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Violet’s skin is pink and tender, like a day-old sunburn. Brennan had mended her to the best of his abilities, dragging her back from the brink of burnout, but he’d had his own rising temperature to worry about, and then there’d been the matter of everyone else waiting on him, a collection of broken bones and gaping wounds for him to heal.
The end result is imperfect; Violet’s skin is hot to the touch, but not burning. It’s tolerable enough that she can focus elsewhere, cast aside her pain, and set about cataloguing the remaining injuries she’d acquired in battle.
Pain in her knees. Pain in her shoulder. No, that’s old hurt, she’d wrapped it earlier, before the battle, before everything. Violet’s entire body is sore, exhausted, worn down to the bone, ready to collapse at any minute.
A pale body collapses to the floor. A chiffon doll crumples to the ground, uncoordinated, unmoving, unnatural. Drained of power, no life, no life, no life.
No. Violet bats the image away from her mind. She shoves it into a box, locks it shut, and starts again.
Pain in her knees. Pain in her shoulder—old hurt. There’s a burning sensation beneath her eyelids. Reddened eyes, a tear-stained red, one that affects the sclera of her eye, a red acquired through weakness, not power. No ring around her irises. Not around hers.
His hand slips away from hers. Abject misery in his eyes—his new eyes—as he turns towards her. Fear tightens the corners of his mouth.
No.
Pain in her knees. Pain in her shoulder–
“Violet.”
She flinches. Vestigial battle instincts kick in, and Violet tries to spin around, to get away from the sound, but there’s something holding her back. The world around her crystallizes, rushing back into focus, and she takes in her surroundings; Violet is standing close to a cliff. Xaden is by her side—Xaden, who holds her hand in his.
Xaden’s hand tightens around hers, only for a second, and then his warmth leaves her as he steps back. He keeps his hands up, palms towards the sky. A surrender.
She doesn’t want that. He’s too far. Violet reaches for him, a low sound rising from her throat, a growl or a whimper caught behind her teeth, she isn’t sure, she can’t tell. She needs him. She needs him.
Xaden doesn’t say anything when she crashes into him. She winds her arms around his neck—pain flares in her shoulder, the joint aching, old hurt—and her forehead comes to rest against his chest. Violet shudders; it takes her entirely by surprise, because she’s far from cold, but her limbs tremble and her teeth chatter all the same.
He wraps his arms around her, then, one hand coming to rest against the small of her back, the other nestling between her shoulder blades. Xaden is slow in his movements, careful as he touches her, perhaps mindful of her sensitive skin. Violet doesn’t care. She burrows closer to him; her trembling ceases.
Violet turns her head. With her ear to his chest, she listens to the sound of his heartbeat. Strong. Constant. Alive.
Alive. That is all that matters. She can focus on that fact and let the rest go.
“Are you hurt?” Violet has asked that question before, she thinks, because the words feel stale on her tongue, reheated. Still, her body goes through the motions; her hands leave his neck and trail down his front. No blood on his clothes—not his, anyway. No breaks under the skin.
Violet pulls away to look at him. Her eyes flit over Xaden’s arms, his shoulders, his neck, his lips, his forehead. She skips his eyes. “Brennan had to rest for a few minutes, he was worried about burning out, but he should be fine now, if you’re wounded somewhere. We can–”
Xaden’s hands circle her wrists, stopping her movements. To be touched like this, gently, after so much violence, is jarring. “I’m fine,” he whispers.
His face wears a mask, the one Xaden dons around people who are not Violet. It hurts to see him so guarded with her.
But there’s no time to dwell on that. Violet nods and pretends she believes him. “That’s good,” she says. “That’s good. Sgaeyl?”
That makes him flinch. Violet notices, and her breathing quickens, her pulse rises, but Xaden composes himself. He shrugs and says, “She’s okay, as far as I know.”
She notes the bitter tone, registers the response, and then she shoves it into the box at the corner of her mind. They have more pressing concerns.
“That’s good,” she repeats. She’s still nodding along.
When Violet was young—when her family was still whole, all five members present and accounted for—she played with wind-up toys. She’d play for hours, sitting on her bedroom floor, her tiny fingers cranking the metal key sticking out of some miniature dragon’s back, turning it over and over again before letting go.
She’d look on, fascinated, as the automated dragon walked on its own, its jaws snapping open and close, and all the while a mechanical sound counted down until the moment everything would go silent, and the movement would stop, the dragon reverting to inertia once more.
Violet is the dragon. Someone’s hand—Malek’s, Amari’s, pick any—is moving her forwards, nodding her head and opening her mouth while Violet follows along, keeping an ear out for the countdown. What happens to her when the noise goes quiet?
She doesn’t want to find out. Not now, not when they have so much to do, people to help and places to rebuild. Later. Later. She shoves the thought into her precious box.
Xaden is staring at her, has been staring at her—she feels his gaze on her like a physical touch, warming her skin. She doesn’t stare back; her eyes drift instead to the world around them. She surveys the damage.
Basgiath hasn’t fallen, but it has crumbled. It still stands, jutting out of the earth, proud and arrogant, but one of its towers has collapsed and there’s rubble lying about in the courtyard. Weakness has seeped into the stone, and the War College is exposed.
Violet’s brain interferes. No, that’s not quite right; Basgiath had been exposed, and now it isn’t. The breach has been colmated. The wards are fixed.
