The gem given to you upon graduation from Cliffsbane should always be worn close to the heart, but if you have not mastered your control, it will only amplify your downfall.
—Chapter Three, The Canon of the Flier
Four nights later, our riot of eight—now including Mira, thanks to Halden throwing his royal weight around—crosses the border at Samara, and magic slips free of the wards’ cage. Power expands in every direction, running like a current that rushes around me, beckoning me to play…or destroy. My skin tingles as we slip down into the valleys through the Esbens, and I’m struck with the oddest urge to try and pluck strands from the very sky and weave runes.
“It feels like there’s more power out here than usual,” I tell Tairn as we dive along a ridgeline.
“There’s actually less—the venin saw to that,” he replies. “But you grow more powerful every day, more capable of recognizing what once was entirely invisible to you.”
“I could recognize it,” Andarna chimes in. “If you ever let me come with you.”
“With Theophanie hunting you, you’re far safer at Samara.” I grip the pommels as Tairn levels out along the riverbank, sticking to the shadows the overcast night has provided. I swear, there’s a permanent bruise just below my sternum from trying to sleep in the saddle. This thing could use some modifications before we head to Deverelli.
“But you’re not,” Andarna argues, her voice fading the farther we fly. “I can burn venin.”
“I’ve told you a dozen times, first fire burns the hottest, which could explain the phenomenon,” Tairn replies. “This mission is dangerous enough without adding a desirable target for any lurking dark wielders.”
“They’re all busy to the south…” Her voice trails off as the connection is severed.
“We have about twelve hours before you’ll start to feel the pain of distance from Andarna,” Tairn reminds me as we cut through the night, opening the conversation to Sgaeyl and Xaden’s pathways.
I have no desire to test the three-to-four-day limit that riders and their dragons can be apart, nor to suffer the fatal consequences. Three hours to Anca. One hour to locate the citrine. Three hours back. A third of the riot stationed at Samara launched an offensive against a known stronghold just north of the fortress an hour ago, which allowed us to slip through the red line on Battle Brief’s map unnoticed by the enemy. Everything is going according to plan.
Three hours later, it feels almost a little too easy as we land in the desiccated village square of what had once been Anca. Definitely not occupied. Other than evading two patrols of wyvern by staying low, we haven’t seen a single enemy, only sparse villages and dimly lit encampments of civilians between the land the venin drained in their advance toward Samara. Tairn sets his claws down first as usual, despite being told to hang back in formation by Grady, and the rest follow suit around the withered remains of a clock tower.
“Just because I accepted the terms of the mission does not mean I like them.” Tairn grumbles low in his chest as I bundle my flight jacket with the pack at the edge of my saddle and dismount.
“I know.” My feet hit the ground, and everything feels…off without the presence of magic. According to our latest intel, wielding within drained territory isn’t just challenging, but it seems to draw venin, so I let the conduit fall along my wrist, keeping it close just in case everything goes to shit. “Stick to the plan. I’ll let you know when we have it.”
Tairn bends, then launches high above the crumbling two-story buildings, and is quickly joined by the rest of the dragons, two of whom bear the riders Grady chose to do recon from above—Pugh and Foley.
Xaden strides past the clock tower, heading my way. He’s done a good job of masking his discomfort, but I can see the struggle in his eyes and the curl of his fingers.
“You should have taken the sentry assignment,” I tell him as Grady gathers the others to my left.
“I wasn’t leaving you on the ground.” Our hands nearly brush as we turn and walk toward the group, but we’re careful not to touch, especially with how Aura Beinhaven narrows her eyes in our direction. “And it’s not like I’m risking anything as long as I remain calm, cool, and collected within the perimeter. The magic is long since drained.”
Which is why the dragons are in the sky, flying over the land the dark wielders left untouched in their haste to reach Samara.
“I can’t tell…” Grady flips the hand-drawn map over. “Her handwriting is atrocious.”
“It looks like that way,” Captain Henson notes, leaning in to see and pointing across the village square.
“Which is why you should have brought Cat like Violet asked.” Mira plucks the map straight out of Grady’s hand and studies it.
