Fuck you. My daughter and I will meet Malek with clean consciences. Will you and your daughters be able to say the same when they come for you?
—The last words of Tracila Cardulo (redacted)
IMOGEN
If chaos were a place, it would be Draithus.
Rain beats against the glass of my goggles as Glane climbs toward the three wyvern trying their best to rip Cuir apart. The steep angle of her chosen approach makes it hard as hell to stay seated, but I’m not going to tell her to slow—not that she’d listen anyway. Bodhi’s in trouble.
I grit my teeth. He doesn’t get it. If we lose both him and Riorson, Tyrrendor falls to whomever the king appoints. I’d rather die than see a Navarrian aristocrat on the burned throne Mom and Katrina died defending. The flame of perpetual rage that lives in my chest burns hotter. Fuck that horde. Fuck the venin who ride them. Fuck that unholy vortex of a tornado at the end of the northern field, and fuck the orders to stay grounded in these winds. We’re not losing Bodhi.
There are still too many wyvern despite the inhuman amount Sorrengail just dispatched, and where the fuck is Riorson? He’d better be helping in the northeastern tower, because I haven’t seen a trace of a shadow in the last twenty minutes.
“Cruth reports we did not bring a sufficient supply,” Glane warns, relaying Quinn’s message from the armory in the turret below.
Godsdamn it. “We brought two cases!” Enough to start a war within our own kingdom, considering Riorson has been withholding our forge’s weapons from King Tauri.
“Nuirlach says they’ve sent for more.” She doesn’t sound hopeful.
“From four hours away? How—” Oh shit. Felix knows about Garrick. Gods, he has to be nearing burnout at this point. “Then we hold out and pray Sorrengail can stop that fucking storm.”
“Cruth also relays that you should be drinking more water, as we’ve been in combat longer than hoped for.”
I scoff. “Tell Cruth to tell Quinn that I’m perfectly fine.” It figures she’s worried about me while she’s the one doing all the work.
Glane’s head snaps upward. “Cuir suffers,” she warns me in that gnarring tone that usually means she’s about to do something impetuous, and sure enough, she angles her wings and climbs even higher, at a nearly ninety-degree angle.
Shit. I slip my boots back to the next scale ridge and adjust my hold. Lying along Glane’s back, tucking my head beneath her pommel, and pressing my cheek to her scales helps cut the wind resistance against my torso as we climb.
It’s a mistake to look down at the burning city, but I can’t help but track two wyvern crossing our airspace below. Cath launches, and I blink in surprise. Guess Aetos is all about breaking rules now.
“Brace,” Glane warns.
It’s more than I usually get.
Her momentum shifts, slowing for a nauseating second, and I clamp every muscle and mold myself to her spine, changing our shape from rider and dragon to one being. She’s pulled this maneuver too many times for me not to recognize how shitty this is about to be.
She attacks from underneath, all teeth and claws, then tucks her wings to protect them and swings her tail upward.
I concentrate on moving with her, fighting gravity as I’m hung upside down and her daggertail slices into the next wyvern. Blood sprays, coloring the rain red. My grip loosens despite my rubber-coated gloves, and I grimace, forcing my fingers further between her scales. “Anytime now!”
“Fine,” she sighs. Then we plummet.
The force of the fall pushes me against her scales, effectively holding me in place as she drags the wyvern from the sky. Bone cracks, flesh rends, and she tosses the carcass like yesterday’s trash. The gray mass falls like a stone to the right, and Glane rolls, putting me on top of her back instead of under it.
“Seventeen,” she counts.
“Pretty sure it was sixteen.” I pull myself upward, using her scales like a ladder until my ass hits the seat, and I drag my arm across my goggles to clear the rain. There has to be a rune somewhere that will keep the fucking lenses clear.
“The first one counted!” she argues as we surge toward Cuir and the remaining wyvern.
“Cath took that first one.”
“Only after I wounded it!” Glane snaps.
“Still not a kill.” My stomach tenses as I get my first good look at what we’re up against. Cuir swings his swordtail again and again, keeping the wyvern at his back at bay, but there’s a deep, bleeding furrow cutting diagonally across his chest, no doubt gifted by the claws of the wyvern at his front.
“I want them all.” Glane’s head swivels in both directions.
“Go for the one at his back,” I suggest and hope she’s in the mood to listen. Never know with her.
“Excellent choice,” she agrees with a macabre tone of glee.
Bodhi has his sword in hand, but there’s no clear shot for him as the trio starts to spiral downward. At this angle, we’ll intercept them head-on.