A body crumples to the ground, bloodless, drained of power. Someone screams. The body—the body…
Violet’s eyes snap back to Xaden. “We should get you to Brennan,” she declares. Her voice is disembodied; Violet herself feels like she could float away. She tries her usual method to ground herself; her hand slips back into Xaden’s, and pulse settles down as she intertwines their fingers together. “I think he’s in the courtyard.”
His features twist; that’s worry, she thinks, peeking beneath the mask, and there’s something else, too, but Violet can’t quite decipher him. “Violet.”
Xaden says her name so carefully, so cautiously, the way you’d handle a wound. Anger sparks from somewhere within her, but it’s muffled, buried under a layer of fog, and so it sputters out, never breaching the surface. She thinks she feels something brush against her temple, but when she lifts a hand to bat it away, there’s nothing.
Violet stares at him. She tries to ignore the red.
“I’m fine,” he says again. “Violet? I’m fine.” His hand tightens around hers, and he amends. “I’m not hurt.”
His voice comes out wry, almost sarcastic. For a moment, Xaden almost sounds normal. The relief that courses through her veins is automatic. Violet can’t help but embrace the fantasy: he’s okay. He’s fine. The red in his eyes is due to exhaustion, and things are as they were, as they always will be.
It’s a nice fantasy. It is only a delusion.
“Then we should help out,” Violet declares. “The healers must have their hands full. Or we could try and figure out if they need our help rebuilding.”
She looks up at him, expecting some sort of agreement, but Xaden doesn’t nod. He keeps his eyes on her, watching her, and he says, “I think we should go back to our room.”
“Our room?” Violet’s voice comes out too loud, baffled. “Why would we do that?”
Xaden opens his mouth. Hesitates, only for a second, but it’s enough time for Violet to see it, and it jolts her. “Today has been a hard day for you, Violence,” he finally says. He speaks to her slowly, measuredly. His eyes seek hers, onyx-gold-red against blue-hazel.
This isn’t right, Violet thinks. Xaden has lied to her before—or told her selective truths—but he’s never hesitated to tell her something. Xaden decides, and then he commits. He’ll let his decisions save him and he’ll let them damn him in equal measure, but he’ll never hesitate. It isn’t him.
He’s also never treated her like she’s fragile. Never been this slippery, this evasive, alluding to things without naming them, never tiptoed around her.
Air whooshes out of her lungs. A wheeze, maybe a laugh. Violet asks, “Have you hit your head?”
“What?”
She’s surprised him, she knows. His wide eyes make the red circles more visible. She makes another mental note—don’t let Xaden be surprised around other people—and then she shoves it into her beloved box.
“Of course it’s been a hard day,” she elaborates. “We were invaded.”
Xaden frowns. “Violet,” he says, faint exasperation coating his voice.
This is better. She’s always known how to handle his anger better than his concern.
“We should do what we can to help,” she says. More stale words dropped from her tongue; Violet is aware, distantly, that she’s talking in circles. It doesn’t matter. “Come on.”
She starts walking, tugging him along. Xaden goes easily, falling into step with her and letting himself be led. He stays silent, and he’s strangely quiet inside of her mind, too. He probably still has his shields up. Violet doesn’t reach for him; she can’t bear to test her theory.
Abject misery on his face as his hand slips away from hers. He turns his gaze on her and the world stops turning as the midday sun shines down on him. New eyes.
Violet blinks back the memory, pushing it away. “Let’s go see Brennan,” she repeats. Xaden sighs, but he follows.
A handful of riders are in the courtyard, milling about, clearing the debris, assembling in small groups to talk in low voices, but her brother isn’t among them. There are dead dragons and dead wyverns strewn all over the place, ally and foe laying side-by-side, mixed in with the rubble. Destruction and death as far as the eye can see. All of this for what, Violet wants to ask. What could possibly be worth all of this?
Violet doesn’t know much about wyverns, but the demised dragons are shocking in their stillness. Tairn and Andarna are constantly in movement, flying or walking or snapping their jaws or swishing their tails. Same thing with Sgaeyl, or Feirge, or any dragon that Violet has ever laid eyes on. To see them on the ground, rigid and stiff, is unsettling.
Is it rigor mortis? Do dead dragons suffer from rigor mortis?
Violet huffs out a laugh. It comes out shaky, distorted, so unlike herself that it shocks her. She’s not sure why she’s laughing. It’s not like this is funny—or maybe it is. Violet can’t really tell anymore; the fog inside of her has thickened and hollowed her out. She feels nothing, except, no, that can’t be right, she must feel something. She’s laughing.
Xaden steps closer to her; she feels his breath ruffle her hair. She leans against him, turns her head to kiss his bicep. She doesn’t know why she does it. Comfort? His presence does soothe her, even when he’s as stoic and silent as he’s been.
“I don’t think he’s here,” she says, her voice muffled as she speaks into the leather of his clothes. Violet’s throat is tight, and it’s hard for her to speak. “He was here before, but now he’s not.”
Here and then gone. Lifeless eyes stare up at her, unseeing, and she reaches for–
No. No. Pain in her shoulder, pain in her knees…
Her grip tightens around Xaden’s arm. He doesn’t complain, pressing her closer to him, turning slightly so that he’s hugging her. Violet welcomes his warmth around her.
