“You knew?” I’m going to be sick.
“I discovered it after the fact, but yes. Don’t give me that look,” she chastises, pulling me up another step. “It worked. You’re alive, aren’t you? Though I’ll admit I didn’t foresee the mated dragons or whatever emotional entanglement you’ve involved yourself in. That was disappointing.”
It all clicks into place. That night at the tree last year when he should have killed me for catching the meeting of the marked ones. The challenge where he had every opportunity to exact his revenge on my mother by ending me—and instructed me instead. Nearly intervening at Threshing…
My ribs feel like they’re cracking all over again. He’s never had a choice when it came to me. His life—the lives of those he holds dearest—has always been tied to mine. And suddenly, I have to know. “Are those your knife marks on his back?”
“Yes.” Her tone is bland. “It’s a Tyrrish cust—”
“Stop talking.” I don’t want to hear a single explanation for such an unforgivable act.
But of course she doesn’t listen. “It seems that by putting you into the Riders Quadrant, all I did was hasten our own end,” she remarks as we climb the last four steps, coming out in the tunnel by the Archives.
Xaden reaches for me, and my mother’s arm falls away.
“I trust you’ll use the chaos to get her out?” she asks him, but we both know it’s an order.
“Planning on it.” He tucks me in against his side.
“Good. Don’t tell me where. I don’t want to know. Markham is still in Calldyr with the king. Do with that information what you will.” She looks at Dain, who waits off to the side with Garrick, his face ashen. “Have you made your choice now that you know?”
“I have.” He squares his shoulders as a group of scribe cadets runs by, their hoods in disarray, panic written on their faces.
“Hmm.” She dismisses Dain with a single sound, then looks at Xaden. “And so the war of the father becomes that of the son. It is you, right? Stealing the weaponry? Arming the very enemy trying to rip us apart?”
“Regret letting me into the quadrant yet?” He keeps his voice deceptively calm, but there are shadows rising along the tunnel walls.
“No.” Her gaze drops to me. “Stay alive, or this all will have been for nothing.” She skims the backs of her fingers along my swollen face. “I’d tell you to take arnica and see a healer, but you already know that. Your father made sure you’d know everything you needed or where to find it. You’re all that’s left of him, you know.”
But I’m not. Mira has his laugh, his warmth, and Brennan…
She doesn’t know about Brennan, and in this moment, I have no regrets about keeping that secret.
The smile she gives me is tight and so full of sadness that I wonder if I’m hallucinating. It falls as quickly as it appeared, and she turns away from us, headed back to the stairwell that will carry her up to the main campus. “Oh, and Violet,” she calls back over her shoulder. “Sorrengails walk or fly off the battlefield, but they’re never carried.”
Unbelievable. I watch until she disappears up the stairwell.
“No wonder you’re so warm and fuzzy, Violet,” Garrick mutters.
“We’re leaving,” Xaden announces. “Gather the marked ones and meet us at the flight field—”
“No.” I shake my head.
Xaden looks at me like I’ve sprouted a few more limbs. “We just talked about this. We can’t stay here, and I won’t leave you.”
“Not just the marked ones,” I clarify. “If Markham is gone and most of the leadership is flying for the border, then it’s our only chance.”
“To leave?” Xaden lifts his brows. “Good, then we’re in agreement.”
“To give everyone a choice.” I glance at the empty tunnel. “They’re going to lock this place down once the cadre returns, once they know they can’t stop the spread of information, and our friends…” My head shakes. “We have to give them a choice, Xaden, or we’re no better than leadership.”
Xaden narrows his eyes.
“Dragons will vouch for the ones who want to leave for the right reasons,” I whisper.
He grits his teeth but nods. “Fine.”
“It won’t be safe here for you. Not after what you just did.” I look to Dain and lift my brows. It’s one thing to protect me in private, or to face down my mother, whom he’s known his entire life. It’s another to be known as the rider who ripped this place apart.
“Not that it will be safe for him where we’re going.” Garrick glances between Dain and Xaden. “You can’t be serious. We’re going to trust this guy?”
“If he wants our trust, he’ll earn it,” Xaden says.
A muscle in Dain’s jaw flexes, but he nods. “Guess my last official act as wingleader will be to call a formation.”
“That’s where the leadership is now! Trying to hide the bodies of over a dozen dead wyvern!” Dain finishes, his voice carrying over the courtyard a half hour later as we stand on the dais in front of formation, the other wingleaders to his right. The sun has fallen beneath the peaks behind us, but there’s more than enough light for me to see the shock, the disbelief on the face of almost every rider.
It’s only the marked ones and my squad who don’t begin to argue amongst themselves, some quiet, some outright yelling.
“Was this what you had in mind?” Xaden asks me, his gaze swinging over the crowd.
“Not exactly,” I admit, leaning heavily on him but managing to stay on my feet. My uniform is clean, my rucksack packed, and I’m wrapped and braced from ankle to broken arm, but more than one cadet is staring at my face. After a quick look in the mirror, I understand why.
Nolon must have only mended the most severe of my injuries, because my face is a collage of new, purple-black bruises and older, greenish ones, and that pattern only continues beneath the cover of my uniform.
Xaden damn near shook the entire time it took for me to change.
“If you don’t believe me, ask your dragons!” Dain shouts.
“If their dragons agree to tell them,” Tairn says, on his way back from the Vale. I’d finally trusted my mother enough to drink the antidote about ten minutes ago—which Tairn had claimed was the only logical move, and he bonded me for my intelligence, after all.
“What has the Empyrean decided?” We aren’t the only ones making choices tonight.
“It will be up to the individual dragon. They will not interfere, nor will they punish those who choose to leave and take their clutches and hatchlings with them.”
It’s better than the alternative, which was full-scale slaughter of the dragons choosing to fight. “Are you really okay?” I ask him again. The bond between us feels strange, like he’s holding back more than usual.
“I lost Solas in a network of caves while I was hunting him, so I was unable to kill him and Varrish myself for their actions. When I do find him, I will prolong his suffering before death.”