out of love with me.”
My gaze flashes to his. “Don’t read my…whatever!”
Tairn stalks toward me, his head low and his teeth bared as he places
himself at my back.
“I didn’t.” The saddest smile I’ve ever seen tugs at Xaden’s mouth.
“First, because your shields are up, and secondly because I didn’t have to.
It’s all over your face.”
My heart struggles to beat regularly, torn between slowing and
sluggishly admitting defeat, and racing—no, rising to fight—in defense of
the simple yet agonizing truth that I love him anyway.
But how many more blows can that love take? How many more daggers
are there in that metaphorical armoire? Gods, I don’t know what to think.
Nausea washes over me. Has he ever used it on me?
“Say something,” he begs, fear streaking through his eyes.
The roaring grows louder, the sound like a thousand soft drops of rain on
a roof.
“My love isn’t fickle.” I shake my head slowly, keeping my gaze locked
on his. “So you’d better live, because I’m ready to ask you all the fucking
questions.”
“Silver One, mount!” Tairn bellows, demolishing the barrier of my
shields like they’re thinner than parchment. “Wyvern!”
Xaden and I both spare a single glance to the edge of the cliffs. My
stomach drops as I realize that the approaching gray cloud isn’t a storm and
that roaring in my ears is actually wingbeats. One heartbeat, that’s all I wait,
and then I’m turning, moving, sprinting across the frozen ground and racing
up the ramp Tairn makes of his foreleg to his shoulder.
“How many?” I lower my flight goggles and blast the question down the
mental pathway that connects the four of us as I climb into my saddle.
“Hundreds,” Sgaeyl answers.
“That’s unfortunate.” I force air through my lungs in measured breaths
to keep calm, but my hand still trembles as I buckle the belt across my lap.
The second I’m secure, Tairn swings his body parallel to the cliffs and
launches, throwing my weight back into my seat as he climbs rapidly with
heavy, forceful wingbeats.
When we have enough altitude for air superiority, Tairn banks left,
flying in a tight circle until we face the flying horde. Then he pushes his
wings back against the wind, abruptly halting our momentum and sending
my body forward into the pommel as he hovers a hundred feet above the
frozen field, leaving twice his body length between us and the cliff’s edge.
“A little warning next time?” I use our private bond.
“Did you fall?” he challenges along the same, his wings rising and
falling only often enough to keep us relatively in place.
I decide to keep my retort to myself as Xaden and Sgaeyl arrive on our
right, keeping a noticeable distance from the edge of Tairn’s wing. “I’m
sorry she didn’t tell you.”
“We will settle matters of emotion after matters of life.”
Noted.
My stomach twists when I can make out individual shapes in the horde,
then outright sours as evening sky appears between their wingbeats.
“Thirty seconds,” Tairn estimates.
I release the pommel and turn my palms up, opening the Archives door
to Tairn’s power and letting it fill every cell in my body until the hum of
energy I pick up on at the edge of the wards is replaced by the hum of
energy that I’ve become.
“They’re slowing,” Xaden remarks as the horde spreads into a grouping
I’m terrified to acknowledge looks like a formation.
Bile rises in my throat as I count one, two, three, four—“I count at least
a dozen venin.”
“Seventeen,” Tairn corrects in a growl.
Seventeen dark wielders and a horde that rivals the riot at Aretia
against…us. “We’re dead if the wards aren’t up, if I messed up the
translation.”
“You didn’t,” Xaden replies, sounding infinitely more confident than I
feel. Heat flushes my skin as my power seeks an outlet, but I keep it
contained, ready to be wielded as three wyvern break away from the
grouping and fly closer. They hover a tail’s length beyond the edge of the
cliffs, their scales dull and gray, holes peppered through their wings as
though they hadn’t quite finished forming.
“They can feel the wards,” I manage to say before my stomach
abandons my body, plummeting like a rock. The rider on the center
wyvern…
“Then they can die in them, too,” Sgaeyl replies.
I can only make out vague facial features from this distance, but I know
in my very bones it’s him. The Sage from Resson, the one who’s taken up
residence in my nightmares.
His head turns noticeably from me…to Xaden.
“He was in Resson,” I tell him.
“I know.” White-hot rage shimmers along the bond.
The Sage lifts his staff, then swings it like a club, pointing toward us.
“I love you,” Xaden says as the wyvern closest to me banks away from
the wards, falling into a turning dive, only to gain speed and climb again,
leveling out behind the lead two before flying straight for us. “Even if you
believe nothing else I ever say, please believe that.”
“Do not speak to her as if death is a possibility,” Tairn snaps, slamming
his own shields around us both, an impenetrable wall of black stone,
blocking out Xaden and Sgaeyl.
I breathe deeply, using every ounce of concentration to keep my power
contained and my emotions under control as the wyvern accumulates speed
and flies past the lead two, heading for the wards.
Time slows to heartbeats, my breath freezing in my heated chest.
Then the wyvern crosses the invisible barrier, and my heart stops beating
altogether as its wings flap once. Twice.
“Prepare to dive.” Tairn swivels his head, his jaw opening as the
wyvern closes the distance to less than a body length, and I brace for the
maneuver. “Never mind.”
