The only thing more unpredictable than the volatile province that is Tyrrendor is her duke. There is a reason reigning aristocracy should never wear black.
—Journal of General Augustine Melgren
XADEN
It was one thing to beckon me, call me, summon me to this hidden, sun-soaked canyon south of Draithus against my will, to drag me from the walls of our defenses and force me to walk away from my friends and a city full of civilians. It is wholly another to have wounded and ensnared Sgaeyl.
Blood drips among her scales, coursing down her shoulder, and the sight of it soaking the forearm-thick ropes that bind her cuts me to the quick and floods me with power in a way nothing else could. I take it all, then draw more, but she’s already depleted from holding off so many wyvern at the walls of Draithus.
Wrath courses like a current under the ice I willingly skate onto, cutting my emotions free like the burdens they are so I can be the weapon she needs. She was the first to choose me, to elevate me above all others, the first to see every ugly side of me and accept it all, and every single person in this fucking canyon will die before they remove a single one of her scales.
Violet will free Tairn. That’s the only outcome I allow to exist.
The two venin standing guard ahead of me at the mouth of the canyon in their ridiculous robes aren’t an issue. I’ll have them desiccated within heartbeats as soon as Sgaeyl can regain enough power. But the one who walks forward toward Panchek’s cowering, traitorous ass, putting himself between Sgaeyl and me… He’s a problem.
Not because he’s more lethal.
Not even because he’s supposed to be dead.
But because I. Can’t. Kill. Him. I could no more raise a blade to his throat than I could Violet. The bond between Violence and me is the kind of magic that has no explanation.
The bond between Berwyn and me is the kind that should never exist, and now that my Sage has another sibling he can use against me…I’m screwed.
“Watch carefully, my initiate,” Berwyn says to me over his shoulder, baring the scar down the middle of his face from when I threw him into the ravine at Basgiath.
I glance past Berwyn, past Sgaeyl and the venin, to my new brother and the unconscious dragon lying in the valley beyond the canyon, guarded by seven wyvern. How could he do this? Choose this after watching me stumble and fall over the last five months. How could he willingly walk the path I’ve fought like hell to leave? He’s the last person I ever would have expected to turn, and yet here we are.
I can’t let Sgaeyl die. Can’t leave him to stumble down the same path I did. Can’t allow my friends to perish because I selfishly want to keep Violet by my side. A clamoring, consuming emotion pounds at the ice, but I can’t let it in. She has her own path.
No matter what I choose, it’s wrong.
But only one path leaves Sgaeyl alive.
“This is not what we agreed to!” Panchek shouts, stumbling backward toward his own shrieking, netted dragon.
I don’t bother looking in their direction. Fucker deserves to suffer for selling us out. Whatever the Sage—what Berwyn—does is of no consequence to me. How much information has he sold to the enemy? Certainly enough to lure us all to Draithus. How many times did he give them Violet’s location?
He dies. The decision is made without debate.
“Do not lose yourself,” Sgaeyl warns, thrashing against the net that has her pinned to the rocky ground twenty feet in front of me. “You have not turned as a result of his ploys this afternoon. Do not give in to this one!”
But he hadn’t had her, and now he does.
“There’s no other way,” I reply, slowly unsheathing the two alloy-hilted daggers I keep at my thighs and earning a glare from the dark wielder standing at the tip of Sgaeyl’s tail, his fingers splayed in obvious threat.
“Did you not ask for power?” Berwyn snarls, holding two alloy-hilted daggers of his own as he approaches Panchek. “Have I not provided?”
“Put those away. We both know you’re not going to hurt me.” Panchek reaches for the net over his dragon. “I’m the only one who can give you access to your son.”
“I have another.” Berwyn stabs deep between the dragon’s scales, and it desiccates, green draining from its scales and shrinking in on itself to a husk.
Terror busts through the ice.
Berwyn just killed a dragon with a dagger.
How the fuck is that possible?
“Were you watching? Because that’s exactly what’s about to happen to yours.” He turns to me and saunters toward Sgaeyl as she thrashes futilely under the net. “You’ll have to channel deep to replace the loss of her power.” He lifts the blade, and I don’t just skate over the ice.
I become it.
“Stop!” Sgaeyl roars, blowing back Berwyn’s robes. “Do not do this to save me!”
Do this? It’s already done.
How fucking dare they pull my dragon from the sky, snare and hurt the one who anchors my existence.
