My heart starts to pound erratically. There’s not a mark on him, and yet I’d almost lost him without even knowing he’d been that close to never coming home again. The thought is so unfathomable that I’m stunned silent.
“She swept me up in a claw, but your sister saw what happened and that’s when she called it a loss. Not because Nyra died, or the three fliers from the footwing drift, or because we only had five dragons left.” He shakes his head. “She called it because I was with them, and she wouldn’t risk you.”
“Is that what she told you?” The first flakes of snow descend.
“She didn’t have to tell me. It was pretty fucking obvious.”
“Then you don’t know—”
“I do,” he counters, then immediately closes his eyes. “I know. And through the anger and the horror of watching all those civilians flee, watching them die, I realized she treated me like every marked one has treated you since Threshing. Like you’re just a vulnerable extension of me.”
“I don’t think anyone would ever mistake you for vulnerable.” I reach for his hand and lace our fingers. “But yes.”
He finds my gaze and closes his hand around mine. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you, but as annoying as it is, I get it. We’re tethered.” I shrug.
He kisses me quiet, hard, and quick. “For the rest of our lives.”
By the time a week passes, no one bats an eye at the sight of Dain and me huddled at a library table long after most cadets have found their beds for the night. We’re still meeting at noon as well, and Xaden stops in when he can to help imbue the stone. And that little strand of lightning Felix has pushed me to sustain? Turns out that can imbue, too.
Desperation sinks her claws into me by the week after. We have nearly the entire journal translated, but the passage about raising the wards still isn’t different enough from my first, failed interpretation to act on. We definitely get that Warrick insists that once the blood from one of the six powerful riders is used on one stone, it can’t be used on the other he’s referenced carving.
“Have you noticed his phrasing is so much more casual in the rest of the journal compared to the one section we actually need to understand?” Dain rubs his eyes and sits back in his chair beside me. “Like he’s deliberately fucking with us from the grave.”
“True.” There are only four entries left. What in Malek’s name will we do if the answer isn’t in one of those? “He has no issue doling out advice on authoring the Codex—
“Or detailing whatever mess of relationships the six of them got into.” Dain nods, cracking a huge yawn.
“Exactly.” I glance over at him. “You should get to bed.”
“You should, too.” He glances over at the nearby clock. “It’s almost midnight. I’m sure Riorson is wondering—”
“He’s not here.” I shake my head and sigh with entirely too much self-pity. “His squad is watching over Draithus this week. But you really should get some sleep. I’m only going to stay another few minutes.”
His brow knits.
“Go,” I urge him with a reassuring smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He sighs but nods and pushes his chair back, standing, then stretching his arms above his head. “Don’t tell him I said so”—he drops his arms—“but the way I’ve heard he wants to reorganize the combat squads by strengths, since the active riders don’t have a full wing to pull from, is brilliant.”
“I’ll be sure not to tell him,” I promise, a corner of my mouth tugging upward.
Dain takes his pack off the table. “See you tomorrow.”
I nod, and he walks out.
The library is comfortably quiet as I pour over the next entry, translating into what we call our draft journal. “The air has grown cold enough,” I say out loud as I write the words into the draft journal, “to see my blood in the mornings.”
I blink, then stare at the symbol for “blood.” My mind spins at the possibility, and then I turn back to earlier entries, just to be sure. Every single time we translated the symbol “blood”…the word breath fits even better. We have the wrong word.
The blood of life is actually the breath of life, and setting the stone ablaze in an iron flame…
I close the journals and sit back in my chair. The six doesn’t refer to riders.
“They’re dragons,” I say out loud in the empty library. Dain. I should tell—
No. He’ll act only on the rules, not taking the ethics into account. There’s only one person I trust to always do the right thing.
I stuff my things into my pack, sling it over my shoulders, and race out of the library, then climb four flights of stairs. My heart races as I knock on Rhiannon’s door.
“Hey,” she says when she opens the door, her bright smile faltering when I don’t return it. Without another word, she steps back, ushering me into her room.
I glance at the spartan decor as I start to pace the length of the room, taking in two plain desks, two doorless armoires, and two beds with simple black sheets that have been awkwardly shoved into a space obviously meant for one—the result of the fliers’ arrival. A single window illuminates the room with morning light. We’re due in formation shortly.
“That one is supposed to be yours,” Rhi says, gesturing to the bed on the right. “Just in case you ever want a night away from Riorson.”
I press my lips between my teeth, searching for the right words as I wear a path in Rhiannon’s floor. “I need to tell you something.”
“All right.”
Stopping suddenly in the middle of the room, I turn toward her. “I know how to raise the wards. I’m just not entirely sure we should.”
The breath of life of the six and the one combined and set the stone ablaze in an iron flame.
—THE JOURNAL OF WARRICK OF LUCERAS —TRANSLATED BY CADETS VIOLET SORRENGAIL AND DAIN AETOS
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Rhiannon slides a mug of warm apple cider across her sister’s dining room table the next day, then takes the empty seat between Ridoc and Sloane. The house has the same scent as most of the barracks in Riorson House—newly cut wood and a faint hint of stain. The carpenters have been working around the clock to turn out serviceable furniture.
I refuse to believe that it could all go up in flames if those dark wielders decide to test their wyvern at altitude. Four hours. That’s all it would take for them to reach us from Draithus.
“Thanks.” I take the mug and lift it to my face, breathing in the comforting scent before drinking. Looking over my mug, into the connected living room of the townhouse, I smile at the sight of Sawyer sitting with Jesinia on a blanket near the fire, an intense look of concentration on his face as he signs—
Shit, he might have just told her that he thinks her turtle is blue, but I’m not getting in the middle of that.
It’s the second time this week Raegan has opened her home to our squad at Rhi’s request, and the first time Jesinia’s joined us. I have to give it to Rhi—her idea was genius. Getting our entire squad—eighteen of us—together outside the academic setting of Riorson House hasn’t solved the tension between riders and fliers, but it’s a step in the right direction.