I’ll say one thing for dragonfire. It kills quickly.
—COLONEL KAORI’S FIELD GUIDE TO DRAGONKIND
A dark shape flies at us from the left, sweeping Cat and me into a spinning tangle of limbs and propelling us backward. I grab onto her in the chaos, forcing her body in front of mine as we come to a skidding halt, knowing the shelter of facing my back to Solas won’t be enough but trying anyway.
She has to live. She’s third in line to the throne of Poromiel. If she dies in Tyrrendor, Cordyn will hunt Xaden down and execute him…if he survives my death.
Survive. Survive. Survive. I push the demand down every mental bond I have just in case we aren’t out of range. Xaden’s too far, but Tairn will hear it, and Andarna—gods, Tairn has to get here in time to save her.
Kiralair and Sloane fly into us next, swept in by an unseen force, pushing Sloane and me backward, toward Solas, but my back hits a hard, rough surface as the cave walls illuminate with the eerie glow of impending fire a heartbeat before we’re overtaken by darkness.
“Take a breath!” Andarna demands. “Don’t argue!”
Not darkness. Wings. It’s her belly at my back and she’s wrapped her wings around us.
“Breathe in and hold it!” I shout, then fill my lungs with sulfur-scented air.
Heat blasts, roaring past us in a stream that shakes Andarna’s wings, and the temperature soars. I force my eyes closed to keep them from cooking as my skin burns as though we’ve been thrown into an oven. How can she survive this?
“She’s fireproof,” Tairn reminds me, but the panic in his voice doesn’t do much to soothe the terror clamping down on my heart.
“Do not breathe!” Andarna demands, and I know it’s because I’ll singe my lungs if I do, if any of us do. I count my heartbeats. One. Two. Three.
The blast feels like it goes on forever, like it’s become my eternity, like my soul has done exactly what Sloane asked in the first part of the year and gone straight to the depths of hell without being commended to Malek. Eight. Nine.
On ten, it ends, and Andarna’s wings fall away. Air rushes in, and I wait until I feel its cool brush across my cheek before I drag in a breath, hearing the others do the same.
I open my eyes and see Cat lunge in the torchlight across the small space, using her gloved hands to put out the burning tips of the feathers along Kira’s far wing. It must have been exposed to the flames. Sloane races to help as Andarna gains her feet, and I narrowly avoid her tail as she faces down Solas.
“No! He’s nearly twice as big as you are!” I lift my hands and throw the floodgates open on Tairn’s power, letting it burn through me as Solas’s blast failed to do, until I’m pure fire. But I can’t wield in here, not when there’s every chance I could hit one of us.
Andarna’s roar fills the cave, and my heart stops when she goes for Solas’s throat. He bats her away like she’s nothing but a nuisance, and I muffle a cry as she slides into the wall, right over the charred remains of Visia’s bones.
“I’m fine.” Andarna shakes it off as Solas sizes me up.
“Three minutes,” Tairn tells me. “You will not die today!”
Three minutes. We can make it three minutes. But time isn’t our issue. Tairn can’t fit through the opening of the cave. He’ll have to find whatever entrance Solas used.
“How the fuck do you kill a dragon?”
“Let me go!” Cat shouts. “You’re…you’re draining my power!”
What the fuck? I chance a look backward, but all I see is Cat disengaging from Sloane’s panicked grip.
“Go for his other eye.”
“Get out of the way,” I order Andarna, and this time, she listens, scrambling back to my side as I grab two knives from their sheaths and flip them, pinching at the tips for a heartbeat before loosing them.
The first misses as he swivels, but the second finds the mark.
His bellow of pain is followed by rage, and he stumbles backward into the forked tunnel, leaving a small, precious opening between his head and the wall.
Cat and Sloane are closer. They can make it.
“Get her out!” I yell at Cat. “Now!”
“Violet!” Sloane shouts, but Kira’s beak closes softly around her pack, and she hoists her into the air as Cat scrambles to mount.
They rush by on the left, making it through just before Solas’s claws come out swinging, his talons raking furrows into the stone of the cave.