I draw my own sword and clench Glane’s pommel scales with one hand. My thighs are strong enough to hold on their own, but she’s anything but predictable, and I’m not in the mood to die.
Blue fire engulfs Cuir from snout to horns, and Bodhi ducks his head as the remnants of flame roll down Cuir’s neck, extinguishing to smoke before they reach him. I inhale swiftly to dispel the sudden tightness in my chest. That was way too damned close.
Then I focus on the top wyvern, looking for areas of weak—
Glane diverts, banking left to follow Cuir’s spiral, then lunges at the wyvern clawing at his belly. “Changed my mind.”
“Obviously.”
Glane hits the wyvern like a battering ram, and I hold tight, whipping forward, then back at the sudden shift in velocity. My pulse jumps as we push forward to the unmistakable sound of ripping scales, but there’s only determination and rage pouring down the bond—not pain.
An enormous head appears over Glane’s shoulder, and for a split second fetid, dripping teeth are all I can see snapping toward me.
Fuck that nonsense.
“Stay level,” I tell Glane, standing on the seat beneath me. Then I run up the slippery scales of her neck, passing the snarling teeth that part long enough for a jet of blue fire to rush across Glane’s back.
Good thing I moved.
Before it can go for her throat, I thrust my sword into its eye and shove with all my strength. The blade plunges through the softer flesh with a sickening squish. Its high-pitched scream rings in my head like a bell, and I debate my life choices when it wrenches its head back, nearly taking me with it. My fist catches on the steel ball at the top of the sword’s hilt, and I lock my grip as the wyvern falls away.
Glane dives after the plummeting heap of scales and wings, and I fall backward, my ass hitting every ridge of her neck before colliding with her pommel scales.
“Are you kidding me?” I heave myself into the seat, then lock into a position my muscles are more than familiar with, sword still in hand. Red flashes by on the right. Cath.
“Did you fall off? No. I did not bond a whiner.” She chases the wyvern down through the rain, then latches on to its neck and rips its throat out.
I throw my weight left and narrowly miss being sprayed by blood.
“Eighteen!” she declares, flaring her wings to pull out of the dive and point us back to the northern wall.
“Seventeen if we’re going by your measurement, since I wounded it first.” Another lump of gray falls in a blur ahead of us, and I look up to see Cath and Cuir descending toward us. There’s a hole in Cuir’s right wing, and the laceration on his chest is going to leave a scar, but I can’t tell at this angle if Bodhi is wounded.
Glane’s head swivels as a bluefire wyvern circumvents the city to the south, sending a row of trees up in flames. “That one.”
“Not our airspace.” Kaori and the other officers hold the eastern, southern, and western territory, which is swiftly becoming the epicenter of the battle due to the winds, but they’re down their most powerful rider—Garrick. And there’s no sign of Chradh in sight.
“For someone so decisive, you have yet to act on that—” Glane starts to lecture.
“Stop right there and I’ll agree your kill count is eighteen.” My ribs tighten as we descend toward the city. The venin are done fucking around—they’ve come themselves. Blue flame swirls down the spiral tower, courtesy of two wyvern climbing its sides, and the fire whips outward as a dark wielder in gaudy scarlet robes sweeps her staff in a circle from the top of the landmark. Gryphons launch with their fliers toward the threat.
A sinking feeling pools in my stomach. There are too many of them, and we’re already exhausted. Beyond the three felled dragons, four more lie wounded along the walls to the west beside innumerable gryphons. Their bleeding riders do their best to tend to them, and I look away from what’s likely a fatal wound on a severed tail on a large brown.
“Orders?” I’ve always known I’ll die in combat. I just don’t want it to be today.
“The tower!” Glane shouts.
Quinn.
My head snaps toward the left, and my heart somersaults. One dark wielder in purple robes strides down the eastern city walls like he owns them, and another in crimson fighting leathers approaches along the northern. Both are headed for the turret where the only person I truly love on this battlefield is working, and she probably doesn’t even know they’re coming. “Relay to Cruth!”
“Already done.” Glane’s wings beat as quickly as my heart as we move toward the walls. There’s nothing we can do from the air. I’m going to have to dismount.
Glane growls.
“You know it’s true, and I’m not leaving her to die.” I sheathe my sword and move to her shoulder despite the roaring wind shoving at my back. Orders can come later; I have to go now.
