Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

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Violet

“This will work.”

Not one of the people — or dragons — assembled around us on the quiet hilltop just outside of Basgiath dares to point out that I’ve said this before.

I’ve said it every single time.

I said it to Xaden first, a whispered promise back when no-one else knew what was happening to him, when it was just us and the worried murmurs of our dragons in my mind, fumbling towards a solution with nothing but guesswork and folklore. I said it every time we tried something new, every time we let someone else in on the secret. I said it before Brennan failed to mend him, before Rhiannon failed to summon back the missing pieces of his soul, before Sloane failed to siphon the venin’s power from his veins.

I said it even when I knew it wasn’t true. You can’t mend when something’s missing. You can’t summon what’s been lost. And you can’t siphon what someone more powerful doesn’t want to let go.

The words might not have altered but I can hear the change in me as I say them tonight. There’s a sickening sort of desperation soaking my syllables now, turning what started as a promise into little more than a prayer.

But still I say it. To every face on this field.

“This will work.”

Down every bond in my heart.

“This will work.”

I’m not sure who I’m even trying to reach in my Archives. It’s been weeks since I felt even a flicker of Xaden’s presence in my mind, longer still since I heard his voice without seeing his lips move. He was fading from me long before he begged me to start dosing him with the serum that dulls our connection and by now the ceilings in my Archives are almost completely illuminated. Sometimes I think I can still see a hint of his shadows playing up there, just beyond the corner of my eye.

Sometimes I think I’m going mad.

“That’s because you haven’t been sleeping,” Tairn’s low voice fills my head, lecturing and yet comforting at the same time.

Of course I haven’t been sleeping. That’s where the Maven waits.

And Xaden won’t lay down beside me anymore.

He hasn’t shared my bed since the night when he reached for me in his sleep, and I woke up with three more inches of silver in my hair.

I toy with the end of my braid now, feeling Xaden’s eyes follow the movement of my hands.

“Sgaeyl says this may be our last attempt,” Tairn tells me, speaking for his mate in the way I’ve grown accustomed to lately. I’ve barely felt Sgaeyl for weeks either, our connection slowly fraying into uselessness. I’m losing her the same way we’re both losing Xaden. Piece by piece. “The nights will only get longer after this one. And there isn’t much of him left.”

I chance a glance at the man I love, standing closer than he’s allowed himself in weeks.

“I know.”

The worst thing is that he doesn’t even look all that different. He’s a little thinner lately, a little sadder, but with the late evening sunlight at his back, he still glows to me. He’s still deadly. Still beautiful. Still strong. He still looks like he’s mine.

I’m just not sure how much of him is anymore.

He fought it, of course, and for a while I thought that might even be enough to save him. I told myself I could get used to the chill on his skin, the distance in his gaze, but then the sickness set in, though he hates it when I call it that. But that’s what it is. He doesn’t want to keep taking more power. But at the same time, he sickens for it.

He shakes. He curses. He begs. He’s cruel.

And then, when the strongest person I’ve ever met can’t summon the fight anymore, he takes.

And I lose another piece of him to the darkness.

The summer wind picks up around us, sending an odd, unnatural sort of chill down my spine, straight through my leathers. But I don’t shiver when I look at Xaden. I stare straight into his red-rimmed eyes and I tell him, quietly, “I love you.”

He almost smiles.

But I notice he doesn’t say it back.

“It’s time,” I call out, raising my voice to address those assembled around us. It takes everything in me to rip my gaze from Xaden, but they deserve my attention in this. “Everyone knows their roles.”

One by one, I look them all in the eye.

Brennan looks sick. Bodhi nervous. Sloane terrified. Even at a distance, I can see the determination in Rhiannon’s face. I imagine the mirror image of it on Imogen, Ridoc, Sawyer and Garrick’s faces where they sit in pairs back at the college, guarding the pathways leading out to this particular field.

At least I know they’ll survive this.

When I move my attention to Mira she gives me a short, sharp nod from where she’s pacing out a large semi circle around us at the edge of the ravine, ready to ward us inside with Xaden if the worst happens. If it comes to it, the protective runes laid out along Mira’s path might save us, or they might not. And Rhi might be able to summon us out to safety. Or she might not. There’s a lot of that in this plan. A lot of mights and shoulds and maybes. But we all agreed on one certainty — we have to try.

“No matter what happens,” I remind them all, “We stick to the plan. We get this done.”

No-one argues. No-one points out that it’s not so much a plan as it is a desperate series of half-baked ideas cobbled together from books in languages none of us can read. Gods, I love them all so fucking much.

“Positions!” I call out, signalling Bodhi to retreat to the very edge of Mira’s semi-circle. He’s the insurance, his signet-countering power perhaps our only chance of stopping Xaden if things start to go wrong. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” I tell him, summoning up a smile from somewhere, “but I really hope you stay way over there.”

“That’s the idea,” he agrees, his eyes flicking to Xaden as he picks a careful path around Tairn and Sgaeyl. “Don’t make me disappoint her, cousin. It’s bad manners.”

Xaden doesn’t reply. He hasn’t spoken to anyone but me in days now.

And when he does speak to me, it’s usually to ask me to lock him in the Rybestad chest, or to put a dagger through his heart.

The shiver I’ve been suppressing slowly rattles through my body.

“You sure about this?” Brennan murmurs to me, moving closer, the vial of antidote clutched tight in his fist.

“No,” I tell him honestly, taking the vial anyway.

There’s a hundred ways this could go wrong. A thousand. And only one way it can work — if Xaden wants it to.

"Nature likes all things in balance," Andarna reminds me, peeking out from behind Sgaeyl.

If Xaden wants all of his soul back, he’s going to have to give up all of the power in return. Willingly. Consciously. He can’t be dulled by the serum. It can’t be forcibly siphoned out of him. When the time comes, he’ll have to choose to let it go.

Even then, there’s no way of knowing if that will be enough to save him. None of us really understand what forces it is that he’s angered — the gods themselves perhaps, or the earth, or even magic itself — and even after all our research, it still feels like we’re guessing at what it might take to appease them.

“This will work,” Andarna repeats my mantra back to me, her certainty overflowing the shield I was trying to put up to protect her from the pain I’m about to endure. “Everything will be as it should be. You’ll see.”

“I hope so.” I didn’t want her here for this but now that it comes to it, I’m glad she’s with me.

“Hope has nothing to do with it. And I’m always with you,” she reminds me, flaring out her undamaged wing in my direction. Her scales reflect the pattern of the mottled clouds above us, the faint swirling shapes mimicking a familiar sort of pattern. It almost looks like …

My face breaks into a grin. “Is that supposed to be a rebellion relic?”