I hit the floor, pain flaring up my shoulders. There’s no pop as talons swipe over us, but something bites into my palm. Glass from the conduit.
I spread my bleeding fingers wide in the dim light of the dying torch, locating the remnants before it goes out. The top of the metal joint has broken, leaving four jagged prongs and one secured piece of alloy.
“I don’t have fire,” Andarna tells me, following my thoughts.
But I have power.
“It’s about to get really dark in here.” It’s our only shot, and I’m taking it. “You have to run as soon as there’s an opening.”
“I’m not leaving you,” she stubbornly argues.
“One minute!” Tairn announces.
How the hell am I going to get close enough to stab the remains of the conduit into him? There’s no time to tie it to a dagger, and the force of a throw isn’t enough to—
Solas roars in pain, his head swiveling back toward his shoulder, and through the opening, I see Cat poised in the dim light, nocking another arrow.
There’s no time to ruminate on her sticking around to save me. I’m already moving, grabbing hold of the dying torch in my empty hand, then running toward the soft spot under Solas’s foreleg, where his scales separate a few inches at a time to allow the movement of the joint.
He roars again, fire illuminating the cave in a short blast as he aims without sight, hitting the wall in front of him instead of Cat. I race into the deadly space underneath him and change my target when I realize he’ll crush me if he falls, charging toward his right shoulder.
I shove the prongs of the conduit into the soft joint between his scales as Andarna sinks her teeth between his neck and shoulder, distracting him, and then I wield. Energy sizzles up my arm and into my fingertips where they meet the metal.
Control. This is all about control.
With one hand raised, wielding the delicate strain of energy, I back away from Solas as quickly as I dare, feeding more and more power into the stream, and then I pour everything—
Solas roars, swinging his hind end around. A shape comes swinging for me, and I make out the thicker part of his tail in the dim light a second before it slams into my stomach, sending me flying and breaking the stream of lightning.
I’m airborne, nothing more than a projectile as I fly backward, hitting my ass, then my back, and lastly my head against the ground with a crack. But I hold my power tight instead of striking, letting it burn me from the inside out. Better me than accidentally hitting Andarna.
The only sound is a loud ringing in my ears, and sight only comes in quick, flashing blasts. Fire. It flares as I struggle to sit up through the fog of my own heartbeat, revealing Andarna latched onto Solas, hanging on even as he thrashes, slamming her smaller body against the cave wall.
“NO!” I think I yell, but the incessant peal of bells in my head blocks it out, and suddenly I’m moving, being dragged backward by a pair of arms. My head falls back, and I recognize those eyes.
Liam. I must be dead.
“She’s not clear!” someone shouts as the ringing fades slightly, and then another blast of fire shows two more arrows in the bloodied hole that used to be Solas’s shoulder.
Cat. She’s beside me, already drawing another arrow, and her lips move silently.
And the eyes above me aren’t Liam’s. They’re Sloane’s.
We’re plunged back into darkness momentarily, and the ringing fades enough to hear Cat’s voice clearly.
“Ninety. One hundred. One hundred and one.” Her voice shakes.
Light flares again as I’m dragged backward, and Cat fires, hitting Solas in the same wound. Andarna flies free, taking a chunk of Solas with her as I’m hauled from the returning darkness into the growing light from the mouth of the cave.
“Andarna!” I claw at Sloane’s grip, but the harder I fight, the weaker I feel, and the insufferable heat of my power lessens as Sloane starts to scream, letting me fall to the ground.
“Silver One!”
I feel the steady beats of air at my back and know Tairn is there, hovering, but I can’t rip my eyes away from the darkness of the cave as I stumble to my feet near the entrance.
A dragon screams, then falls horrifyingly silent.
She isn’t. She can’t be.
“She lives,” Tairn promises, but I don’t breathe until I reach mentally and find my bond with Andarna gleaming and strong.
“I drained you.” Sloane holds up trembling hands, staring at them like they don’t belong to her. “I drained you!” She grasps my shoulders, yanking my focus from the dark as my head swims.
