It was not without risk that the first dragons bonded humans, for though they clearly hold the power, their bonded riders made them the one thing they could not tolerate: vulnerable. Many dragons suffered the loss of their bonded riders in the name of self-preservation.
—The Sacrifice of Dragonkind by Major Deandra Naveen
“Mira!” I scream louder than a dragon’s roar as crimson blood streams from the laceration in my sister’s throat.
Everything seems to happen at once, like a group of musicians cued for a performance.
“Time to play, Violet.” Theophanie hurls the dagger—at Jack.
A sea of gray wings rises in the south, and my boots pound across the field.
Xaden projects a stream of shadow toward Theophanie, but the bands fly southward.
What the fuck? No time to think. I’m already running at the dark wielder, alloy-hilted dagger drawn, when the closest wyvern launches and plucks Theophanie from the ground as it flies overhead.
Mira collapses to her knees in the grass, grabbing for the fatal cut with both hands, and suddenly nothing else matters. Not revenge. Not Draithus. My sister only has seconds.
Malek, please, no.
“It’s all right.” My voice breaks, and I discard my dagger and hit the ground, catching her as she falls. Blood streams through my fingers as I press my hand against the pulsing wound at her throat. Pressure. She needs pressure.
Not Mira. I yell at whatever deity will listen and press harder, like I can force the blood back into her body. My breath comes in stuttered gasps, terror cutting off the flow of oxygen.
Mira stares up at me, her brown eyes wide with shock, and I force a smile so she doesn’t meet Malek in fear. “You’re going to be all right.” I nod, my head jerking as my eyes blur.
“Move!” Brennan hits his knees, and I barely have time to yank my hand away before his is there. “You will live, do you hear me?” He slams his eyes shut and sweat immediately beads on his forehead as he leans over Mira.
Is it even possible? Brennan’s powerful, but I can’t think of a single rider who’s been saved on the battlefield with an injury this extensive. She goes limp and my heart seizes, but she’s still breathing despite the blood coursing down the sides of her neck.
Shapes blur and snarls sound from every direction. I look up, and the dragons leap over us, claws filling the sky before they land on the circle of wyvern. Four of the gray creatures launch at the onslaught, shrieking their way into the sky. The daggers of Sgaeyl’s tail swing just a few feet above us, and I throw my body over Mira and Brennan as the navy-blue blades cut so close I can feel air rush against my skin.
Xaden casts a wall of shadow, blocking us from the fray, and to the right, I see Garrick pull the venin’s dagger from the door of the Rybestad chest as Bodhi forces the other one shut.
Screeches fill the air and my muscles lock as I look back over my shoulder at the impenetrable darkness. “Tairn!” I can’t see him.
“They die,” he says, fury saturating the bond.
I take that as the only good sign on this field and sit back on my heels, giving Brennan room to breathe.
“Come on, come on,” Brennan mutters, his brow furrowed in concentration just like Dad’s used to, but he’s swaying slightly and losing color in his face.
It has to work. It just has to.
Blood trickles down the column of Mira’s neck, crossing her scar as her eyes flutter shut.
“You can’t have her,” I whisper up to Malek, and I swear the clouds darken slightly in acknowledgment, or maybe mocking, as two reds approach from the south at tremendous speed.
Wait. Why are they flying away from the city?
I strain to identify the dragons. Thoirt? The tear pattern in her right wing is unmistakable, but that would mean…
Oh gods, Sloane is here.
Liam, I’m so sorry. My throat tries to close as I throw my head back and search the sky for gray, but there’s only Thoirt and— I blink. That’s Cath on her tail.
Sweat drips down Brennan’s neck at the same alarmingly fast pace as blood from Mira’s wound, and his breathing becomes labored. “There’s too much damage,” he whispers.
“There isn’t,” I argue, glancing between Mira’s slackened face and the strain on my brother’s. “Brennan, you can mend anything, remember?”
Marbh roars.
“Your brother nears the limit of his power,” Tairn warns.
And I can’t give him mine. My heart races.
“Get the chest out of here,” Xaden shouts to Garrick. “If she wanted him dead, he obviously knows things they don’t want us to.”
“Chradh!” Garrick yells, and the Brown Scorpiontail bounds over the shadows to Garrick’s side. A second later, they disappear, along with the trunk.
I feel a rush of air as they go, and glance toward the sky as the two reds approach.
“How much are we trusting Aetos these days?” Bodhi says as he runs toward us.