“Gryphons can’t keep up,” Grady reminds us. “And this mission will serve as a trial run for all those that follow. An extra member would have thrown off the dynamic.”
“What fucking dynamic?” I ask Xaden. “I loathe Aura, don’t really trust Grady after he fed us the serum during RSC training, and don’t know the rest of them.”
“Calm. Cool. Collected.” Xaden slides his hands into his pockets.
“Really? I don’t see a prince or his guards here, let alone anyone representing Poromiel. And stop whispering like they can hear you.” Mira rotates the map and lines up the landmarks Cat sketched out. “The area is deserted, and we’ll be fine as long as our sentries intercept any wayward patrols and no one wields.” Mira points past my right shoulder. “It’s this way.”
“I’ll take that, Lieutenant.” Grady snatches the map back.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were setting the mission up to fail.” Mira offers a cutting smile.
“Let’s go.” Grady glares my sister’s way, then stalks past me in the direction she pointed.
“If it makes any difference,” Captain Henson says, glancing at Mira as she passes, “I agree with you.”
“I don’t.” Aura pushes up the sleeves of her uniform and runs by. “We can’t trust the fliers.”
“And yet it’s their artifact that Cat is helping us find,” I mutter as we follow.
“Cool. Calm. Collected.” Xaden scans every building we pass.
“New mantra since becoming duke?” Mira asks, surveying the remains of what looks to have been a marketplace on our right.
“Just trying not to explode on Grady and ruin our little trial run here,” Xaden replies.
The village is silent as we walk the abandoned streets, passing the desiccated remains of people every block or so. It reminds me of a sandcastle. The structure is there, but so delicate that even a harsh breeze might crumble the colorless structure.
We turn at the next intersection, entering narrow columns of residential rowhouses with barely enough room for wagons to pass each other in the street. Some of the houses connect to ones across the way with covered bridges, creating a tunnel effect every twenty feet or so.
“Ironic that they built these so tight to keep dragons from fitting between them, and yet it’s dragons that might save us,” I remark, studying what’s left of the architecture.
“A gryphon would fit with no problem as long as its wings were tucked,” Mira notes.
“This is the one.” Grady stops in front of an expansive house.
“Was it the plaque that says Home of Amelia, First of the Drifts that gave it away?” Xaden asks, nodding toward the right side of the door.
Grady’s mouth tightens. “You know your places. Let’s go.” The front door creaks loudly enough to wake the dead as he swings it open, and everyone freezes.
My stomach does its best to displace my lungs, and I clench my fists when power immediately rises in my veins, responding to my fear.
“They can’t hear us,” Mira repeats, then clasps my shoulder as she walks by, heading to Grady and Henson.
“Be right back,” Xaden says, but there’s no usual brush of his hand or shadow along my lower back because Aura is watching like we might just start making out at any second.
The four officers disappear into the creaky house, leaving Aura and me in the middle of the street.
“I’ll take south,” I tell her, moving toward the doorway, then facing in that direction.
“Fine.” She puts her back to me, and we begin watch.
Rumblings sound from within the house, and moonlight illuminates the cobblestone street.
I look to see the clouds breaking as the wind picks up.
Shit.
“Stay out of sight,” I tell Tairn.
“I am as the night.” He sounds more than a little offended. “It is Dagolh you should worry about.”
Aura’s Red Clubtail.
“Any luck?” I ask Xaden.
“This whole place is a museum, and Cat only remembers that it was on display upstairs in a protective case. Not sure if you’ve noticed, but there’s a lot of upstairs,” he answers.
I glance up at the five stories that look ready to topple at any second. “We’re going to be out here awhile.” This is exactly why we should have brought Cat. Maybe being here would have triggered the memory of exactly where it was displayed.
“Great.” Aura shifts nervously behind me, her shadow swaying near my feet.
“You scared?” I ask as nicely as possible.
“We’re hundreds of miles from the wards, standing in a fucking cemetery,” she snaps. “What do you think?”
“As someone who has spent my share of time beyond the wards, it’s healthy to be nervous.” Something rattles up ahead, and I tilt my head, focusing in that direction. A glass bottle rolls down the gently sloped hill of a street, propelled by a gust of wind before lodging itself in a doorway four houses over. “See? That’s—” I glance over my shoulder, then whip my entire body around to face Aura. “What the fuck?”