“Do you like it?” She preens a little, a sound suspiciously like a purr catching in her throat. “I’m team Xaden tonight.”

“Yes, yes, we’re all for the lieutenant,” Tairn grumbles, nudging Andarna until she tucks her wing away and retreats back behind him. “Let’s get this over with. Sgaeyl is anxious to begin.”

My smile slides off my face. “Right…”

If Sgaeyl is anxious to begin, I’m just … anxious.

I swallow hard as I approach Xaden, wishing I’d forced a little more food down my throat today. My stomach is a pit, terror gnawing away at the emptiness.

“You need to stand there,” I tell him, pointing towards the small patch of grey, dead ground near the edge of the ravine.

It took us a while to find it—the exact spot where he first channelled from the earth.

It’s so small it’s almost unnoticeable.

But look at what it’s done to him.

The evening sun crests over the edge of a cloud, illuminating the faint spiderweb pattern of broken veins in his cheeks. The dark bruises under his eyes. The misery in his beautiful face.

I pour all my focus into keeping my hand steady as I hold out the serum antidote in the flat of my palm. “And you need to drink this.”

He looks down at the vial in my hand, but makes no move to take it from me.

“Once you do, Sloane is going to siphon the venin’s power out of you, and you’re going to let her.”

He already knows the plan, of course. We all do. But it makes me feel steadier to say it aloud, my heart calming like it does when I recite facts. Something almost fond flickers in Xaden’s red-rimmed eyes as he listens to me, as if he can guess what I’m doing. As if he’s humouring me.

“When the time comes, I’ll sever the connection on Sloane’s end with my lightning, so there’s no risk of the power flowing into her.” That’s where we almost went wrong before, and I won’t risk Sloane’s soul just to save Xaden’s, even if a hideous, selfish part of me whispers that I should. No matter what, I won’t break my promise to Liam. “But you’ll need to be the one to sever the connection on your end. I can boost Sloane enough to pull it out without touching you. I can keep her safe. But I...” So much for calming myself down. I can barely breathe. “I can't save you. The choice to let it go has got to be yours.”

“I know.”

“After that, Brennan will be on hand to mend you … if—if you need it.” This is the weakest part of the plan. The vaguest. We don’t know if it’s possible to mend a soul. We don’t know if he’ll have one to mend. I drop my gaze to the patterns burned into the grass at his feet, afraid to show him my uncertainty. “And if we understood the texts correctly, then the runes we’ve placed—the runes should help you—”

“Violet.”

“You just need to focus on—”

“Violet. Stop.” He curls a single finger under my chin, gently tilting my head back up to meet his gaze. My knees almost buckle beneath me, Gods, it’s been so long since he touched me. I’ve stayed up nights trying to remember the last time. “I know what’s coming.”

He brushes his thumb along my lower lip, as if he’s trying to remember the feel of my kiss.

And then he drops his hand and tells me, quietly, “It won’t work.”

My stomach drops like I’ve just fallen off the side of the ravine. Because that’s not cruelty I can hear in his voice. It’s defeat.

“You don’t know that,” I remind him. “You can’t know that.”

“I know it never has.”

“Says who?” I curl my hand into a fist over the vial of antidote, seizing on the argument. Anything but the goodbye. “If the last year has taught me anything, it’s that recorded history isn’t history. Navarre has been fucking with the truth for centuries.” My power ripples dangerously along my veins, and it takes all my focus not to shatter the vial before Xaden even gets a chance to drink it. “Just because there’s no written account of anyone being cured, doesn’t mean it’s never happened.”

“I just don’t want you to—”

“To what? To hope?” I hear the break in my voice. Feel the break in my heart. “Xaden, that’s all I have left.”

“Don’t—” He makes an aborted movement, like he almost reached for me. That’s all I get lately. Almosts. “Please don’t cry.”

“Don’t give me a reason to and I won’t.” I swipe at my cheeks, impatient with my own emotions. It’s unforgivable to let tears blur my vision right now. I don’t know how long left I have to look at him.

No. I stop the thought in its tracks. This isn’t the last time. It can’t be.

“Even if it is true,” I go on furiously, “even if no-one has ever been cured before, I don’t care. All that tells me is that no-one as strong as you ever tried.” My hand shakes as I shove the antidote back out towards him, uncertainty slipping over me like his shadows. “You will try … won’t you?”

For a split second there’s not a trace of red in his eyes. “Violet…”

“I know it won’t be easy,” I barrel on, the words tripping over themselves in my rush to say them, “I know it’ll hurt. But promise me you’ll try. Please. Promise me.”

“Of course I will.” He steps in closer, so close I can almost feel the brush of his chest against mine when he breathes in. “Of course I’ll try. I won’t let you go without a fight.”

“This isn’t about me. Don’t let yourself go, Xaden.”

His jaw tightens, his troubled eyes sliding away from mine.

“I mean it.” I slip the vial of antidote into one of the sheaths at my ribs, freeing up my hands so I can reach for him. He hisses a breath through his teeth when I touch his cheek, like the contact hurts him. But I don’t pull my hand away. And he doesn’t stop me as I slowly turn his face back to mine. “You are so much more than your power.”

Not just to me. Not just to Sgaeyl. He’s a leader and a friend and a cousin and a person. He’s bad tempered. Clever. Dryly funny. Brave. He matters. And I hate that he can’t see himself like we do.

“Promise me you’ll fight. I need the words, Xaden.”

“All right,” he whispers softly, his eyes slipping closed. “I promise.”

I let out a slow, shuddering breath and release my hold on him, my forehead falling to rest against his chest, just for a moment. It’s a featherlight thing, barely real, but I think I feel him press a kiss into my hair before I muster the strength to straighten back up. Or maybe it’s that half-imagined kiss that gives me the strength to move, I don’t know.

Over the ravine, the sun glows low on the horizon.

We’re almost out of time.

I reach for the antidote again, my fingers fumbling in the tiny opening of the sheath. “Are you ready?”

“Wait.” He covers my hand before I can retrieve the vial, holding on just long enough to stop me. And then he lets go. “I need a promise in return first.”

“We don’t have time—”

“We have time for this.”

“Xaden…” Dread slides like poison down the back of my throat. Because I already know what he’s going to say. I can almost feel him putting the dagger in my hand. “Don’t,” I beg, my voice barely carrying over the rustle of the summer wind through the grass at our feet.

“If this doesn’t work—”

“Don’t say that. Don’t give up.”