“Not enough for what he just saw,” Xaden answers, his shadows blocking what looks to be the tip of a wyvern’s tail from hitting me.
Wind from wingbeats blows back Brennan’s hair, and the reds land so close their heads hover over us as they skid to a halt, their talons dragging up clumps of grass.
“Violet, I’m sorry,” Brennan whispers.
“Don’t say that.” I shake my head. “The blood flow is slowing. It’s working.” Though it hasn’t stopped.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Xaden calls up at Dain as he dismounts, but my focus firmly locks over Brennan’s shoulder.
“Following her ass,” Dain replies, then winces at the crunch of bone coming from behind the wall of shadows Xaden holds in place with both hands. “She’s under my command, and Cath alerted me the second they crossed the wards against orders.” He aims that last part in Sloane’s direction.
Sloane. A shard of hope pierces the terror wrapped around my heart.
She races our way, reaching into her flight jacket and retrieving a cylindrical parcel the length of her hand. “Aaric told me you’d need this—” She stumbles as she catches sight of Mira.
I don’t give a shit why she’s here. Only that she is.
My eyes prickle. “Please.”
Sloane’s fearful gaze snaps to mine.
“Mira?” Dain runs, then drops to a knee beside me. “Oh shit.”
“Please,” I blatantly, shamelessly beg Sloane. “Brennan needs more power, and we’re going to lose her.”
She takes one tentative step, then another as Brennan trembles, his hands on Mira’s neck. “I don’t know how. When your m—” She stops herself. “Transferring is different than imbuing. I know that much.”
“Whatever you’re going to do, you’d better do it fast,” Bodhi warns, drawing a sword and standing guard, his eyes on the sky.
“Try,” Dain urges, shoving the sleeve of his uniform up his forearm. “It’s dangerous to use your own power if you haven’t trained, so take mine. I’m the only one here who doesn’t have to wield today. Just try.”
A wyvern snarls behind me, and a distinctive snap follows.
Sloane lowers herself between Dain and Brennan as Mira’s blood soaks into my leathers.
“One hand on my wrist,” Dain says gently, like he’s talking to a skittish horse.
She stares at the gray handprint that scars his forearm. “I don’t want to do that. Become that.”
“You won’t.” He lifts his brows. “You can hate me later, but trust me now or she dies.”
Sloane wraps her fingers around Dain’s wrist. Her eyes flare, and she swallows. “Someone like you shouldn’t have this much power.”
“Good thing for Mira I do. Put the other hand anywhere his skin is exposed,” he orders.
Sloane drops her little package and lifts her hand to the back of Brennan’s neck.
I brush Mira’s hair off her forehead, leaving a bloody smear behind. She’s so damned pale. I should have told her about Xaden. She should have told me about my dedication. We’ve wasted so much time keeping things from each other, when Dad warned me to only trust her. If I had, would this still have happened?
“Do not blame yourself for wounds you do not inflict,” Tairn lectures.
“Eyes here,” Dain says, and Sloane looks his way. “Pull from the excess you feel in me, and push to the deficit in him. You’re not a weapon of destruction. You’re not venin. You’re the artery power chooses to flow through. You’re life.”
Her brow knits, and Dain flinches. “I’m going to hurt you.”
“Gods, don’t I know it.” He nods. “But you’re not going to kill me, no matter how badly you want to. Now do it.”
Her mouth tightens, and Dain grits his teeth.
Precious, long seconds pass before Brennan breathes deeply and color flushes his cheeks. I glance back to Mira, expecting the worst, but her chest still rises and falls. Blood ceases to drip, color returning to her cheeks.
“Brennan?” I whisper, too scared to even hope.
“It’s messy, but she’s alive.” My brother sits back, his frame drooping as he drags the back of his arm over his sweaty brow. “Thank you, Mairi.”
She lets go of both men, then lifts her gaze to mine. “She’ll be all right?”
“Thanks to you,” I say to Sloane.
She blows out a swift sigh of relief as Brennan reaches for the waterskin clipped at his hip. He quickly uncorks the top, then pours the water over Mira’s neck. A thick, angry pink scar straddles her throat.
I push her hair off her forehead again and give myself exactly three seconds to feel everything. My chest threatens to explode.
One. She’s alive.
Two. I won’t have to navigate a world where she doesn’t exist.
Three. Brennan is a fucking miracle worker.