Infantry soldiers fight to intercept the dark wielders and are flung from the walls like inconsequential dolls. The guards plummet fifty feet to their deaths, clearing the path for the venin.
Terror saturates my lungs, and my heart pounds.
“You are to defend the tower from the walls with the wingleader,” Glane relays with a disagreeing snarl, banking left for a parallel approach.
“Great. Get me on the wall, now.” The dark wielders are less than thirty feet from the door of the turret, and the two remaining guards in the cross-bolt launch platform above look ready to flee.
Damn it. They were supposed to be safe. No one was supposed to know, but the purposeful strides of those dark wielders prove they know what’s happening in that tower.
“Your death would annoy me.” Glane slows just enough so I’ll survive and extends her foreleg as she flies along the northern wall.
“Same.” I race down the scales of her unwounded leg. There’s no time for fear, no room for mistakes, not when Quinn is being hunted. Reaching Glane’s talons, I leap into the rain without hesitation.
My pounding heart fills my ears while I’m airborne, and the northern wall rushes up to meet me. I bend my knees to absorb the coming impact, then run the second my boots hit the stonework so the momentum doesn’t kill me. I hurtle forward and narrowly avoid falling on my face on the wet expanse of cobblestone as I sprint toward the back of the venin in crimson.
There’s forty feet between us.
Thirty. Commotion erupts from the base of the tower, but I focus on the dark wielder and the staff he carries in his right hand.
“They are evacuating the weapons by foot,” Glane says from somewhere above me.
Good. My lungs burn, but I breathe a little easier. Quinn will be safe.
Another set of footsteps joins mine, and a flash of metal sparks in the corner of my eye. Aetos catches up on my right, half his face drenched in blood, bearing his own dagger and a shield half his size.
Shit. That’s not good.
Twenty. I channel my rage, rejecting any notion of fear, and draw one of my alloy-hilted daggers from the sheath at my arm in preparation to strike. We’re almost there—
The dark wielder pivots, whipping to face us with an unnatural speed even I can’t match, and swings his staff in our direction. Fire erupts, barreling toward us in a deadly stream, and I weigh our options for all of a millisecond as we skid to a halt. It hits? We die. Jump? We die.
“You will not burn!” Glane demands.
Fuck, I really didn’t want to have to do this, but I mentally open the door to my childhood home and flood my body with her power.
“Get—” Aetos starts to yell.
“Get behind me!” I shout, ripping the shield from his grip. His eyes flare wide, and he lets go. We have seconds, so I flip the shield, then slam its flat top between the row of stones at our feet and drop behind it, keeping my hand on the leather strap.
Aetos jumps behind me as power rushes into my fingers so quickly I clench my teeth to keep from screaming. Heat surrounds us and the leather hardens in my grip as the shield turns to stone. Fire roars, blazes, flows around us. We are the rock in the river, demanding the water part.
The heat dissipates as the blast ends, and Aetos dives to the left and throws. An alloy-hilted dagger sails from his hand and I rise, clutching my own.
The dark wielder’s expression of shock remains permanent as he desiccates a few feet away and falls off the wall.
One down, but the guards are missing from the top of the turret, and I see a flash of purple disappear into the tower. Worse, another dressed in crimson strides along the eastern wall.
Aetos jumps to his feet and draws his remaining dagger. “I’ll take that one. You get the one in the tower.” He glances at the stone shield, then breaks into a run, and I follow, sprinting as fast as I can. “And we’re going to talk about whatever the fuck that just was later,” he shouts over his shoulder, but I’ve already passed him, using lesser magic to boost my speed.
Cruth roars, sweeping from the sky to the city below, but Draithus is just like other Poromish cities, designed to keep dragons from landing within its narrow streets.
Two women carrying crying toddlers stumble out of the turret’s doorway, horror etched on their faces. The taller one’s gaze swings to mine as I reach them. “You have to help her! We got lost and went into the wrong tower and she—”
“Go west!” I shout, pointing in the direction I’ve just come from as Aetos runs past to intercept the other dark wielder. “And run.”
They nod and do just that.
I fling myself through the doorway into the tower and blink, struggling to adjust to the dimmer lighting as I descend the spiral staircase down and down and down, looking for whomever they left behind.
“Where are you?” A raspy roar of frustration fills the tower and my heart surges into my throat as I round the bend of the third story.
Purple robes spin as the venin turns on the landing, swiping a green-tipped dagger at Quinn as she flashes in and out of space, appearing in front of him only to disappear within seconds and pop up somewhere else. There are two of her—no, three—circling the dark wielder.