“I’m not,” he promises, as fierce as I am frightened. “I swear it. I made you a promise and I intend to keep it. But you and I both know we won’t get another chance at this. If I fall—”

“You won’t.”

“But if I do—”

“Xaden—”

“Please, Violet.” His voice is softer than I’ve ever heard it. If I couldn’t see his lips move, I’d swear he was in my head again. “I don’t want to look at you and not know you. Not love you.” He reaches out and strokes down the end of my braid, pausing over the discoloured strands. “Some things are worse than dying.”

“But…”

“Mira will do it if she has to. But I’d rather it was you.”

Power crackles beneath my skin, my misery furiously searching for some sort of outlet. “I can’t.”

“You can.” He moves in even closer, filling my field of vision. There’s nothing but him. Nothing but us. “I know it’s selfish to ask. I know that. I should let Mira do it and be grateful. But I want your face to be the last face I see. Please. Promise me that.”

“I…”

I can’t.

I’d follow him into this darkness before I send him to Malek without me.

“Violence…” He takes a sudden step back, all the tenderness fading from his face. “Tell me you don’t mean that.”

“How—” I choke off the question, betrayal wrapping round my throat like a fist as I realise the truth. “You promised….” I lower my voice so no-one else on this field hears the accusation. “You swore you’d never use your signet on me again.”

The broken veins in his cheeks seem to suddenly burn darker. “The man who made that promise still had a soul.”

“Stop it.” I let loose all my useless, helpless fury, lighting up the summer solstice with the force of a thousand storms. “You still have one now.”

A tremor rips through him, almost as if my storm is raging inside him as well. He shoves his eyes shut, riding it out. And when he opens them, he’s Xaden again. He’s mine again. “Barely,” he whispers.

“I don’t care.” I close the distance he created, watching the faint red web of broken veins fade slightly as he retakes control of himself. “I don’t care how much is left.” I take hold of him, digging my nails into his leathers, like I could keep him tethered to me with nothing else but the strength of my fingertips. “I could love a sliver of you more than anyone has ever loved the whole of someone else.”

I don’t give him time to reply.

I don’t give him time to object.

I surge up onto my toes and kiss him hard on the mouth.

For one heartbreaking moment, I think he’s going to push me away.

But then I hear a whisper in my Archives. So quiet I could be imagining it. Dreaming it.

“Violet…”

And he kisses me back.

I forget where we are. What we’re about to do. I forget everyone except him, everything except the slide of his tongue against mine, the mindless bliss that I haven’t known in so damned long. He’s careful, even now, giving me the kiss I demand but nothing more, only reaching for me where there’s leather between his hands and my skin. But I meant what I said. I’ll take whatever he has left. I’ll take a sliver.

Lightning surges again, burning against my eyelids, beneath my fingernails, in my bones.

“Careful, Silver One,” Tairn’s voice pushes past my shields. “Don’t burn yourself out just to say goodbye.”

“This isn’t goodbye,” I say aloud, an answer and a promise, all in one.

“No,” Xaden agrees. “It’s not.”

When he pulls away, he’s holding the vial of antidote in his hand.

I didn’t even feel him take it.

“Wait!” I cry out when he raises the vial to his lips. “Wait.”

I’m not ready for this.

I don’t think I ever will be.

I close both of my hands around his to hold the antidote away from his lips, just for another few seconds.

“You will not die today,” I tell him, my power rising within me again. Maybe if I fill the sky with lightning, the solstice won’t ever end. The night will never come for him. “Your soul isn’t only yours to give away. Remember that. You belong to me, Xaden Riorson.” A low, furious growl sounds behind me, an echo of it reverberating in my mind, filling every corner of my Archives with the sound. And despite everything, despite the terror in every fibre of my being, I smile. “And you belong to Sgaeyl,” I amend. “Come back to us.”

Xaden’s eyes lift over my shoulder towards his dragon, then back to me.

And I hear his voice in my mind, one last time. “I love you.”

He pulls his hand free of mine, raising the tiny vial of antidote to his lips. “Here’s to you, Violence.”

He drinks.

And the world turns black around us.

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Chapter Text

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Xaden

There’s a strange sort of irony to being an inntinnsic.

Every single mind on this field is an open book to me, except my own.

Without the serum to dull my abilities, even the strongest shield can’t keep me out tonight. I don’t even need to try. The explosion of my shadows might have plunged every person on this hilltop into darkness, but I can see their intentions clear as day.

They all mean to save me.

And I don’t know if I’m going to let them.

I’m planning to, of course, I want to, but the truth is that I don’t know if I will. If I can.

Resisting the urge to wield is like trying to hold your breath. It doesn’t matter how much you try and fight it, eventually something else takes over, some baser instinct that you can’t resist, and you breathe.

I’ve been holding my breath for so long now.

I’m so fucking tired.

I haven’t told Violet, but I’m fairly sure that beating this thing will kill me.

But giving in would destroy me altogether.

And I meant what I said to her; there are some things worse than death.

I curl my hands into fists, trying to clear the shadows from the hilltop, but they’re unwieldy, refusing to obey my commands. There’s no use trying to ground myself in my mental hilltop in Aretia. I haven’t ventured there in weeks. Not since I looked down and saw the grey, dead ground all around me. Not since I reached for my connection to Sgaeyl and found the familiar sapphire of our bond cracked into sharp, glittering shards.

Somewhere in the darkness, I hear her growl.

I whip my head around to search for her, trying to separate the real hilltop from the one in my mind, but the darkness is beyond my control, blinding me in a way my own shadows never used to. Chaos reigns all around me. I can hear my friends calling out to each other, asking what to do. For a split second, I feel Sloane think about running away from me.

Liam would never forgive me if I turned his little sister into a coward.

I can almost feel the sting of the scar on my back that belongs to her.

I try again, gritting my teeth as the shadows resist me. My nails bite into my palms, a sudden sharp scratch telling me I’ve just shattered the glass vial that held the serum antidote. I drop the broken pieces to the ground just as a flash of lightning lights up the sky all around me, slicing straight through the darkness.

In that split second of light, my eyes find Violet. Some of her hair is escaping her braid, the wind whipping the strands all around her face as she wields her power like a weapon, over and over again.

She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

And the ugliest thing I’ve ever done is put those three more inches of silver in her perfect hair.

Fury lends me a strength I haven’t had for months, allowing me to finally bend the resistant shadows to my will. They disappear in an instant, the hilltop clearing back to what it was a moment ago — the sun on the horizon, summertime in the air.

For a split second, nobody moves.

And then Violet throws her hands out and screams, “Now, Sloane!”

I feel it the moment the siphoning begins, reminding me of the first time we tried this, when Sloane almost absorbed the power herself.