He pulls away first, holding her at arm’s length to look at her face. Again, Violet feels something brushing at her temple. She jerks her head away, hoping for whatever insect that’s been hovering around to leave, but she doesn’t do anything else.
Worry deepens the lines on Xaden’s face. “We should go to our room,” he suggests again. There’s an urgency in his tone. “We can ask Tairn to pass along a message to Marbh, and tell him to meet us there.”
“We can tell him to meet us here,” Violet says. She’s being stubborn, but Xaden’s not getting it; she needs to move around. Violet thinks back to her wind-up dragon, and her chest tightens. She needs to do something, anything. She absolutely cannot be still.
Xaden’s frown worsens. His throat bobs. “Violence.”
“Vi!”
Rhiannon’s voice. Violet spins around, her eyes searching across the courtyard until they land on her friend. Rhiannon jogs towards them, and though Violet had seen her minutes—hours?—ago, though she had already known that Rhi had escaped from battle relatively unscathed, she can’t help the relief that floods through her. Safe. Rhiannon is safe.
Xaden is still as a statue beside her. This baffles her for a moment—Xaden has certainly never been afraid of Violet’s friends—but then reality sinks in once more, its truth echoing through her mind. No one else knows that Xaden has—turned.
“Hey, Rhi,” she greets. Violet touches Rhiannon’s arm, both to direct her friend’s attention towards her, and also to touch her, to feel her, real and alive and alive and alive. Maybe her brain will accept this fact if it is experienced through other senses.
The red rings aren’t really that visible; Violet only notices them because she’s spent a ridiculous amount of time staring into Xaden’s eyes. She’s memorized their shape, their depth, every fleck of gold is a map to her heart, and so to her, the red sticks out like a brand.
But Rhiannon shouldn’t notice. Probably.
“How’s Sawyer?” Violet asks. Her mind goes through the facts; missing limb, scary amount of blood lost, taken in charge by healers. Fine the last time she’d talked to Rhiannon, or, well, stable at the very least. Fine. Fine. He needs to be fine.
“They’re still watching over him,” Rhiannon says, “and there’s no change, but in his case, no change is good.”
Her face changes as she looks at Violet more carefully. “How are you…” Rhiannon’s eyes flick up towards Xaden, only briefly, as if to include him in her question. “...holding up?”
“Matthias,” Xaden hisses, just as Violet says, “I’m fine.”
Rhiannon’s brows raise. “O-kay,” she says, her gaze travelling between the two of them.
“I’m fine,” Violet repeats. She attempts a smile; as she watches Rhiannon’s expression morph from confusion to mild alarm, Violet thinks she might have been unsuccessful.
“It’s okay if you’re not,” Rhiannon says, gently.
“Sure,” she shrugs, “but everything’s fine.” And then, because she needs the conversation to turn, because she needs her friend’s attention occupied on other matters, she adds, “Why are you here?”
Violet knows her words are wrong, crooked, inaccurate, as soon as they leave her mouth. Rhiannon flinches. The movement reverberates painfully against Violet’s heart.
She rushes to correct herself. “No, I mean, why aren’t you with Sawyer?”
“Jesinia and Ridoc are with him,” Rhiannon says. Her tone, defensive, carries a hint of hurt within it. She gestures towards the courtyard with a flourish of the hand. “And I thought I could help clear up some of the debris over here.”
“With your signet,” Violet says, nodding. “Right. I should’ve thought of that.”
Her friend shrugs, and silence falls upon all three of them. Violet knows the other two are staring at her, for once united in their thoughts. Concern and worry and caution are etched on their faces, but they don’t speak.
The silence expands and expands until Violet feels it pressing against her throat. Pressure builds behind her forehead, a buzzing, an insistence, a dizziness. She thinks it might be her own signet, her own power, and she thinks it wouldn’t be good if she let it loose in the courtyard. She thinks she should control it, but she thinks she can’t. She thinks she might have to let her lightning fly.
Silver One, Tairn says, both in reprimand and in warning. He sounds worried.
Why is he worried?
Xaden’s arm curls around her waist. Violet welcomes his touch, lets it clear her mind. The buzzing recedes, but no one will talk, so it might come back. It can’t come back.
“Have you seen my brother?” Violet blurts out the question. Anything to fill the silence.
Rhiannon blinks at her, clearly surprised. “Oh, um, he was here just now,” she says. “But I don’t know where he went, sorry.”
He’s coming to the courtyard, Tairn reports. He’ll arrive from the Eastern side.
You talked to Marbh?
You needed to see him. Tairn’s answer is simple, matter-of-fact, and it worms its way through the thick wool around her heart; she feels the smallest pinch in her chest.
But Violet can’t let herself dwell on that. Instead, she turns her eyes towards where Tairn had told her Brennan would arrive, and she waits.
She doesn’t have to wait long.
Even from afar, Violet knows her brother is exhausted. His skin is paler than usual, and his walk isn’t as assured nor as graceful as normal, like he’s forgotten all about his rider-honed reflexes. His hair is disheveled, and something about that strikes her as oddly familiar.
“Brennan,” she calls out to him, waving her hand. She feels stupid as she waves; no doubt Marbh has already told him that his baby sister wanted to speak with him.
“You called?” he asks, before frowning at her, taking her in. “You don’t look so good, Vi.”
Both Rhiannon and Xaden snap their heads towards him; their synchronicity would amuse her on any other day.
“What?” Brennan’s tone is defensive. “She doesn’t.”