“For fuck’s sake, Sloane, give her a second. She just hit her head,” Cat barks, still aiming into the darkness as we stand in the glaring light but not firing an arrow without a target.
“Are my eyes red?” Sloane shakes me, or maybe she’s shaking and simply holding on to me. “Are they red? I swear I didn’t reach, Violet. I didn’t take anything from you on purpose! Oh gods, am I turning venin?”
“She is as Naolin was,” Tairn says.
“You’re not turning.” I take her hands from my shoulders and stare into the darkness as footsteps sound, talons clicking along the rock.
“I’m not?”
“Your signet manifested,” I whisper, my eyes straining to see into the cave opening. “You’re a siphon.”
Andarna walks into the light, but it’s not the blood covering her mouth that catches my attention—it’s the blood dripping from the poisoned barb on her tail.
“You killed him.” My shoulders dip in relief. “You killed Solas.”
Pride and worry assault me at the same time, but I can’t force my shields up before Tairn’s voice fills my very existence.
“Slayer.”
Xaden bursts into our room as the healer finishes checking my eyes, shading my vision, then exposing me to light.
“Violet—” He halts a few feet away from where I sit on the edge of our bed. “Cat? What the hell are you doing in here?”
“She saved my life. Making sure she was seen by a healer was the least I could do,” Cat answers.
“She what?” Xaden moves forward as the healer stands upright.
“You heard me. She put herself between that giant orange dragon and me.” She rises from her seat—the same chair Xaden sat in while I slept in here for days after Resson, poisoned by the venin’s blade. “Thank you, Sorrengail.” She chokes on the words a little before passing by Xaden on her way out.
“Solas—” I start to explain.
“Oh, I already know,” he seethes. “Sgaeyl told me.”
“You were in a meeting. I didn’t want to bother you.” I follow the healer’s fingers upon direction.
“Bother me?” Shadows flood the floor.
The healer notices, blinking quickly. “You’ll be all right. I don’t think you’re concussed, but that’s quite a lump on the back of your head, and I’ll ask that you mind the stitches in your hand.” She arches a silver brow at me.
“Of course.” I lift my wrapped left hand. “Thank you.”
She nods, then dismisses herself, disappearing into the hallway.
I stare at Xaden, and he stares right back, tension emanating from every line of his body. “If you want to fight about the wards, that’s fine, but I’m not taking the blame for fighting my way out of a cave.”
He stalks forward, then bends down into my space and kisses me, soft and slow. “You’re alive,” he whispers against my lips.
“So my heartbeat says.”
“Good.” He stands, folding his arms. “Now we can fight. What the fuck were you thinking, saving Cat?”
I blink. “I’m sorry, you’re mad at me? I fight my way out of a cave against a dragon, and you’re mad at me? For saving a woman in the line of succession to the throne of Poromiel?”
He reels backward, horror flashing into his eyes a second before anger swamps them. “You saved Cat because she’s third in line?”
“First, I would have fought to save anyone—”
“You selfless, reckless—” he accuses, backing away slowly.
“And second, her death would have triggered yours, so hell yes I saved her!” My feet hit the ground and my head swims for a heartbeat, but my pulse steadies as I breathe deeply. “Tecarus would have had you executed if she’d died under your care.”
“Un-fucking-believable.” He laces his hands on the top of his head. “You hate her, and yet you refuse to raise the wards, no doubt so her power won’t be stripped away, and then you put your life in front of hers—”
“For you!”
“All I want is you!” He flicks his hands, and shadows shut the door a little harder than necessary, sealing us in behind the sound shield. “If she dies, then I’ll take the consequences. If they can’t channel, I’ll take those consequences, too. But not you. Never you. Gods, Violet. I’m doing everything in my power to both respect your freedom and keep you safe, and you’re…” He shakes his head. “I don’t even know what you’re doing.”
“Keep me safe.” I laugh, sarcasm biting into my eyes and making them sting. “Is that what you do? I get it all mixed up with just not killing me.”
“There it is.” He retreats until his back hits the wall, and then he folds his arms and leans against it, crossing an ankle casually. “You finally ready to ask me about the deal I made with your mother?”