Every instinct screams to resist the pull. The power is a part of me now, the corruption of it wound around me like a vine, roots digging deep. Letting it go feels like coming apart at the seams. Like my hair is being ripped out from the root. My fingernails lifted. My bones splintered.

Someone screams and it takes me a moment to realise that it’s me.

And this is only the beginning.

I drop to my knees, throwing my hands out to break my fall. I heave up nothing at all, my head hanging low as I stare at the ground beneath me. I’ve landed right where Violet wanted me — my palms pressed into the patch of grey that I scarred into this earth. There’s no power here to tempt me.

But if I move just an inch…

“Xaden, no!”

I can feel the power calling me, louder than Violet’s warning. The pulse of it is a steady, quiet heartbeat, more comforting in this moment than the memory of hers. It would be so easy to reach for it. To replace what Sloane is taking. I could make the pain stop.

I only need to breathe in.

Instead I grind my hand hard into the broken glass of the antidote vial, grounding myself with the agony.

And I let Sloane get to work.

I don’t know how long it lasts. Forever and the blink of an eye. Every scar on my skin feels fresh, one hundred and seven wounds spilling the ghost of their blood down my back. And under my shirt, over my heart, I bleed for Violet.

I keep my eyes fixed on her as the power spills out of me in tendrils of shadow, some like wisps of smoke, others like dark, hideous flames. When the hilltop is almost as dark as it was when I first took the antidote, she lights us up. I’ve never seen her wield so much. Never seen her aim so perfectly. Time and again she slices her lightning like a knife into that dark power, cutting it away from Sloane.

Now all I have to do is cut it away from me.

In the eye of the storm, she meets my gaze. Her eyes are wild, the loose strands of her hair flying all around her face in the unnatural breeze. She looks elemental. Powerful. Hopeful. She looks like she still believes in me.

“Now, Xaden!”

I’ll be damned if I let her down. I summon every last vestige of the pure power within me, ready to burn myself out to cut myself free.

And that’s when he comes for me.

The monster I thought I killed on this hilltop all those months ago, the one who has been haunting my dreams ever since. The venin general walks right out of my shadows, right out of my nightmares, and stops at Violet’s side, turning his head to look at her.

“No,” I gasp out, struggling to rise. I can’t let him reach her. Can’t let him touch her.

But she doesn’t even seem to notice him. And when he moves a little closer, the grass beneath his feet doesn’t flatten.

“You—you’re not really here,” I gasp out.

“Of course not.”

“You’re not real.”

He smiles at that, showing his rotten teeth. “Now, now, don’t lie to yourself, shadow-wielder.” He looks from Violet to Sloane, shaking his head softly. “Did they really think this would work?”

“It will,” I grit out, swallowing a scream as I release one of the thinnest, palest streams of shadow, watching it disappear into the ether.

“You won’t let the power go.”

He means to frighten me, I know, but all I hear is won’t. Won’t, and not can’t.

I let another tendril of the power go, even as the pain feels like it’s splitting my head in two. Another. Another. More. I fall forwards again, catching myself on my bloody hands. I think I’m screaming again.

From very far away, I hear Violet call my name.

I’ve never heard her sound like that.

It’s not right. This is supposed to break me, not her.

I struggle upright again, severing multiple shadows at once, just enough to catch a glimpse of the sun, still burning low in the evening sky. The longest day isn’t over yet. And when my eyes find the patch of cold, dead ground beneath me, I could swear it’s a little smaller. A little greener.

“Fascinating,” the general notes, moving a little closer, “but ultimately futile. Spare yourself the pain and stop this.”

I ignore him, black spots appearing at the corner of my vision as I sever more and more of the power. For one horrifying second I think the shadows are building inside me again, that it’s them blurring my eyesight away, but it’s only oblivion, waiting there at the edge of my consciousness. Ready to take me away.

“No,” I grit out, tasting blood on my tongue. I don’t know when I bit down on it. “Not yet.”

As quickly as Sloane pulls the darkness out, I let it go. But I’m not fast enough. There’s too much pouring out of me now, and I can feel myself getting weaker, burnout threatening to tear me apart as I fall back to my hands and knees again.

But still I don’t stop.

I want to be me again when this kills me.

I want to be Sgaeyl’s rider. Violet’s love. Garrick’s best friend. Tyrrendor’s heir.

I want to be Xaden Riorson.

With the last of my strength, I look at Violet, horror gripping me as I realise she’s in pain. Her eyes are wide, her posture rigid, her skin aflame with her power as she wields her lightning over and over, boosting Sloane at the same time.

I scream at her to stop, to be careful, but my voice is a ragged, soundless thing, too weak to reach her in the maelstrom all around us.

“Look at her,” the general says, wandering closer to her side. “Burning out to try and save you.”

I know he’s not really here, I know it, but that doesn’t stop the surge of fury that rips through me when he strokes a finger along the burning skin of her cheek. I dig my fingernails into the dirt, dragging my broken body towards him. “Don’t touch her!”

“You could save her, you know. You could show her where to find more power…”

The hum of power beneath my feet rises as if in response to his words, calling to me. Sweet. Simple. Easy.

But Violet and I have never been those things.

We never fucking will be.

“No!” I roar out my refusal, snatching my hands away from the ground.

I won’t let her burn for me. And I won’t let her turn for me either.

I summon every last vestige of power, knit every ragged piece of my soul back together, and start to rise to my feet. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the general’s eyes widen, like he didn’t expect this. When I falter, shadows rise up to curl around my limbs, supporting my weight as they gently, carefully, help me stand. They’re nothing like the darkness I’ve been wielding lately. If it’s possible for darkness to be bright, for shadows to contain light, these do. They almost feel like—

“Sgaeyl?”

I stagger upright near the edge of the ravine, feeling my boots land on that hilltop in my mind at the exact same moment.

“Xaden.” Her voice wraps around my mind like an embrace.

Gods, I’ve been so lonely without her.

She chuffs her annoyance, the sound so achingly familiar I almost laugh aloud, even now. “Yes, well, whose fault is that?”

I ground myself as my hilltop takes shape in my mind, the grass growing green and thick beneath my feet. Sgaeyl sends a flood of her emotions through our bond—fear and love and pride and fury. And in my sky, I see a streak of lightning.

“Violet.”

“She can’t hold on much longer,” Tairn warns me, his voice joining Sgaeyl’s in my mind. Gods, I even missed him.

“Finish it!” Sgaeyl orders, the glittering sapphire of our bond burning brighter than any jewel I’ve ever seen.