“I’m fine,” Violet says impatiently. She’s used those words so often by now that she can practically feel them decompose on her tongue. “Listen, is there something you need help with? I’ve basically been sitting around, doing nothing.”
“Oh.” He lifts an arm to scratch at the back of his neck as he thinks. “Well, if you were a mender, you could help me out in the infirmary, but as of now, there’s nothing else, really.”
Violet’s heart lurches in her chest. “I could triage your patients,” she says. She sounds desperate; something inside of her is clawing at her lungs, the pain muted but constant. “Or help you give out tonics, or fetch bandages. Anything.”
She must say something wrong, just like she’d done with Xaden and Rhiannon, because Brennan frowns at her once more. Violet is quick to catch the signs, this time; his eyes are alert as they roam over her face, searching for information that Violet doesn’t want to give, and his lips press into a tight line.
He exchanges a look with Xaden over her head. Violet recognizes that look. She has been here before, she thinks; Brennan and Mira, trading pointed glances, silently arguing over who would have to deal with a young Violet.
Then, just as carefully as the other two had, Brennan says, “Have you thought about getting some sleep?”
“It’s the middle of the day,” Violet points out. “Come on. There has to be something I can do.”
“Yes, actually. You can rest,” Brennan says. He raises a hand as she opens her mouth to protest. “This is my expert opinion, Vi. You were close to burning out multiple times today and you were mended. Your body should be exhausted by now.”
“My body is fine,” she snaps. Xaden makes a low noise, and his hand tightens against her hip. Shadows gather into the crook of her neck, their weight against her skin comforting.
She’s lying. Her body feels incredibly heavy, aching all over, and she knows somewhere in the corner of her mind that she won’t be able to stay awake for long. She’ll have to give in to sleep sooner than later.
The idea of sleep terrifies her.
“Violet,” Brennan says. “You did more in this battle than most of the riders here. Go rest.”
His eyes go glassy and his gaze loses itself in the distance when he says most of the riders. Looking at him now, with his untidy hair and hunched shoulders and lost look, Violet figures it out; she is staring at her father’s mirror. She is staring at the spitting image of her father after Brennan had died.
Except he hadn’t really died, Violet corrects herself. He’d faked his death and killed his own father in the process. Malek gives and Malek takes.
A pale, lifeless body crumpling to the floor–
No.
Brennan is still talking to her, explaining something she can’t even bother to listen to. Something useless, probably, yet another lecture about how she needs to rest. Everyone wants her to fucking rest.
Violet turns her head towards the horizon. The sky above them is clear and the sun shines down on the War College, but Violet can see storm clouds in the distance. That can’t be right, she thinks. How could there be storms if her mother is dead?
Her thoughts rip through her like a lightning bolt. Her heart races in her chest, and her chest has become too tight for her lungs.
Her mother’s body hits the floor, and the dull thud reverberates in Violet’s head. Her jaw crisps; she tries not to throw up. She tries not to think about anything. She tries to shove the memories into her box, but the box is too small, the box is overflowing, and her mother is dead.
Violet can’t breathe. She trembles all over.
Her mother is dead.
A wounded animal somewhere keens. Voices ring out in the distance. Shadows form around her, supporting her. Hands grip her hips, turning her around, and she collides with something warm, but Violet can’t see what it is, because her head is turned and her eyes are still trained on the horizon, on the clouds.
“Violence.” Xaden’s voice fills her ears, low, desperate, panicked. He sounds far away. “Violet.”
The horizon is blurring under her eyes, twisting the clouds; Violet can’t see them properly. She can feel her pulse beating at her throat, too fast and too harsh. “No, no, no,” she moans. She needs to see the clouds; she needs to see the storm. Or else, or else…
Her mother is dead. Her mother is dead. Her mother is–
Violet bursts into tears.
Someone above her head swears, and then she’s floating in the air—no, she’s being carried, someone is carrying her in their arms. A voice—Xaden—barks out orders, and then they’re moving, and Violet is clinging to Xaden’s neck as they rush through the courtyard, sobbing into his leathers. She vaguely registers whispers as they move, people stopping to watch the spectacle she’s made of herself, but Violet cannot bring herself to care.
Oh, Violet. Andarna’s sweet voice rings in her mind, tinged with sorrow. She sounds overwhelmed.
Let the Shadow Wielder take care of this, Little One, Tairn says. There’s no disapproval, no sneer in his voice when he talks about Xaden, and that is how Violet realizes just how worried he must be.
Through the bond, she can feel both of her dragons’ love, unconditional and eternal, and she cries harder. She cries so much she drowns. Her lungs burn.
Xaden talks to her as he walks. “You have to breathe, Violet,” he says. “In and out, love, do it with me.”
Violet feels his chest rise and fall under her, but she can’t copy him. She can’t.
“Violet,” he says, he cajoles, he pleads. With her head next to his chest, Violet can feel his heart rabbiting away. “Come on, Vi, please.”
He demonstrates again, this time grabbing one of her hands to put it on his chest. “Inhale,” he says as his chest rises once again.
Violet sucks in a small breath. It’s stilted, and choked, and the air burns her all the way down, but it is a breath nonetheless.
“Good, Vi, good,” Xaden says, his voice strangled. “You’re doing so well, love. We’re almost there. Exhale.”
