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)
Wait. Strike in the darkness. That’s what Aaric’s note said…
Like he knew this would happen.
I gasp as all the pieces click in one overwhelming heartbeat. The reinforcements. Telling me to guard Dunne’s temple. Yanking Lynx out of the way before the doors even opened to the great hall. He knew. He’s been manifesting this entire time.
“He’s a fucking precog,” I whisper in awe. A real one—not like Melgren, who can only foresee battles. If Aaric wields true precognition, he saw this, and he gave me a weapon made of the fractured temple—a temple Theophanie can’t step inside. I don’t believe in oracles, but I do believe in signets.
I unsheathe the marble dagger with my right hand, then mix my pain into the searing power that scorches what’s left of my beating heart, lift my broken arm, and release the agonizing burn of energy skyward.
And hold it.
The continuous strike lights up our surroundings and branches out through the shadow, revealing Theophanie’s back. She stumbles to her feet and whirls toward me, her eyes flaring wide, and she dives left, smacking into an invisible wall and falling backward.
A wall that snarls.
Scales shimmer to the same silver-blue as my strike, and a small dragon stalks toward Theophanie, her head low, teeth bared.
And just like that, my stammering heartbeat stabilizes.
Andarna.
Theophanie reaches out her hand, wonder lighting her red eyes.
I don’t care what her intentions are—she’s not getting her hands on Andarna. Pain wraps me in a broiling vise and fire sears my lungs, but I hold the bolt and sprint. Andarna leaving was one thing; losing her to the touch of a dark wielder is incomprehensible.
“Irid,” Theophanie whispers with reverence, straining toward Andarna. I lunge, driving the dagger straight into her heart. Fire breathes through me, until I am char and cinder and agony.
She staggers backward and starts to laugh.
Then she sees the blood and stops. “How?” Her eyes flare, and she topples to her knees. “Stone doesn’t kill venin.”
“You were never just venin,” I reply. “Dunne is a wrathful goddess to high priestesses who turn their backs on Her.”
She opens her mouth to scream, then desiccates in an instant.
I release the bolt, plunging us into darkness and surrendering to the fire burning me alive.
“Violet,” Andarna whispers.
And then I hear nothing.
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
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
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.