I throw my blades into the air, fall to one knee, splay my hand over the canyon floor, and break.
In my final act of resistance, I become the very thing I despise. Maybe it’s good that I can’t feel a single damned thing.
I breathe in the power that pulses beneath my hand like a living, breathing creature, and exhale darkness. Shadow streams through the canyon, thick as tar and black as ink, blacking out the afternoon sun and turning the space pitch-black. Shadow plants my daggers in the chests of the two venin standing guard. Shadow drags Berwyn from Sgaeyl and knocks both him and my new brother unconscious. Shadow brings quiet.
My soul departs like pieces of ash from a fire, flaking free and drifting away as power consumes the space it once inhabited. I’m no longer on the ice—I am the ice.
And still I feed, tunneling deep into the source of magic itself and surging outward simultaneously, finding the identical heartbeats that mark wyvern and slicing through scale with shadow, ripping their runestones free. I start with the one who dared set its teeth in Sgaeyl’s shoulder, skim past the one who now thinks himself my brother, then destroy the six blocking the entrance to this canyon.
Save them, the last remaining pieces of me beg, holding on with teeth and claw to keep from being torn away, too. My shadows surge from the canyon, over the city, ending every wyvern in the air and on the ground. I’m everywhere at once, shredding the net that ensnares Sgaeyl, tearing the heart from the wyvern who has Dain and Cath backed into a corner, rushing over Imogen as she looks to the sky. I’m at the pass, plucking wyvern off one by one, listening with satisfaction as their bodies hit the ground in front of the people she loves. I stream up the cliffside, fall back at the magic that burns to the touch, and surge north.
“I love you.” Violet’s voice cracks the cold, and a silken thread of warmth wedges itself in the opening before it seals shut, locking it in place.
No. Wait. I grab for that thread with desperate hands, clawing to keep her as more of my pieces are blown away, lost to the void. She is warmth and light and air and love.
My shadows consume the valley she stands in, dagger bared, defending Tairn from the same style of net that caught Sgaeyl. I shove the Maven to the ground, regardless of her rank, then slide over Violet with a gentleness that takes all my concentration.
I love her. That is the emotion I cling to, the fire of pure power burning at the feeling’s edges, and I know if I take it any further, it will be the next and final piece to float away. I bare my teeth and yank my hand from the ground, gasping for a full breath as my heart thunders.
I’ve never felt so strong and so defeated at the same time. This was the only way. I rise to my feet and release the shadows, and the canyon comes into view.
Sgaeyl struggles to stand upright ahead of me, blood dripping from the bite marks in her shoulder. The net falls in tatters and she expands her wings to their full width, taking nearly every foot in the canyon. She glances over the destruction, the bodies, and narrows her golden eyes in silent rebuke.
“Will you forsake me now?” I ask, walking over Berwyn’s unconscious body. I’d kill him if I could. Fuck, I thought I had. I wonder how many initiates feel the same about their Sage? At least one that I know of. But beyond the physical impossibility of it, he has something I need.
And I’m no longer an initiate.
“What is there left of you to forsake?” Sgaeyl lowers her head and steam gusts down the canyon, reminding me of the moment she found me in the forest at Threshing.
“You tell me.” I lower the ice and let her in.
Her next breath is laced with sulfur, and her eyes widen. “You cannot mean to—”
“You saw what happened. It is the only way.”
She glances over her shoulder. “And you think she’ll help?”
“She loves me.”
“Tairn does not, and you haven’t looked in a mirror yet. The red veins branching from your eyes look like her lightning.”
“She’ll help.” It comes out with a hell of a lot more certainty than I feel. “She promised.”
“Even if she agrees, no one will—”
“Someone owes me a favor.”
“He’ll never let you near her.” Her tail flicks. “Especially while she lies in a vulnerable state.”
“Is she hurt?” The beating organ behind my ribs stumbles, and I reach down the bond that connects my mind to hers, but it’s muddled with unconsciousness.
“Yes,” Sgaeyl says slowly, her head moving in a serpentine motion. “But she will survive.” She pauses. “They have completed the wards, but they extend no farther than Draithus.”
That’s good. Bad. Fuck, I don’t know. What even am I?
Hers.
“Persuade Tairn,” I beg.
Everything depends on it.
“We will ask,” Sgaeyl finally says, flexing her claws in the rocky soil. “And her decision will determine our fate.”
Those are terms I can agree to.
We’re airborne in less than a minute.
