Total pages in book: 247
Estimated words: 235897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1179(@200wpm)___ 944(@250wpm)___ 786(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 235897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1179(@200wpm)___ 944(@250wpm)___ 786(@300wpm)
She blinks.
“See?” Leothan shifts his focus to Andarna. “Humans should only be capable of bonding a single dragon, and yet you forged a second connection where there shouldn’t be one. Only an irid can do that. Your instincts are excellent, but you need instruction. Break the connection and come with me.”
My heart thunders like hoofbeats in my ears.
“But Violet…” Andarna’s tone shifts from denial to… Amari help me, is that worry?
I blanch as it hits me. She wants to go. Of course she does. He’s her family—the only dragon of her kind willing to accept her. I’m the one holding her back.
“Her other bond will sustain her life,” Leothan states like that’s all there is between Andarna and me. “Should you choose to return, you can always reforge the bond.”
When she doesn’t respond, he lowers his head to my eye level. “She is emotionally ensnared because of her age. What would you have her do?”
Andarna ducks her head.
“I…” Warmth drains from my face, but I keep my eyes on her, memorizing every detail like it might be the last time I see her. The possibility is unfathomable—I developed my signet out of sheer need for her—and yet it feels like we’re hurtling toward some kind of precipice. “I love you and I want you to feel complete,” I tell her, and she slowly meets my gaze. “I want you happy and safe and thriving. I want you to live.” My voice breaks. “Even if it’s not with me.”
“Admirable,” Leothan says. “I understand your choice.”
Yearning floods the bond, so deep it aches within my own chest, and the pain of it sucks the breath from my lungs. I force my head to nod, feeling everything she can’t say.
“I do not know how—” she starts.
A shrieking whistle sounds in my head, and then only silence remains. I reach for the bond and find only a wall…then nothing.
Andarna whips her head toward Leothan.
He launches without warning, springing high above me. His wings snap open, and wind blasts my face as he gains altitude. His scales flicker, turning the color of the cloudy night sky, and he begins to disappear.
Andarna roars up at him, and then her gaze swings wildly, focusing behind me, then to the right, then landing on me for the length of a heartbeat. Her eyes flare like she wants to say something, and I throw myself at the wall where our bond should be.
But it’s gone.
A breath later, so is she.
All that’s left is a gust of wind as her scales blend into the sky.
A roar vibrates my very bones, and my ears ring as the edges of my vision darken. My heart stutters, and my lungs cease their struggle. There’s no air and no reason to seek it. I was infinite yet moored, and now I’m hollow and adrift in waters too vast to comprehend.
My knees buckle, then collide with the ground.
“Violet!” someone shouts, and racing bootsteps register a second before she crouches in front of me, her brown eyes searching mine for answers I don’t have. “Are you all right?”
I’m nothing.
The sky darkens, and the ground trembles. I look up into the black void, and my vision narrows in an ever-shrinking circle. Not the sky. A wing.
Stern, demanding golden eyes appear.
“You will breathe!” His deep, gravelly voice fills my head, and unyielding strength barrels down the pathway that connects us.
Tairn.
He exists, therefore I must, because we are bound. Never alone. Always connected.
I gasp and air rushes in. My heart pounds in an erratic, painful beat, but the edges of my vision clear. “She left us. She left us. She left us.” It’s all I can think.
“We remain,” Tairn orders, as if I have a choice not to.
“What happened?” Someone hits his knees beside me, and my gaze swings, meeting amber-flecked onyx. Not someone—Xaden. “Violet?” Worry and fear slide down the bond that tethers us, and the connection anchors my heartbeat.
I exist for Tairn, but I live for Xaden.
“I don’t know,” Rhiannon answers, and I find her watching me with heartrending worry that I instantly want to soothe.
Rhi’s still here. So are Mira, and Brennan, and Ridoc, and Sawyer, and Dain, and Jesinia, and Imogen, and Aaric…everyone is here but her.
“How could she do this?” Sgaeyl snaps, fury sharpening the words to daggers.
“She’s gone,” I whisper to Rhi, then crumple under the weight of the unbearable truth. Xaden catches me, tugging my shoulder against his chest, and his brow furrows as our gazes collide. “Andarna’s gone.”
No rider has ever survived the loss of their dragon. I can’t imagine wanting to.
—Colonel Kaori’s Field Guide To Dragonkind
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Andarna is gone.
I don’t leave our room for the next three days. I barely leave our bed.
Andarna is gone.
But I’m never alone.
Brennan reads in a chair by my bedside in the mornings while I drift in and out of sleep. My squadmates take over in the afternoon, but their voices barely cut through the fog of exhaustion. They are an endless stream of company that doesn’t know what to say, which is fine by me, since I don’t have it in me to answer. Xaden holds me at night, wrapping his arms and his mind around me.