It takes them a few tries, but together they get her breathing under control. There’s nothing to do for her tears—Xaden does his best, tightening his arms around her, pressing kisses in her hair, shushing her soothingly, but his best efforts don’t work. He notices; his shadows whip around him, agitated.
He carries her into their room and sets her on their bed. Immediately his hands cradle her face, thumbs wiping away at her cheeks. Xaden stares at her, throat bobbing, lips pressed tightly together. “Violence,” he says, sounding lost. “Please stop crying.”
Violet doesn’t stop crying. Xaden’s hands slide down to rub her arms and her back, whispering words of comfort into her ear, but her tears don’t stop falling. He tries, and he tries, and he tries, but he can’t help her.
Eventually he straightens up. “Okay,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “Okay. We’ll shower first, see if that calms you down, and then—and then we’ll go from there, okay, Violence?”
He must take her silence as approval; Violet watches with blurry eyes as he rummages through their armoire, haphazardly selecting clean clothes for the both of them.
Xaden almost rushes back to her. “I’m going to pick you up now, Violet,” he narrates. He’s probably looking for a reaction to his words, some sort of acknowledgement that she’s with him, but Violet can’t do it. Her tears fall on their own.
He sighs. “Come on,” he says, and he lifts her up again, leaving their room and walking towards the empty Bathing Chamber. Xaden locks the door behind him.
He sets her down gently before turning on one of the showers. Xaden’s hands coax her into lifting her arms; he’s so unbelievably careful as he takes off her jacket and passes her head through the collar of her tunic, so delicate as he unlaces her corset, then her boots. He quickly takes off his own clothes, while Violet deals with the rest of her garments, and then he checks the water’s temperature with an open palm.
Somewhere along the way her tears have dried, but the salt sticks to her skin. Her entire face feels congested, and her throat feels raw. Violet’s eyes sting, and she knows she’ll wake up tomorrow with one of the worst headaches of her life and the puffiest face imaginable, but right now she can’t bring herself to care.
Xaden guides her under the jets, letting her grip his forearm to keep herself stable. Warm water rains down on her; she sighs.
“Okay?” Xaden asks, his eyes meeting hers. Worry permeates his entire being. He’s got her backed up close to the wall, placing himself between her and the rest of the room and putting himself in the way of any possible threat.
Violet nods, and Xaden sets out to wash away all of their sweat, grime, and blood. He passes a soapy washcloth over her skin, working with care to scrub without pressing down too hard.
She tips her head back, breathing out another sigh as she leans against the shower wall. Her eyes close automatically, and she feels so heavy, like she could sink down to the floor and go further down still, down and down until she reaches the center of the world.
Xaden keeps her grounded. His hands on her, his proximity, they keep her stuck to the present moment, stopping her mind from spiraling any further. It is comforting; there’s a feeling of peace that floats around her chest, surrounding her and keeping her calm, for now.
Violet knows that this is a natural response; her body releasing hormones in reaction to all of her crying. It is a sort of protection against herself, maybe, but she can’t help but feel robbed somehow. Her mother is dead, so she should be sad; her mother is gone forever, and so a part of her brain thinks, irrationally, that maybe she should be sad forever, too. It’s only fair.
But the peace and the exhaustion—the bone-deep, heavy, all-consuming exhaustion—keep those other feelings at a distance for now.
The pads of Xaden’s fingers graze the nape of her neck, bringing her back to him once more. Violet opens her eyes.
“Your hair,” he says, his voice raised only to be heard over the sound of the running water. “Do you want me to wash it?”
She thinks about it. Violet never lets him wash her hair. She loves her hair, and it takes a lot of work to maintain, and Xaden usually can’t stare at her hair for too long without getting distracted, but this is different. He’ll stay focused today, she knows.
And Violet is so tired.
The calm feeling inside of her shatters. She pushes herself off the shower wall to rest her forehead against his chest. He waits patiently for her answer; Xaden’s arms wrap around her, bringing her even closer to him. He strokes her back while her tear ducts somehow manage to find enough water for her to spill again. Violet’s fingers dig into his shoulders, nails biting into his skin, but he does not complain.
This crying fit is shorter than the last, thank the gods; tomorrow, when she’ll bring herself to care about all of her outbursts today, Violet will be horribly embarrassed. Even now she can feel it, the beginnings of shame creeping up in her heart.
“You could do it,” she finally says. Her voice sounds as raw as her throat feels.
“Of course, Violence,” Xaden says. He ducks his head down to press a quick kiss into her wet hair. “Whatever you want.”
He is even more gentle with her hair. His fingers massage her scalp; Violet leans into his touch, and the feel of his blunt fingernails lightly scratching the back of her head is so soothing that her eyes start to droop. She sways on her feet.
Quickly, Xaden slides an arm around her waist, keeping her stable. “Easy there,” he says. “I just need to rinse, Vi, and you can go to bed. Alright?”
“We can go to bed,” Violet says. Dread rises inside of her at the thought of being alone. “You have to stay.”
“I’ll be wherever you are, Violence,” he promises. He guides her head under the stream of water. “Close your eyes, now.”
Once they step out of the shower, he towels them off and hands her a clean set of clothes. Violet dresses herself. She walks out of the Bathing Chamber on her own. She’d been carried here, because she’d been too out of it, but now she’s better, and Violet can keep herself under control. She can walk.