“Just being prepared.” She stands with her hands raised, a flintstrike device between thumb and forefinger, fear pinching her face.
“That”—I motion to her hands—“is an unhealthy, mission-dangerous amount of fear. Put them down. Away. Gloves on. You need to remind yourself that wielding is the worst possible thing we could do.”
“No.” She lifts her chin. “Getting drained is far worse. I’m not about to be caught off guard. In fact, you should stand ready, too.”
“Absolutely not.” I shake my head and turn my back on her. “My orders are not to wield unless there’s an imminent threat of death, and I hardly think that bottle constitutes such.”
“As your senior wingleader, I’m ordering you to stand ready,” Aura seethes. “What use are you as our ‘greatest weapon’ if you can’t wield at a moment’s notice?”
“The only rank that matters out here is cadet, so with all due respect, fuck off.” I shrug and roll my shoulders, trying to dispel the tide of energy pushing against my Archives door. At least that means Tairn has located some undrained land.
“Found it!” Mira calls through an open window.
I blow out a sigh of relief.
The door across the street swings open with an ear-screeching creak, and my head whips toward the sound, fear launching my heart into my throat as a figure steps out of the shadows—
“Vi, watch out! Aura’s going to—” Xaden starts.
“Don’t!” I pivot and throw myself at Aura, but the damage has been done.
Fire sparks and spews from her hand like dragon flame and engulfs the doorway.
We land in a tangle of limbs, and I narrowly keep from smacking my head on the stone of the stoop as a wave of heat blasts the side of my face, lighting up the night. Dread seizes my heartbeat, but I cut it off before it can take hold or, worse, freeze me with fear.
“Get off me!” Aura bellows, shoving me aside as the figure stumbles forward into the moonlight and screams.
I gasp, and for a millisecond, fear wins.
Captain Grady is on fire.
“No!” Aura scrambles across the stone as he kneels in the center of the street. Every inch of the leathers that should help protect him is covered in foot-high flames.
And we don’t have a water or ice wielder on the ground.
“Xaden!” I yell, gaining my feet and running toward the captain. “Aura! Take off your flight jacket!” We can smother the flames. We have to.
His shriek etches itself into my memory as he collapses, and I wrench Aura’s flight jacket from her hands and throw it over him, hoping to put out the fire. The scent of charred flesh turns my stomach, but it’s quickly overpowered by thick, cloying smoke coming from the building behind him.
Xaden gets to me first, yanking me back from the captain, and shadows stream from our feet to smother the flames as the screams cease, but the fire in the building ahead of us roars. “Fuck.”
All three of us look up as the wind gusts.
My heart drops to the ground as house after house catches fire, spreading down the street. The land, the buildings, the very wood they’re built with may be drained of magic, but they go up like kindling.
“Riorson!” Mira shouts, barreling out of the house behind us, Henson close on her heels. “Do it! We’re as good as dead already!”
I wrench out of Xaden’s arms and stumble toward Grady as shadows rush up the sides of the buildings, but the flames have already licked their way across the bridges. We’re in the middle of a fucking tinderbox.
“Sir!” I drop in front of Grady, but he doesn’t move.
“He’s dead,” Xaden announces like it’s the weather forecast. “And I can’t…”
I look over my shoulder to see sweat beading on his skin as he shakes his head, lifting his hand again and again, directing shadows over one building and then the next, but there’s no earthly way to keep up with what the wind is spreading. Every cinder, every gust sends another structure up in flames.
Captain Henson battles what she can, but even the best wind wielder can’t control the drift of ash and ember.
The sky cracks, and my eyes jerk upward. The bridge connecting both halves of the house comes crashing down, engulfed in flames. I move to push Xaden out of the way, but Mira’s standing between us, her arms raised and fingers splayed.
A pulse of blue emits like a mage light, and the bridge cracks overhead, splitting in two and falling on either side of us.
“We have to get out of here.” Mira hauls me to my feet, then yanks a stunned Aura up by her collar. The senior wingleader just stares wide-eyed at the spreading destruction.
“I can do it!” Xaden shouts, raising shadow after shadow.