I summon the shadows she gifts me, the rightness of that power flooding through my veins, lending me the strength I need.

I was wrong before. This is breathing in.

“Don’t be a fool, shadow-wielder,” The general hisses, but there’s something hesitant in his eyes. And that’s when I understand. He didn’t come here to see me fall. He was afraid I would stand. “If you give up this power, you will never know it again.”

“Good,” I grit out. I don’t want even an infinitesimal taste of it. I only need Sgaeyl. I only ever needed Sgaeyl.

“Gods, I’m so sorry.”

“Survival first. Apologies later.”

“You could command us all,” the general shrieks, his outline fading. “You could end this war!”

It’s a lie, of course. And even if it wasn’t—

“That’s not what I was born for,” I tell him, sharpening my shadows. My eyes find Violet, even as my vision darkens at the edges. She’s so lost to her power, I don’t think she sees me at all. “I was made to stand by her side and hold her hand while she destroys you.”

I reach for Sgaeyl, plumbing right to the depths of her power, taking everything she can give me. And nothing more.

My voice is quiet on my hilltop, a whisper just for her. “Stay with me?”

Her answering roar sounds inside my head, and rings in my ears. “Until the end.”

I look at Violet again, her unfocused gaze sharpening as it finds mine. I don’t see her lips form my name. But I hear it in my head.

“Xaden.”

Yes. That’s my fucking name. That’s who I am.

With the last of my strength, I slice my shadows through the corruption pouring out of me, over and over, until I’m finally free.

And I was right.

It kills me.

****

Chapter Text

****

Violet

Before tonight, I thought I knew fear.

And I was born knowing pain.

But nothing compares to the agony of watching Xaden tear himself apart to put himself back together. Nothing compares to the terror of watching him fall.

It all happens so fast. The last shreds of darkness on the hilltop disappear at the same moment that shadows explode in my mind, Xaden’s power — his true power, his true self — flooding through our bond and covering the ceilings of my Archives again. On the hilltop, the sky above us clears, the summer breeze reasserting itself in an instant, like nothing happened here at all. The sun still hasn’t fully set, and for a heartbeat as it bathes Xaden in shades of pure gold, I dare to think that everything is going to be alright.

Then I see him stumble.

Then I hear him gasp.

Something fundamental cracks apart, deep in the foundations of my Archives.

And the light goes out in his eyes.

“No!” I scream out my denial, throwing myself across the space that separates us.

It’s only a few paces and I’ve been running every morning for so long now. But I’m still not fast enough. He hits the ground before I reach his side.

“XADEN!” I reach for him in my mind instead but his shadows recede as fast as they arrived, daylight filling the roofline of my Archives again.

“No, no, no, no.” I fall to the ground at his side, barely feeling the jolt of pain in my knees at the impact, or the agonising pull in my shoulders as I heave him over onto his back and into my lap. The phrase ‘dead weight’ drifts through the screaming silence in my mind and I taste bile at the back of my throat.

No. This can’t be real. He fought it. He won.

Didn’t he?

I cup his cheeks, my frantic fingers wiping the dirt and grass from his face. A sob catches in my throat as the grime wipes away to reveal nothing but clear, perfect skin, no trace of those angry broken veins that marred his face for so long.

“Xaden.” I shape his name into an order, shaking his shoulders until the tips of my fingers turn numb. “Xaden, wake up. Show me your eyes.”

He did it. I know he did it.

Gods, this can’t be the price.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen…” I don’t know who I’m talking to. No-one on the hilltop dares to approach me. Tairn and Andarna are stunned and silent in my mind, their concern pulsing down our connection like twin heartbeats. I can’t feel Sgaeyl at all. Oh gods. Why can’t I feel her? Why can’t I feel him? I shake him again. “Xaden, please—”

A familiar voice interrupts my pleading. “Violet—”

“Brennan!” How could I forget him? I wave him over frantically, furious that he isn’t already at my side. “Quickly!”

“Vi—”

“Fix him,” I order, hauling him down to his knees as soon as he reaches my side. “Mend him. Now!”

But Brennan has none of my urgency. “I can’t.”

My power surges with my temper. “What do you mean you can’t?!”

“Be careful, Silver One,” Tairn warns, just before Brennan jerks back from me, almost as if I’ve shocked him.

I force in a breath, trying to calm the furious crackle of power in my bones. In my teeth. Burnout is so close. And Xaden is so far.

I look back down at him, choking back a sob as I gently brush his hair away from his forehead to reveal a faint, unfamiliar touch of silver threaded through his temples, as if he drained himself to break free.

Gods, the strength it must have taken.

I need him to wake up so I can tell him how fucking proud I am.

“Brennan.” I barely recognise my own voice. “Brennan, please—”

“It’s too late,” Brennan says gently, taking my hand and moving it to Xaden’s chest. “I’m sorry, little sister.”

He laces our fingers together, holding my hand there.

And the crack at the heart of my Archives grows wider.

“His heart’s not beating,” I say uselessly, pressing my hand harder against Xaden’s chest, as if I’ll find a heartbeat if I try hard enough. “Why isn’t his heart beating?”

“He’s gone, Violet.”

Everyone on this field must hear the broken noise I let out. Everyone on this fucking continent. It echoes down the ravine, sinking into the cliffside, into the roar of the river below.

Behind me, Sgaeyl lets out a sound that I’ve never heard before.

I didn’t know dragons could wail like that.

Maybe Malek will take pity, and give us back the soul we’re crying over.

“No!” I shake Brennan off as he tries to pull me away from Xaden. “We were supposed to stay together.” If his heart isn’t beating, why is mine? “We were supposed to die together…”

“Silver One—”

I slam my shields down on Tairn. On Andarna. And I close my eyes on the reality in front of me.

This can’t be happening.

“Let him go, Violet.”

“No.”

“Come away.”

“I said no.” I shove Brennan away from me, tightening my hold on Xaden. “Go to Sloane,” I tell him, sparing Liam’s sister a glance where she lies to my left, Bodhi kneeling beside her. “She almost burned out saving him.”

But she did save him. I saved him.

He saved himself.

And that should have been enough.

Fury fills my soul, pushing aside the fathomless grief. I look down at my favourite face in the whole world, so peaceful he could be sleeping, and I ask him one more time, “Xaden, wake up.” I curl my hand into a fist over his leathers, shaking him again. “Wake the fuck up.”

I should be gentler, perhaps, or kinder. But we’re none of those things. I am none of those things.

My love is a lightning storm.

I reach for that pure power now, letting it burn through every inch of me, from the tips of my fingers to the ends of my hair. And then I bring my hand down on his chest and shock the force of my storm straight into his quiet, silent heart. “Wake up!”