In her ear, her mother says, Sorrengails don’t get carried off the battlefield, and Violet feels like she’s been punched in the stomach. Her feet stop; her hands fly to her middle.
How long does it take for a ghost to form? If Violet concentrates hard enough, she thinks she could see the outline of her mother’s face floating somewhere near. She could see the calculating eyes, the severe line of her mouth. The disapproving look on her face—yes, if her mother were here, she’d be disappointed.
Of course, if her mother were here, Violet wouldn’t be so weak.
Xaden almost runs into her. His hands come up to her, frantically skimming her skin. “What is it, Violence?” He asks. He scans her up and down, alert. “Where does it hurt?”
Violet shakes her head. Her joints hurt, of course, but there’s nothing he can do about that. Nothing he can do about the pain in her chest, either. There’s no blood, no exit wound.
“I’m fine,” Violet says. This time, she can recognize the words for what they are: a lie.
Xaden recognizes it, too. His fingers flex against her skin. “Don’t do that,” he says. “Not to me.”
He’s right. She shouldn’t lie to him, but she cannot say the truth, either, so she keeps her mouth shut. Her feet stutter back to life, and they carry her through Basgiath’s hallways and into her room, Xaden hot on her heels.
She makes a beeline for the bed. Once she plops down on the not-quite comfortable mattress, she knows she won’t be able to get back up. Violet closes her eyes. Behind her eyelids she sees memories, ones that had escaped her overflowing box. She wants them gone. She wants to collect them and keep them close to her heart.
Movement near her makes Violet open her eyes again. She finds Xaden kneeling in front of her, unlacing her boots like he’d done in the Bathing Chamber.
“I’m sorry,” she tells him.
His shoulders tense. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“Well,” she says, “I think crying for the woman who ruined your life might qualify.” Violet means for her tone to be light, but she can’t shake the wobble in her voice. She fucking hates the way her voice warps, hates how it makes her sound.
Xaden shakes his head. “She was your mother,” he says, like that explains everything.
Was. Lilith Sorrengail was her mother.
She has nothing to say to that, and so she lets Xaden unlace her boots in silence. Outside, there had been silence, but it had been oppressive, and it hadn’t truly been silent. Too much life and death surrounding them for the quiet to be total and all-encompassing.
But within these four walls, it’s like they’re isolated from all of it, like there’s a sliver of the world that belongs just to the two of them, tucked away from all the outside realities. It is a sort of peace, Violet supposes.
When Xaden is done slipping off her boots, his head comes to rest on her lap. Violet’s trembling fingers tangle into his hair. He sighs, leaning into her touch, and for the first time today, she sees the muscles in his back relax. Violet isn’t the only one who’d been wrung out from the battle.
“Hey,” she says. She keeps her voice low, careful not to disturb him. “We’ll figure it out, alright? We’ll find a way. Whatever we need to do, we’ll do it.”
Violet doesn’t specify what it is. She doesn’t need to—the word lingers between the two of them, heavy and menacing.
Xaden tugs her wrist down; he drops a kiss into her open palm. He doesn’t say anything.
“Xaden,” she insists. She tugs at his hair with her other hand, just enough so that he’ll lift his head up to meet her eyes. “We’ll do whatever we need to do, and we’ll do it together.”
He stares up at her, brilliant gold shining in his eyes. “Yeah, Vi,” he says. “Together.”
Her dreams are terrible. Violet sleeps and wakes, sleeps and wakes, each time plagued by the events of the day. A pale body crumbling to the ground. Pale red rings around his eyes. Dead people and dead magic over and over again.
Xaden is there when she wakes. The first few times, he’s awake, sitting up in their bed and watching as Violet comes to reality with a cry on her lips. His face twists, his touch becomes desperate, but he’s here, dragging her to him, whispering in her ear and running his fingers through her hair. Only then does she fall asleep once more, sinking back into her nightmares.
She wakes when he’s fallen asleep. The sun has started to go under, painting the sky shades of orange and pink. His chest rises and falls steadily, and he looks so beautiful, so peaceful, his warm skin lit by the remains of the day, that Violet can’t bring herself to wake him up.
She shuffles closer to him and joins him in sleep.
The next time she wakes, her body realizes she’s alone before she does. It jolts her awake; her heartbeat pounds in her ears, and her breathing quickens. It’s disorienting, and it takes her a moment to even situate herself and remember that she’s in her old room at Basgiath.
Violet scans the room three times over, trying to assess for threats, when her mind finally catches up to her body. Xaden is gone.
He can’t be. He’d promised.
Violet reaches for their bond, but there’s nothing. Fear spears through her, so strong that she’s robbed of her breath.
She scrambles out of bed; in her haste, Violet falls off of it, scraping her knees, but she doesn’t even register the pain. She stumbles to the door and yanks it open.
Stay in your room, Silver One, Tairn urges, but Violet almost can’t hear him over her panic.
It is night, and no doubt most people are fast asleep in their rooms, so the corridors are silent. Violet barely notices anything; her mind, her entire being screams Xaden, Xaden, Xaden. It is a plea and a prayer. Nothing else exists beyond his name.
Silver One!
Where is he? Where has he gone? Why has he left her alone? Alone, alone, alone. Violet is alone. She is–
“Violet!”
Xaden’s voice. Violet looks up to find him rushing towards her. He seems panicked; good, she thinks, even as she dissolves into sobs in front of him. Good. He should feel the same as she feels.