“We have to get Mira out of here,” I say to my brother as the snarls and sounds of tearing flesh diminish behind me. A shape comes flying overhead but is yanked back by a rope of shadow. Pretty sure it was a talon.
“Agreed.” Brennan looks toward Draithus, where an outright battle has begun. Dragons and gryphons hover above the city walls as enormous cross-bolts fire into the cloud of approaching wyvern. “You all right, Aetos?”
Dain twists his hand around his wrist. “I’m good.”
My stomach clenches. The hardest part of this will be trusting everyone to do their jobs, and the city isn’t mine to hold. I glance at Xaden, then Dain. “You both have to go. They’ll be out of cross-bolts soon.”
Dain rises to stand and offers his hand to Sloane.
“Fuck off, Aetos.” She rocks forward and up to her feet.
He pauses like he’s counting to three. “Get back across the wards, Mairi, and stay there.”
She turns on her heel and stalks toward Thoirt, lifting a middle finger.
Bodhi snorts.
“Fucking first-years,” Dain mutters as she mounts. “Riorson, I’ll meet you down there.” He heads toward Cath’s foreleg.
“Dain!” I shout, and he looks back over his shoulder. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. Just tell me later how the fuck Garrick and Chradh disappeared into thin air.” He takes off at a run, and within a matter of seconds, both Thoirt and Cath fly in separate directions.
Bodhi helps Brennan to his feet.
“I don’t want to leave you.” Xaden drops the wall of shadow. I glance over my shoulder and find dead wyvern scattered in the field, and Sgaeyl, Tairn, and Marbh examining the chains strapped around Teine.
“I know. But you have to.”
“I’ll carry her.” Brennan bends and scoops Mira’s unconscious body off my lap.
“You’re all right?” I locate my alloy-hilted dagger in the grass and put it back in place as I rise, then grab the package Sloane left behind, too. It’s addressed to Aaric and bears the unbroken seal of Dunne.
Why in all that’s holy would he send Sloane into a war zone to give me his own mail? I’m going to throttle him…as soon as I figure out what the fuck he’s currently doing.
“Mairi gave me a little more than she needed to. I’m fine.” He adjusts Mira in his arms.
“I know you were supposed to stay, but take Mira,” Bodhi says. “We’ll figure out how to free Teine so she can follow.”
“Agreed.” Brennan’s mouth tenses, and he looks at me. “I have more than a dozen runes I can leave—”
“Thanks, but I’ll pass,” I interrupt. “Better I stick to what I’m good at.”
He nods. “Stick to the plan, Violet—no matter what goes wrong. We’re counting on you.” His gaze jumps to Xaden. “That applies to you, too.” He doesn’t waste time waiting for a reply, just heads toward Marbh.
I slip Aaric’s package into my flight jacket pocket and watch as Brennan walks away. Weird. There’s no mark at the back of his neck like he carries on his palm. There hadn’t been one on Dain’s wrist, either.
“You’d better go,” Bodhi urges Xaden. “We’ve got wyvern trying to round the north side of the city, and the pass is just beyond. Whole battle just a few miles away, remember?”
“I’m going.” Xaden grabs Brennan’s discarded waterskin, then pours its remaining contents over my right hand, washing away the majority of Mira’s blood. The water runs off my fingers, slowly fading from crimson to pale pink before he drops the skin. “Concentrate.” He cradles my cheek, and our eyes lock. “Use only Tairn’s power. Do not turn. Do not die. Accomplish your mission, and I will find you after.”
He kisses me breathless, and for just that second, time doesn’t matter. My heart races, and I wrap my arms around his neck, pouring everything I feel for him into my response. It’s chaotic and desperate and over far too soon.
“Come back to me,” I demand as he moves away.
“Only ever you.” He holds my gaze for another few steps, then turns to Bodhi. “Stay with her, but remember your promise.”
Bodhi nods. “I don’t want your fucking province.”
“Noted.” Xaden clasps Bodhi’s shoulder, then breaks into a run for Sgaeyl. Her golden eyes swivel toward mine.
“Get off the ground and stay with him,” she orders, and we both know she doesn’t mean Bodhi.
“Same goes to you.” I lift my chin.
They’re airborne within seconds, flying south toward the city. I look away before fear has a chance to grab hold. He’s the most powerful rider on the field, and she’s merciless. Their survival isn’t a question.
Bodhi and I will give them enough time to save the city.
“Now that the Duke of Angst is gone,” Bodhi says, his voice rising, “we have a problem.”
Of course we do.