She isn’t here. She’s projecting. Relief nearly cuts me at the knees.
I pause just out of sight and lean over the railing to scan the stairs below, but I don’t see her. She’s probably buildings away with Felix, setting up a new armory. I adjust my grip on the dagger, then creep down the steps to get within throwing distance.
Wait. The Quinn a handful of stairs beneath me has her labrys strapped to her back and is actually moving closer to the infuriated dark wielder who thrashes wildly with his dagger while other versions of Quinn dance around him, serving as the diversion.
I flip my dagger and throw at the same moment Quinn lunges with her own and the pale-haired venin spins. His eyes light up, then glass over as he turns gray and shrivels, collapsing at Quinn’s feet with two daggers in his chest.
“Got him!” I lift my hands in victory and hop down the rest of the steps as Quinn turns toward me, her dark-green eyes impossibly wide as she looks at her chest.
No. The venin’s blade is lodged between her ribs in the vicinity of her heart.
The world around me slows as she sways toward the wall, her horrified gaze finding mine.
“No!” I shout, throwing myself at her so it’s me she falls against, and my back scrapes stone as we slide to the floor of the step. I cradle her as carefully as I can, locking my right arm around her back so she doesn’t fall. “Quinn, no.”
“Did they make it?” Her voice breaks as she stares up at me, blood spreading into the layers of her uniform through her flight jacket along the blade.
“We can fix this,” I promise, and suddenly it’s so fucking hard to breathe. “We just need to get you to a mender—”
“Did they make it?” she repeats, resting her head against the top of my arm.
The women. The kids. They hadn’t been telling me they’d left someone behind. They were telling me she’d saved them. “Yeah.” I nod as my eyes burn and my throat tightens. “They made it. You got them out.”
“Good.” A soft smile pulls at her mouth.
“Hold on, all right? We need to get you some help.” I look up and down the staircase, but we’re alone. Someone has to be close by. Aetos, maybe? “Get us some help!” I scream toward Glane.
“I’m sorry,” she says more gently than I’ve ever heard, ever wanted to hear.
“There’s no helping me,” Quinn whispers.
“That’s not true.” I shake my head, and my vision blurs. Quinn will be fine. A world doesn’t exist where she isn’t fine, isn’t laughing with Jax or hanging off my bed with her curls hitting the floor so she can get a head rush while she lectures me about feelings.
A roar vibrates the stone at my back. Cruth.
“There are no menders here, and no runes for this,” she says with that damned reassuring smile of hers. “This is one thing you can’t fix, Gen.” Her face contorts with pain and I swear I feel it in my own chest, rending muscle and stripping my veins before it passes and her breaths grow shallow. “I need you to tell Jax that I love her.”
“No.” I wipe away the tear that slides from my eye before it can reach her hair. “You tell her. You’re going to graduate in a couple of months, and then you’ll marry her in that pretty black dress you picked out, and you’re going to be happy.”
“Tell her she’s been the best part of my life—” Her mouth curves and she glances past me. “You don’t count, Cruth. You became my life.” She brings her gaze back to mine, and the color drains from her face. “Please, Gen. She’s with the officers in the south, and I won’t…”
I nod. “I’ll tell her.” This can’t be real, can it? How can this be real?
“Thank you,” she whispers and relaxes against me, her blinks slowing. “Tell my parents it was worth it. I’m glad it’s you with me. Parapet to Malek’s own doorstep. I’m so sorry I have to go first this time.” Her breathing garbles. “And you should tell him, Gen. Tell him, and you find some happy.”
“Quinn—” My voice shatters. “Don’t go. Don’t leave me,” I beg, wiping another tear as my vision blurs and clears. “You’re my best friend, and I love you. Please stay.” This is not how she ends, not in some dark stairwell in Draithus. It can’t be. I’m the one who’s supposed to fall. She’s supposed to live forever.
“You’re mine, and I love you, too.” Her smile slips and another tear falls. “I’m scared. I don’t want to be scared.”
My face twists, but I mask it. “Don’t be scared.” I shake my head and force a smile. “My mom will take care of you. And Katrina, too.” My mouth quivers. “She’s a little bossy, but she’ll be thrilled to have another little sister. I talk about you all the time. They’ll know who you are. Don’t be scared.”
Her next breath is strained and watery. “They’ll know me.”
I nod. “They’ll know you and they’ll love you. It’s impossible not to love you.”
“Imogen,” she whispers, and her eyes flutter shut.