“Are you okay?” Xaden asks. His eyes are a little wild as he searches her. “Tairn said—”
“Your shields were up,” she hiccups. “Your shields were up and I didn’t know where you were and I was alone.”
Whatever answer he had been expecting, it hadn’t been that. His eyes widen and his throat bobs. He presses her into him, one hand cupping the back of her head, drawing her head to his chest and holding her tightly. “I’m here, Violence. I’m here.”
“You can’t leave me,” she sobs. Some rational, detached part of her brain knows that she’s being hysterical, that she needs to get a grip, but she can’t. Panic has planted its claws inside her, and Violet is no longer in control.
She cries harder, curling into him, clinging to his arms, and she repeats, “You can’t leave me, you can’t leave me.”
“I won’t,” Xaden promises. His voice cracks. “I’m sorry, Violet, I’m so sorry. I won’t leave. I’m here, Vi, I’m sorry.”
Tairn and Andarna are inside her head, speaking to her, but their words blur together, and all Violet can really register is the rush of warmth they send through the bond, their solid presence in the corner of her mind. It helps.
Xaden manages to get them back to their room. The moon illuminates the space, adding surreal tones to this tableau; Violet, silver hair gleaming in the moonlight, half-carried to her bed, pliant from fatigue, a marionette without her strings, Xaden hunched over her, moving her limbs, adjusting her, covering her with the blanket, touching her all the while, a beacon in the fog, pressing his lips to her forehead, her cheek, her hair.
“I won’t leave,” he whispers over and over, though she’s not sure who he’s trying to convince.
You’ve already left once, Violet wants to say, but sleep is calling to her once again, and she lets go.
The next morning is horrible. Violet’s hungover from grief; her head throbs, her eyes are crusted over, and there’s a vague sense of nausea that surges within her, once the events of yesterday re-emerge from her sleep-addled mind.
She feels like shit, but she feels more like herself; no panic, no muddy thoughts. No more tears, most importantly. The sadness is still present, of course—Violet isn’t sure it’ll ever leave her—but it’s manageable, today. It doesn’t overwhelm her. She can shove her pain into her mental box, the way she’s been able to manage herself all the other times. Yesterday’s anomaly can stay an anomaly.
Xaden sits on a chair, half-heartedly thumbing through a book. He’s so close, Violet could reach out, stretch her arm and touch him. She doesn’t, preferring instead to watch him through half-closed eyes, squinting against the sun’s glare.
He is so beautiful like this, sun-touched and unguarded. A gift from the gods. He is hers, above all, no matter how much the Sage thinks he can get to him—he can’t have Xaden. Violet will kill him if he tries.
“I know you’re awake, Violence,” Xaden drawls from his perch. His eyes are on his book, but his hands have stilled.
Pretense abandoned, Violet manages a sitting position despite her protesting muscles. She must have slept with her limbs locked into place, because she’s sore all over.
“Good morning,” she says. Her voice is scratchy; her throat is raw. Something nudges at her, the feeling of cool, polished stone against her hand.
Not stone—ceramic. Shadows offer her a mug, insistent, prodding at her until Violet accepts the drink.
“My very own butler,” Violet jokes. Her voice comes out shaky, hesitant, and the joke falls flat. “Can I ask for freshly picked berries?”
Xaden’s pupils slide towards her as he side-eyes her, unamused. Still, the tense lines of his mouth have relaxed. “Drink,” he says.
Violet drinks her water. Under his watchful gaze, she reaches over to set the empty mug on the desk, and then she rises out of bed. She undresses, unbothered by Xaden’s eyes on her. He’s seen it all before.
“Help me with my corset?” She asks over her shoulder.
Xaden stands up without a word, drawing himself up to his full height. Towering over her, he laces up her corset with quick, practiced fingers. He’s efficient about it; his touch does not linger on her skin.
There had been signs, ever since she’d woken up—evidence of something brewing behind his onyx eyes, the distance he’d put between the two of them, the way he held himself, even, almost as if he were bracing himself—but that stiffens Violet’s spine.
Yesterday’s Violet floats back up to the surface, only a for a second, long enough to have her brain chant he’s leaving he’s leaving he’s leaving in a strident wail, before Today’s Violet manages to wrestle back control, shoving the panic inside her well-worn mental box.
She inhales. Exhales. Inhales.
Xaden moves away from her. Violet feels the distance between them grow.
“Spit it out,” Violet says on her next exhale. She looks over her shoulder and forces herself to meet his eyes. “Whatever you want to say, Xaden, just say it.”
He sighs, and she turns to face him fully, though her movement is too sharp, too rushed.
“If this is about last night–”
“I’m not leaving,” Xaden says. “I won’t leave you, Violence.”
His voice is assured. Violet wishes she could feel the same way.
“Of course not,” Violet replies. Xaden sends her a look, and so she adds, “I know you won’t.”
The lie sits uncomfortably between them. They’d promised to tell each other the truth, and so Violet can’t fault the way Xaden’s lips flatten, or the way his eyes narrow, but she can’t part with this specific truth. Too embarrassing. Too painful.
“Well, I’m saying it, just in case,” he says, slowly, clearly not fooled. “I can’t live without you, Violence. I don’t see how I’d ever be able to leave you.”
There’s comfort in his words, she thinks, comfort in the fact that Violet won’t have to watch him die, that she knows he can’t leave her in that way, in the way her parents had left her. The way Liam had left her. She doesn’t ever want to be left behind again.