The force of my strike flings me back from him, sending me flying backwards across the grass. I slam my eyes shut as I land, all of my breath forced out of me in an agonising rush.

I don’t care.

I don’t need to breathe if he isn’t.

I feel my mind start to crumble, collapsing into the gaping chasm within my Archives.

But then I hear it—

A gasp.

A cough.

My name on his lips. “Violet?”

“Xaden?”

There’s no answer. And it’s not joy that floods through me. It’s terror.

I hear him scramble to his feet, but still I keep my eyes slammed shut. Because he might be awake, might be moving towards me, might be calling my name in the tone of voice I’d half-forgotten he even possessed, but I can’t feel him in my mind. Not a flicker.

I can hear him right in front of me.

And I don’t know where he fucking is.

“No, no, no.” I don’t know what I’ve done. I don’t know what I’ve made him. My breath comes in sharp, horrified bursts as I consider the possibilities.

He was free. He was whole.

What the hell have I dragged back from Malek?

“Silver One—”

I’m not ready to find out. I shove my shields back into place, cowering like the scribe I used to be, my face buried in my hands.

“Violence?” I hear Xaden drop to his knees beside me, breathing hard.

Even through my terror, my heart fucking soars at the sound.

He’s breathing.

He’s alive.

But is he mine?

“Are you alright?” His hands ghost over me, the lightest, most careful touch. “Are you hurt?”

I can hear the panic in his voice but I can’t find the words to answer him.

“Violet, you’re scaring me. Look at me, please.”

I can’t. I don’t want to open my eyes and find that ring of red back in his eyes.

I don’t want to pick which of the alloy daggers at my ribs will come out to kill him.

“Look at me,” he says again, his hands curling around mine where they still cover my face. I hold my breath as he peels my fingers away from my face, gently, but surely, his strength overcoming my resistance. “Open your eyes, Violence. Please. For me.”

One thought pierces the screaming panic in my head; surely a soulless man couldn’t sound like that?

Slowly, I open my eyes.

The sun is finally setting, painting the sky behind him in the pinks and purples of the most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen. And Xaden Riorson is smiling at me. Because his eyes—

His eyes are gold flecked onyx, and completely, utterly perfect.

“You’re alive,” I choke out. I reach for him, cradling his face to hold it in front of mine as I examine his expression. There’s no trace of red in his eyes. No web of veins on his cheeks. He looks tired. And lovely. And mine. “You’re you.”

“Were you expecting someone else?” he says, surprising a rough, choking laugh out of me.

He kisses that laughter right off my lips.

I whimper into his kiss, clutching for any part of him I can reach. His hair. His jaw. His shoulders. There’s no finesse to the way I kiss him. No technique. I think I’m trying to devour him. I think he might let me. He curls one arm around my back, pulling me into his lap as we lie sprawled on the grass, tangled in each other.

“Violet…” He whispers my name against my lips, against my throat, his mouth tracking a slow, certain path to the spot above my collar that never fails to make me melt.

Instinctively, I answer him in my mind, searching for his shadows. “Xaden.”

My Archives are whole again. But he’s not answering me inside them.

“Wait…” I pull back, remembering what terrified me when he first woke. “Are your shields up? I can’t feel you at all.”

“My shields? I don’t think I could shield right now if I tried. I’ve got nothing left.”

I frown, anxiety chilling my joy. “I don’t understand. Why can’t I…”

My words die in my throat.

Because something just made the last of the daylight disappear. And it wasn’t the sunset.

“What—” Dread drops into my stomach like a sickness but when I look up, it’s not the shadows of the dark power we just siphoned out of him. It’s just an ordinary shadow. If a dragon can ever be ordinary. “Oh.” Foolishly, I start to relax. “Sgaeyl?”

The only answer I receive is a growl, low and menacing.

She stalks slowly closer, her unfurling wingspan blocking out the whole sky as she towers right above us. There’s nothing but the ravine on one side of us and her massive body on the other. Almost like … we’re trapped.

‘Violet…” Xaden goes very, very still. “You need to move.” He gently moves me out of his lap and onto the grass beside him, inching away slowly. “Carefully, now.”

“What?”

“Do as he says,” Tairn warns. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him sound so tense. “Now.”

“I don’t understand.” I crawl closer to Xaden, ignoring the warning look he gives me and the rumble of disapproval from Tairn in my head. “What’s happening?”

It’s Andarna who answers, her high voice filling my head with one terrifying word. “Threshing.”

“What?!”

Even as I throw that disbelieving question down every bond in my mind, I already know it’s true. It all makes sense now. The lack of shadows in my Archives when Xaden woke. The absence of any hint of Sgaeyl.

Whatever happened on this hilltop tonight, it severed the bond between Xaden and Sgaeyl.

He’s not a rider right now.

He’s just a man.

And Sgaeyl looks fucking furious with him.

“Oh, Gods…”

“Move, Silver One. Right now!”

I’ve never heard Tairn sound like that. I obey him at once, even as it kills me to move away from Xaden. Every instinct inside me screams that I need to put my body between his and Sgaeyl. I need to protect him.

But that’s not how Threshing works.

For the first time, I fully understand the agony of that one unbreakable rule.

“You must not interfere,” Tairn reminds me.

I scramble sideways on my hands and knees, watching the scene play out in front of me with horrified, unblinking eyes. Sgaeyl growls again, stalking closer to Xaden, her head swaying in that terrifying serpentine motion that never bodes well. And Xaden—

Xaden doesn’t cower. Doesn’t avert his eyes. Doesn’t bow his head. He just lifts his chin, and meets her gaze.

“You never told me this could happen.” I throw the accusation down my connection to Tairn.

“I did not know.”

Xaden lifts his chin even higher, baring his throat. And then that brave, foolish, fucking brilliant man does the unthinkable. He opens his mouth, and he speaks to her. “I’m sorry, Sgaeyl.”

Her answer is a roar of fury and a wild lash of her tail, the very end of it catching the side of his face, right over the scar she gave him three years ago. The force of the blow lifts Xaden off his feet, throwing him to the floor.

“No!” Just like he did on the day of my own bonding, I throw the rules aside, and take a step.

“Stay back!” Xaden warns, staggering back to his feet. Half of his face is covered in blood, the scar over his brow ripped open all over again. “Don’t come any closer.”

“She won’t hurt him,” Andarna promises me.

“She just did!”

“He betrayed her,” Tairn reminds me. “I’ve never seen her in such pain. He’s lucky I have not burned him to ash where he stands for that.”