“Let it go,” Henson orders. “The best we can hope for is a clear path to the village square for evac.”
Xaden’s arms tremble, and fear stabs deep within my chest, chilling me to the bone. If the land he stands on hadn’t already been drained…
I put myself in his face, uncaring that everyone can see, and grasp his cheeks in my hands. “Let it go,” I beg. “Xaden, you have to let it go. We need to get out of here.”
His tortured eyes lower to mine, reflecting the flames in their onyx depths.
“Please.” I keep my gaze on his. “There’s no stopping this. There’s only surviving it.”
He nods and lowers his hands.
Relief fills my next breath, but that’s all the time we’re allowed.
“Run!” Mira shoves at us both, and we break into a sprint down the narrow street.
Pain shoots from my ankles up to my knees, but it doesn’t matter, not when both sides of the street are catching fire slightly slower than we’re running.
“Focus and get to the town square,” Tairn orders, and I do just that—focus.
Dragons can’t fit down these streets. We have to make it to the square or we’re dead.
Every ounce of my energy goes into the placement of my feet so I don’t roll my ankles on the stone, the movement of my breath, the space between us as Xaden keeps pace beside me.
Mira hurries ahead, turning corner after corner with a certainty I could never possess in this maze of a village, and we follow, running for our very lives.
“There!” Mira shouts, pointing as the clock tower comes into view at the end of the street and wings beat overhead. “No!” she yells. “Tairn first!”
I shake my head and run faster. “Go! If Teine is here, then go!”
“I’m not leaving—” she starts to argue.
“Go so we can!” Henson yells.
Xaden throws his arm out, catching me in a skid as Mira races into the courtyard to meet Teine’s arrival. Their run-on mounting is flawless, timed to the peak of perfection, and Mira is already climbing the clubtail’s foreleg as Teine flies over the village.
Henson nods as if talking to her dragon, then looks back at Aura. “You’re next. One minute out.”
The flames start catching the houses behind us.
“This is my fault.” Aura clenches her fist to my right and looks to the courtyard with wide, frightened eyes. “Grady is…gone. They’ll know we’re here. There’s no hiding a fire like this.”
“All that matters is that we get out,” I tell her. “Don’t think about anything else.”
“Overhead!” Xaden shouts as wings block the moon.
“We’re not the only wings in the sky,” Tairn warns, and ice prickles the back of my neck.
“Go!” Henson orders Aura, pointing toward the courtyard. “Dagolh is on the approach.”
“Wait!” I shout, but she’s already sprinting toward the clock tower. “Tairn says we aren’t alone.”
“She’ll make it,” Henson says in a voice that doesn’t quite convince me.
Scorching heat flares at my back, but I keep my eyes forward as Aura races into the open.
A claw reaches for her, and I hold my breath for them to make contact. The claw curls in the same way Tairn’s does right before he scoops me up—
The talon emerges somewhere near the middle of her spine.
Blood gushes from the wound, but Aura’s scream is silenced as the wyvern drags her lifeless body into the sky. Not too far overhead, a dragon bellows.
Xaden’s arm tightens around me, supporting my weight when my knees try to buckle.
“Tairn…”
“Sixty seconds,” he says, urgency lacing his tone.
“Damn, they got here fast,” Henson mutters, rocking back on her heels. “All right, Riorson, you’re up—”
They got here fast? That’s all she has to say?
“We do not answer to you,” he says without taking his eyes off the courtyard.
The moon catches on a flash of navy-blue wings, but instead of landing, Sgaeyl streaks overhead, flying fast and hard for the wyvern that’s just picking up altitude.
“What in Dunne’s name…”
“And she damn well doesn’t take your orders,” Xaden says to Henson.
Sgaeyl lunges, then seems to rake her claws into the wyvern and climb its back. Her head darts left, then right, and the creature’s wings snap free.
“Remind me to never piss her off,” I mutter as the wyvern falls, crashing somewhere at the edge of the village.
A corner of Xaden’s mouth rises.
“Approaching,” Tairn announces.
“Take us both.” I grab Xaden’s hand. “Run with me.”
Xaden’s brow furrows for a heartbeat, and then he nods.