“I’m right here,” I promise, but I can’t force the words any louder as my throat closes.
“We made it a good one.” She falls limp, and when I lift my shaking fingers to her throat, there’s no pulse. She’s gone.
My hand slides to the side of her head, and I hold her tight.
The scream that forces its way through the tangled mess of my throat shreds my soul on the way out and reverberates off the stone, shaking the foundations of my world until it doesn’t just slow, it stops. I stop.
Hi! I’m Quinn Hollis. I’ve decided we should be friends. That’s what she said to me as we climbed the turret on Conscription Day.
You do realize we’re about to cross the walkway of death.
Well, then it might be a short friendship, but we’ll make it a good one.
I stare at the other side of the staircase, locked in the memory, watching as the stones begin to pale, then lose their color one by one, each loss higher than the last. My heart somehow continues to beat, marking what I used to think of as time, and color disappears from the stones in the bend beneath us so gradually that I can’t help but wonder if Quinn simply took the color with her.
“Quinn!” someone bellows from above, and footsteps thunder. “Where are you? We have to go—” There’s a deep intake of breath to my left. “Imogen? Oh, fuck.”
My head turns slowly toward the voice and Garrick crouches on the step above us, his hazel gaze locking on mine and filling with so much misery, so much sympathy that it overflows my own eyes and wetness streams down the sides of my cheeks. “She’s dead.”
Saying it doesn’t make it feel any more real.
His face falls. “I’m so sorry.” He glances down the staircase. “But we have to go. There’s half a dozen of them with their hands on the city walls, draining the life out of the stone. It’s time to go.”
I hold her tighter, unable to fathom the concept of moving, like there’s some miniscule chance she’ll return if I just wait here long enough. “I can’t. Just leave.”
“I am with you. You may not die,” Glane growls.
Garrick’s square jaw flexes. “You have to. We have to go, or they’ll drain us, too.”
“I’m not leaving her!”
“I’m not leaving you!” He leans in and slides his hand behind my neck. “I’m not leaving you, Imogen,” he repeats, softer this time. “We’ll take Quinn, but we have to go now. Let me have her.”
I notice the circles beneath his beautiful eyes, the unusual pallor of his complexion. He’s exhausted, and for the first time in my life, I don’t care that he’s seeing me at my weakest, because he’s right there, too. My chin tips in a nod.
“All right.” He moves quickly to the step beneath us, kicking something out of the way and gathering both of us into his arms. I lock mine around Quinn so she doesn’t slip as we’re lifted off the floor, and the landing beneath us loses its color. “Let’s get you out of here.”
He takes a single step.
Heat and light force my eyes shut as my stomach careens.
When I open them, we’re somewhere else. Rain falls through an open doorway, and the scent of smoke and sulfur fills my lungs.
“Oh gods!” Professor Trissa gasps as Garrick sets Quinn and me down on a warm stone floor in a nondescript building. A store, maybe? Quinn’s body slides, and he helps lay her beside me, cushioning her head with his hand.
“Venin.” Garrick explains her loss with a single word. “Are you weaving?” he asks Trissa.
“We’re starting.” Her gaze darts over me. “They’ll be weak until we can bolster with more power, but they’re our best shot.”
“It’s still not enough.” Garrick’s head hangs as he stands. “I can’t…” He sighs and strides through the door.
I obey the simple instinct to follow, shoving myself to my feet and forcing my body to move. There’s a battle. We’re in a war. Malek might claim more lives. I follow him past the little room where Felix works beside cases of alloy-hilted daggers, all imbued, all humming with power.
Then I step outside into the rain and stare. Houses burn. Wyvern and gryphon bodies lie in the middle of crumpled rooflines. Civilians scream. Cruth sails through the sky and takes a wyvern straight to the ground. Bodhi is on his hands and knees across the town square, retching.
If dark wielders are draining the city walls, we’re next.
“Where are you going?” I shout at Garrick’s back.
“I can’t walk again. Even if I made it to Aretia, I’d never be strong enough to get back,” he calls over his shoulder. “So, I’d better find some fucking way to do something.”
I unsheathe my last alloy-hilted dagger and stare up at the wyvern-filled sky. Then I make my way back inside, slip Quinn’s last dagger from her thigh sheath, and reach for Glane. “Tell every rider within the walls to get over here and disarm. It’s the only way we’re living through this.”
Outside, the sky darkens further. Sorrengail better take their leader all the way the fuck out, or this will all have been for nothing.