“But he came back to us! To her! Doesn’t that mean anything?”

“Of course it does. He’s still breathing, is he not?”

“But will she bond him again?”

I can’t imagine Xaden without Sgaeyl. He’s a rider. He’s her rider.

“That is up to Sgaeyl. She chose him once for his ruthlessness. Now she must decide if she will take him for his heart.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

“She may let him live. But he will never ride again.”

Dread smothers the last of the summer heat from my skin. “No…”

I’d love him in any quadrant, in any place. Infantry. Scribe. Healer. Rebel. King. I’d take his name if it meant nothing at all.

But I can see it in his eyes.

He only wants to be a rider.

I don’t think. I just move. I scramble to my feet, placing myself at Xaden’s side. “Please, Sgaeyl.”

She whips her head around towards me, nothing but fury in her familiar golden eyes.

“You cannot command a dragon!” Tairn warns me, his fear flooding our bond.

But I’m not commanding her. I’m begging her.

“That is hardly preferable.”

Wait.

That wasn’t Tairn’s voice. And it wasn’t Andarna’s either.

That means…

I stare up at Sgaeyl, my eyes blowing wide.

Hope is a wonderful, weightless thing. I’m standing on this hilltop, tired and battered and broken, but her voice in my mind has me soaring.

“Stand aside,” she tells me. “Right now.”

I do as she says, darting out of her way as she stalks closer to Xaden. She lowers her head down until it’s level with his, her nostrils flaring as she breathes in, almost as if she’s scenting his blood. And still, he doesn’t cower. He plants his feet in the ground and lets her draw even closer. I instinctively tense when she opens her mouth but there’s no fire on her tongue. The barest tip of it reaches out, licking the blood off the side of Xaden’s face.

And then she rears up on her hind legs, and kicks him straight off the side of the mountain.

“No!” I forget about her voice in my head. I forget everything except the wide, terrified look in Xaden’s eyes as he flies backwards and out of sight. “Xaden!”

I throw myself forwards as if I could somehow save him, even after he drops out of sight. But Sgaeyl is even faster, launching with one powerful beat of her wings, the force of it throwing me to the ground.

She dives off the side of the ravine, disappearing into the dusky sky.

I don’t breathe. I don’t blink.

I lie on the ground where she left me, and I watch the cliff edge.

I should’ve watched my Archives instead.

I feel it the second she catches him, my mind flooding with shadow as our connection reasserts itself, stronger than I’ve ever felt it. It wraps around my entire existence, a brighter sort of darkness somehow, the roofline of my Archives disappearing behind an endless pool of shimmering, starlit shadow.

I throw every ounce of gratitude down my freshly burning connection to Sgaeyl.

“I did not make this choice for your sake,” she tells me, sounding almost bored by the idea. “He’s mine as much as he’s yours, silver girl. We took him back together tonight.”

I hear the powerful beat of her wings a split second before she appears back above the ridgeline, hovering against the evening sky. My eyes immediately fly to Xaden on her back, sitting tall between her shoulders like he never left that seat. His face is bleeding, his eyes bright. I can see his smile all the way from here.

I can feel it.

“Having fun?” I tease him along our connection, letting his joy flood through the bond between us.

“Come here and kiss me, and I will be.”

“Sgaeyl just licked your face.”

“I avoided his lips,” she reminds me, as unimpressed with me as ever as she mutters something about idiotic human sensibilities. Gods, I missed her snark.

“Well in that case…”

I’m running before Xaden even touches the ground. He vaults up from his seat as Sgaeyl flies along the ridge line, running along the spines of her back before leaping down onto the hilltop just before she banks and lands on the cliff edge just behind him. I haven’t seen him move with that much ease in months. I forgot how utterly perfect he is.

I’m almost at his side, my eyes fixed on his face, when I suddenly see Sgaeyl open her mouth behind him, fire building in the curl of her tongue.

Just in time, I remember the final act of Threshing.

“Silver One!” Tairn warns.

“I know!” I stutter to a stop, my feet digging into the grass as my momentum almost carries me into the path of that unearthly fire.

Sgaeyl roars, letting loose a blast of colourless, shimmering fire that pours over Xaden’s back, marking him without burning him. He falls to his hands and knees again, his own cry swallowed up by the roar of hers.

It’s over as soon as it began and for a split second, there’s nothing but ringing silence, total stillness.

And then Xaden lifts his head and looks at me, and I fucking fly.

I reach his side in a heartbeat, dropping to my knees for what feels like the hundredth time tonight, my joints protesting the sudden impact yet again. I barely feel the pain. For once, I don’t even need a box to put it away in. My joy is bright enough to smother any agony.

I could run ten miles.

I could fly ten hours.

But I won’t. Because there’s nowhere I need to be more than here.

“Can I…?” When he nods I carefully lift his leathers at the collar, finding no trace of the scar the Maven left on his back that night, only the perfection of Sgaeyl’s fresh relic, the fierce, brilliant blue of it branded boldly across his shoulders.

“It’s beautiful,” I tell him, leaning in to press a kiss to the very top of his spine, when his dragon relic meets the rebellion relic on his neck.

He pants out a pained laugh, lifting up off his hands as he turns towards me. “Forgot about that part.”

I can’t help it, I laugh along with him.

I laugh right up until I start to cry.

Xaden makes a wounded noise in the back of his throat, gathering me into his arms. His familiar leather and mint scent washes over me like a balm, soothing every sore muscle, every painful joint, every rotten memory from the last few months. I don’t mean to flood my feelings down the refreshed connection of our bond but I can’t seem to help it, exhaustion pushing my emotions towards Xaden before I can even sort through them myself.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, a catch in his throat the only warning I get before I hear the sob in his chest. “I’m so fucking sorry.” He chants it in my mind as he absorbs the depths of my feelings, his tears soaking the ends of my hair where his face is pressed into my shoulder. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Sgaeyl grumbles an impatient, distressed sort of sound, folding her massive wings around us a split second before Tairn’s wrap around her. Somewhere in the mass of limbs and wings, I feel Andarna worming her way into our odd, ridiculous embrace.

With our dragons protecting us, there’s no-one to see him break.

Only them.

Only me.

I stroke my hand over his hair as he crumbles, my own distress forgotten in the face of his. As soon as I wrench my own feelings back behind my shields a flood of images overpowers them, the maelstrom of his memories blurring together, showing me the mess of the last few months through his eyes.