“I am not a horse,” Tairn fires back as Xaden and I run for the courtyard, the heat at our back flaring to unbearable temperatures.
“They patrol in pairs,” I shout down the pathway that connects all four of us. “Take. Us. Both!” My boots pound against the stone, and ahead, I see Sgaeyl banking back in a steep turn.
We hit the open air, and I block out the very real possibility that the wyvern’s partner will see us first, sprinting harder for the widest place where Tairn can grab us.
“I’m here,” he says down our shared pathway.
“Trust me,” Xaden demands, and I can’t tell which one of us he’s talking to, but I instantly nod. He pivots with alarming speed, putting himself in front of me, then hauls me up against his chest, bringing our heads level. “Hold on.”
I throw my arms around his neck, the conduit bouncing against his back as he pitches his arms outward, and bands of midnight-black shadow wrap around us both, binding me to him.
Familiar wingbeats sound over the flames in the scant heartbeats before we’re plucked off the ground, Tairn’s claws hooking over Xaden’s shoulders and yanking us into the night.
Wind tears at my eyes as we fly toward Sgaeyl, but another pair of wings approaches from the right on an intercept path. Two legs, not four.
“On your right,” I warn Tairn, then turn to Xaden. “You’d better be damn good with these shadows.”
“I have you,” Xaden promises, and the bands tighten.
Power floods my body as I throw open the Archives door, and heat stings my skin. Gods, if I channel too much while attached to him…
“He’s been a great deal closer when you’ve wielded,” Tairn reminds me, and—
Nope, not thinking about how he knows that.
I fumble for a second to clasp the conduit and hold it away from Xaden’s skin, then let the energy surge to a breaking point and focus entirely on my right hand.
Power snaps, whipping through me and departing all in the same heartbeat. Lightning strikes and I yank it downward from the sky with my finger, taking aim. Heat singes my fingertip, but I hold the bolt as long as tolerable, then set it free.
Straight into the wyvern’s back.
The creature plummets and Sgaeyl roars, blasting its corpse with a stream of fire as it falls past her. She pitches back to follow as Tairn banks left, taking us from the path that leads along the river and heading due west.
We fly like that for another few minutes, just long enough to be sure we’re safe, then land to take our respective seats and launch again.
Tairn leads us low, through the shadows of the mountains and up the ridgelines. Two and a half hours later, we cross the wards a hundred miles south of Samara.
We make it back to the fortress with three hours left to spare of our twelve-hour limit.
“I can’t believe you let him die,” Lieutenant Pugh mutters as we walk under the portcullis at Samara.
Xaden turns on him and pins him to the wall with the weight of his forearm. “Beinhaven was a scared cadet who thought he was venin. What the fuck is your excuse? Where were you when that wyvern skewered her?”
“We were patrolling north.” The man’s complexion favors a tomato as he forces out the words, but neither Mira nor I intercede.
“You were needed above the village.” Xaden removes his arm, and the lieutenant slides down the wall.
Henson and Foley help Pugh stand, then walk away from us into the courtyard, and Mira holds up her hand once their backs are to us, so we stay right where we’re at.
“I got there first,” she says, turning to face us and dragging a long chain from the inner pocket of her flight jacket.
A thumb-size stone I’m guessing was once the color of a citrine now rests in its setting, cracked, hazy, and smoke-hued.
“Shit.” My shoulders dip. “If Courtlyn doesn’t accept that, this all will have been for nothing.”
“That’s not why I’m glad I got there first.” Mira hands me the necklace, then reaches into her pocket again, drawing out a folded piece of parchment. “This is.”
Clutching the necklace in one hand, I take the parchment in the other, noting that it’s addressed to Lightning Wielder.
“It was sitting next to the necklace,” Mira says as I open it, and Xaden tenses at my side.
Violet,
Just a reminder that while I want you to come of your own free will, I’m capable of taking you whenever I wish. Why do you not ask me for the answers you so desperately seek?
—T
“Theophanie.” My stomach hollows.
Either she knows I’m looking for Andarna’s kind…
Or she knows I’m looking for a cure.
Xaden stiffens to the point of statuary. “She knew we’d be there.”
Well shit, there’s that, too.