The wyvern’s wings and head sag, and its body follows suit—as though
someone plucked out its life force—and then it falls, propelled only by its
previous momentum, passing forty feet beneath us and crashing into the
field below, leaving a deep furrow before stopping.
“We should check—”
“Its heartbeat ceased,” Tairn tells me, his attention already redirected to
the other two wyvern along the border and the horde behind them. “The
wards work.”
The wards work. Relief restarts my heart.
The Sage swings his staff again and lets out a furious shout, sending the
wyvern on the right, who meets the same fate a few seconds later, impacting
a short distance from the first one.
Tairn doesn’t look when Sgaeyl dives for the carcasses, but he does
lower his shields.
“They’re dead,” Xaden confirms a moment later, and I glance down to
see Felix arriving on his Red Swordtail.
We’re safe. I throw out my hands and release the searing energy within
me, letting it snap free as I wield. Lightning cracks open the sky, striking a
few feet from the remaining wyvern, and I curse under my breath.
Close, but I didn’t hit him.
It’s enough for the Sage to call off the attack, and though I can’t see his
eyes from here, I feel the hatred of his stare locking onto me as he looks
back before joining the rest of the horde.
“That’s it?” I ask Tairn as he holds position, watching the wyvern
become a cloud of gray once again. How…anticlimactic. “Now what?”
“Now we stay long enough to be sure, and then we go home.”
We wait another three hours before flying back, long enough for Suri to
arrive and tell us of three similar incidents along the cliffs. We weren’t the
lucky recipients of a lone horde. It was a coordinated, simultaneous attack.
But we survived.
The joyous atmosphere is contagious when we walk into Riorson House
a few hours later, accompanied by Felix, and I’m promptly pulled into
Rhiannon’s hug.
“You got the wards up!” Her flight leathers are still cold from the night
air, meaning she’s just returned, too.
“We got the wards up,” I counter before I’m yanked out of her arms and
smooshed against Ridoc’s chest, then Sawyer’s, as riders and fliers
celebrate around us, the noise filling the cavernous space of Riorson
House’s foyer and somehow making the area feel smaller in the best way,
less like a fortress and more like a home.
“We’re needed in the Assembly chamber right now,” Xaden says,
leaning past Sloane and raising his voice to be heard over the cacophony.
Our eyes lock and I nod, keeping my shields firmly in place to block
him out, which feels not only unnatural but…wrong. How ironic to
celebrate a monumental victory and still feel like I’ve lost something
precious. There hasn’t been a second alone to discuss the fact that if my
shields were down, he’d already know how fucked up my head is about the
signet he’s hidden.
I can’t imagine walking away from this, from us, but that doesn’t mean
that we don’t have some serious issues we need to discuss—nor that I am
not pissed as hell that he’s given me another reason to doubt my own ability
to trust my own judgment. And just because I can’t imagine walking away
doesn’t mean I won’t do it if we can’t find some healthy ground. I’m
quickly learning it’s possible to love someone and not want to be with them
at the same time.
The second we walk into the Assembly chamber and a guard shuts the
door behind us, the noise outside falls away and eight pairs of eyes turn in
our direction. None of them appear as happy as they should be, given what
we’ve just accomplished.
Syrena and Mira break away from the Assembly and walk toward us as
Felix calls Xaden over from the dais with an urgent tone.
“We need to find time to talk,” Xaden says quickly and quietly, and I
know he only says it out loud because I won’t let him into my mind.
“Later,” I agree just to end the conversation before Mira and Syrena hear
us. There isn’t enough time in the world to process what he’s told me.
He walks away as they approach, and I peel my gaze from his back to
give my attention to my sister. The tension in her face has power rising
within me swiftly, my body preparing for battle. “What’s wrong?”
“As soon as the attack was over, a missive was delivered to Ulices,” she
tells me. “He was at the Terria outpost—”
“On the border with Navarre,” I finish for her, anxious to get to the heart
of the matter.
“Melgren has asked us to meet with him tomorrow. He requested
whomever represents our movement—no more than two marked ones
allowed—along with Violet and Mira Sorrengail.” She reaches for my hand
and squeezes gently. “You can say no. You should say no.”
“Why would the commanding general of all Navarrian forces ask for a
cadet and lieutenant?” My voice trails off and I glance over to the dais,
where Brennan is locked in a quiet, heated discussion with the other six.
“Our mother will be there.”
“And if a fight breaks out, we know it ends in his favor—otherwise, he
would never summon us. He’s already seen the outcome.”
I stick that predicament on the growing list of things I’ll have to deal
with.
“There’s something else you need to know,” Syrena says, drawing a
dagger and placing it on her outstretched palm. With a flick of the flier’s
wrist, the dagger rises a few inches, then spins when she twirls her index
finger.
It’s a simple, lesser magic, something I learned last year—
“You can still wield.” My heart sinks at the wider implications, and my
shoulders sag.
She nods solemnly. “As glad as I am to not be stripped of my power, I’m
sorry to say there’s something wrong with your wards.”
Fuck.
The day Augustine Melgren manifested his signet changed warfare
for the kingdom of Navarre forever.
—NAVARRE, AN UNEDITED HISTORY
BY COLONEL LEWIS MARKHAM
T