I’m — no he — is on this hilltop on the darkest night of the year, in the darkest moment of my existence. I’m here in the aftermath, and I don’t understand why Violet isn’t running away, isn’t putting a knife in my back and throwing me off the side of this ravine. I’m angry. I’m hungry. The power is calling me. Killing me. Jack fucking Barlowe keeps smiling at me. Garrick won’t look at me. Sgaeyl won’t answer me. Violet won’t leave me. Why won’t she leave me? Why won’t she hate me?

“Stop it,” I beg him, wrenching myself back into my own consciousness. “Stop.”

I rebuild my shields as guilt pours like poison down our bond. I will not drink it. I shove that intention at him.

“I don’t understand.” He lifts his face from my shoulder, meeting my gaze. I really don’t like the look in his eyes. “Why aren’t you angrier? You should—”

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence,” I warn him aloud, poking a single finger hard into his chest.

“So violent.” A ghost of a smile flirts with the corner of his mouth, then disappears. “I mean it,” he says, reaching out for the ends of my hair, touching the silver he put there again. “You should hate me for this, if nothing else.”

I bat his hand away from my hair, flicking it over my shoulder. “Don’t tell me how to feel.”

“Violet, I almost drained you.”

“By accident.”

“That’s beside the point.”

“You’re right. The point is it’s over. It’s done. Forgotten.”

He looks at me like I’m speaking a language he doesn’t understand. “It shouldn’t be.”

“Why not?” I cup his cheek, forcing him to keep his eyes on me. “Why are you the only one who gets to love unconditionally?” I watch him absorb that question. And then I give him back the words he once gave me. “Nothing you could ever do is unforgivable to me, Xaden. Nothing.”

He looks like he still wants to argue, so I send a flood of my own memories back at him. It’s never been so easy to do it. I pour out my memory of the ward chamber on that awful night, my fingers flexing as power surges in response to the memory of how close I came to burning out, to giving in.

I almost made the same mistake he did. If it wasn’t for my mother kicking me away from that stone, who knows what I might have done? It’s not Xaden’s fault he didn’t have anyone to pull him away. I won’t condemn him for the tragedy of being alone on this hilltop that night.

But he wasn’t alone tonight.

My squad, my family, his friends, his family, they were all here for him. For us. I push the memories of that instead, the hours we spent pouring over books, whispering and planning and promising not to give up. Then I show him what he looked like to me on this hilltop tonight, brave and broken and fighting like we all knew he would.

And I remember the one thing I wanted to tell him.

“I’m so fucking proud of you.” I kiss him before he has the chance to argue, forgetting for a moment that he doesn’t need to speak to say something to me.

“Violence—”

“No.” I don’t even risk letting him finish. “New rule,” I tell him, nipping at his lower lip, “no fighting in our bedroom and no fighting when one of us just died.”

“Deal.” I feel him smile against my lips. It makes a mess of our kiss, but it mends something in my chest, all the same.

Before I can do much more than clamber back into his lap, I hear Mira’s dry, unamused voice in the distance. “Er—I take it this weird dragon group hug thing means it worked?”

“Shit.” I pull back enough to shoot him a sheepish look. “I sort of forgot they’re all still out there.”

Xaden’s laughter rings out in my Archives. I know the scribes prefer silence, but I’ve never heard a better sound in my library.

“It worked!” I call out the confirmation, hoping Mira can hear me through the mass of dragons around me. “Look after Sloane! And go tell the others! We’ll be—”

“Really don’t want to know what you’re doing in there, thanks!”

My answering laughter sounds insane. Shrill and ruined and victorious.

I think Xaden likes the sound of it. He grins over at me in our tiny, protected little cocoon, his breathing slowly coming under control. He’s never looked more of a mess, his face still pouring with blood, his hair a riot of ruined, sweat-soaked curls.

But his eyes — Gods, those eyes.

I’ve never seen anything more perfect.

And when I look down at the ground around us, there’s no trace of those grey, dead handprints in the dirt.

We’re lying in a meadow.

And there are violets blooming everywhere.

“I love you.” I barely finish the thought before his mouth is on mine again.

I don’t bother resisting the flow of my feelings, letting every last part of my heart pour down the bond between us, turning the kiss frantic, then desperate, then slow.

Now is hardly the time or the place for what I want to do to him, but I don’t care. It’s been so fucking long. I sink one hand into his hair, shoving the other beneath the collar of his tunic, finding the thin line of my scar over his heart.

“You died,” I whimper the reminder, even as I feel his heartbeat pounding steadily beneath my hand.

“And you saved me.” His strong arms wrap even tighter around my shaking frame. “Stubborn, perfect, brilliant, fucking woman.”

“Yours,” I tell him, licking into his mouth, undeterred by the iron tang of the blood on his lips. Gods, I missed this. Missed him.

“Mine,” he agrees.

I press my hand against his heartbeat, staking my own claim in return. “And you’re mine.”

“Always.”

I know there’s still a war to win. Still battles to fight. But for the first time in so long, I don’t kiss him like it could be the last time. I kiss him like I mean to do it every day for the rest of our lives. And the rest of our lives will be long.

I push that intention at him deliberately, feeling him open up the skies of my Archives as he throws the same intention back at me.

Suddenly I’m everywhere at once — in my body and in his soul, on this field and in my Archives and sitting on a hilltop in Aretia, watching the sun setting beyond the cliffs of Dralor. I’m ten years old and my mother is telling me she’ll be home soon. I’m seventeen and my father is telling me the same thing. I’m sitting on the roof of Riorson House, wondering why they both lied. I’m sparring with Garrick, laughing with Liam. I’m looking into Sgaeyl’s eyes for the first time. Flying for the first time. I fucking love it. I fucking love her. I’m watching a tiny girl cross the parapet in mismatched boots. I’m trying to hate her. She’s irritating. Beautiful. She can’t fight for shit but somehow I end up on my knees anyway. Garrick thinks it’s hilarious. I think it’s dangerous. She’s dangerous. She’s standing in the cold, smiling at me with snow in her hair and I know, then, exactly what she is. She’s mine.

I gasp as the overwhelming rush of memories recedes, but doesn’t leave me. They settle into my existence like they’ve always been there, as real as my own history. When I look at Xaden, his beautiful eyes are wide and staggered, and I know without question that he just experienced the same thing with my memories.

It’s something more than our bond from the dragons, though I can still feel that in the comforting swirl of his shadows in my mind. This is something different. Something new. I don’t know where he ends and I begin anymore. I don’t think the delineation even exists. We’re one and the same.

Almost like—

I hesitate to even think it.

But then I hear Tairn’s voice in my head, his deep, overwhelming pride flooding along our connection as he confirms it. “Humans don’t have a concept for such a bond. The Empyrean would call you a mated pair.”

****