“Violence,” Xaden says, his voice insistent, bringing her back to reality. When she blinks up at him, she sees his jaw clench. “I think we need to talk about yesterday.”
“Do we?” Violet asks. “My mom is–”
She cuts herself off, and her eyes snap towards the window. Outside there are clear blue skies. Not a cloud in sight. Violet feels cheated, somehow.
“–gone,” she finishes. “There’s nothing left to say about that.”
“Your mother is dead,” he says. Violet tries to suppress her wince; she fails. “And I’m sorry beyond words for that, because I know how it feels, but—Violence, you weren’t yourself yesterday.”
“I know,” she says. “Won’t happen again.”
It can’t happen again—there is too much at stake for Violet to act like that ever again. The war, Xaden’s veninism. Xaden.
He makes a sound, low in his throat. “I don’t care if it happens again, Violence, but I need to know how I can help you if it does.”
Xaden looks away from her, turning his head so that Violet can only see his profile. His jaw clenches, and he inhales, clasping his hands at the back of his neck. “I didn’t know what to do,” he admits. The confession is torn out of him, a revelation that clearly pains him to say out loud. “You were hurting, and you didn’t let me in through the bond, and I didn’t know what to do.”
Violet’s breath catches in her throat. Her eyes burn once more. “Xaden,” she breathes.
He starts pacing around their room. “Next time,” he says, “if you want to be left alone, I’ll do it. If you want me to—to distract you somehow, I’ll do it.”
Xaden stops, turns back to her. His carefully crafted mask is gone; instead Violet can see the storm in his eyes, the anguish and the fear and the remorse.
He says, “I’ll do whatever you want me to do, Violet. Just tell me what to do. I can’t—I can’t—” Xaden cuts himself off, shaking his head. “Don’t shut me out.”
Violet is frozen, her heart precariously balanced inside her ribcage, on the edge of slipping through the bones and falling, falling, falling.
Xaden waits for her answer, and when it doesn’t come, he sighs.
“I know I don’t deserve it,” he says, sounding wretched. A joyless smile hangs from his lips. “After all I’ve put you through, after everything I couldn’t give you. I don’t deserve you, Violet, I know that. But don’t shut me out. I’m being selfish, and I’m asking for too much, but I’m asking anyway. Please don’t shut me out.”
Her treacherous tears. They fall easily, once again, spilling from her eyes, past her reddened cheeks and trembling lips. Violet is tired of crying.
Xaden sees her tears. His face softens. “I’m sorry,” he says. He swallows, the motion laborious, and he crosses the room to find her. Like yesterday, his hands cradle her face; his thumbs wipe her cheeks. Xaden kisses her forehead. “I’m sorry, Violet.”
Already she’s shaking her head, though her motion is reduced, engulfed between his hands. “Don’t be,” she says, voice thick through the tears. “I love you. I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m so emotional today.”
He leans his forehead against hers and laughs, but it’s shaky, an uneven exhale. She feels it over her skin, her lips. “Violet. You’ve lost your mother.”
“If she could see me, she’d be so disappointed. She’d tell me that I was weak.”
Xaden shakes his head. “She can’t tell you what to do.”
Not anymore goes unsaid but not unheard. It’s a relief. It’s a condemnation. She feels light and she feels heavy and she feels too much. There are too many feelings inside Violet’s heart that don’t make sense together and that she’s not sure she’ll ever be able to untangle.
Violet wishes Lilith Sorrengail had been an easier mother to love, and she wishes she’d been an easier daughter to understand. She wishes she could love her mother without resenting her; she wishes her mother could have done the same.
Her wishes don’t matter. Dead is dead.
“How do I move on?” Violet asks. “Brennan, my dad—I thought I’d gotten used to it, I thought it would be easier. Why does this feel so different?”
This, it. She can’t name her grief. Violet knows her mother is dead. She’s realized it over and over again, but she speaks in euphemisms, because she’s a coward, because her throat is too tight to let the truth live past her lips, because to name is to materialize, because she does not want her mother’s ghost hanging off of her.
“It’s always different,” Xaden whispers. “My father…He died, and I couldn’t stand it. I told myself that would be the worst time of my life, that no other death would hurt as much, and for a while that was true. Then Liam died. It’s always different, Violence.”
A sob tears free, and she buries her head in the crook of his neck. His hand strokes her hair.
“We’ll go one day at a time, Vi,” he continues. “One day and another, and another, and eventually the world will make sense again.”
“Promise?” She doesn’t mean for her voice to sound so fragile, but Violet thinks she also hears hope, somewhere beneath the wobbling of her voice. She pulls back from him, slightly, to look him in the eyes.
Xaden leans down to kiss her cheek. “I promise, Violet.”
They stay like this for a while, until eventually they have to leave their room and confront the world—this world that has changed so suddenly. This is a world post-venin, post-Lilith, and it’s a world where the truth has expanded and shattered what they’d once known. This world is nonsensical to Violet; it’s been tilted off balance, leaving her stumbling along and trying to find new footing. But Xaden is there, always, and they are together. The world has gone to shit, but they are together.
One day, and another, and another. Violet clings to the things that stay with her; her friends, Xaden, and the loss and love that are immeasurable within her. She keeps all of it near her heart, and she waits for the world to make sense again.