“I drained you.” Sloane holds up trembling hands, staring at them like they don’t belong to her. “I drained you!” She grasps my shoulders, yanking my focus from the dark as my head swims.
“For fuck’s sake, Sloane, give her a second. She just hit her head,” Cat barks, still aiming into the darkness as we stand in the glaring light but not firing an arrow without a target.
“Are my eyes red?” Sloane shakes me, or maybe she’s shaking and simply holding on to me. “Are they red? I swear I didn’t reach, Violet. I didn’t take anything from you on purpose! Oh gods, am I turning venin?”
“She is as Naolin was,” Tairn says.
“You’re not turning.” I take her hands from my shoulders and stare into the darkness as footsteps sound, talons clicking along the rock.
“I’m not?”
“Your signet manifested,” I whisper, my eyes straining to see into the cave opening. “You’re a siphon.”
Andarna walks into the light, but it’s not the blood covering her mouth that catches my attention—it’s the blood dripping from the poisoned barb on her tail.
“You killed him.” My shoulders dip in relief. “You killed Solas.”
Pride and worry assault me at the same time, but I can’t force my shields up before Tairn’s voice fills my very existence.
“Slayer.”
Xaden bursts into our room as the healer finishes checking my eyes, shading my vision, then exposing me to light.
“Violet—” He halts a few feet away from where I sit on the edge of our bed. “Cat? What the hell are you doing in here?”
“She saved my life. Making sure she was seen by a healer was the least I could do,” Cat answers.
“She what?” Xaden moves forward as the healer stands upright.
“You heard me. She put herself between that giant orange dragon and me.” She rises from her seat—the same chair Xaden sat in while I slept in here for days after Resson, poisoned by the venin’s blade. “Thank you, Sorrengail.” She chokes on the words a little before passing by Xaden on her way out.
“Solas—” I start to explain.
“Oh, I already know,” he seethes. “Sgaeyl told me.”
“You were in a meeting. I didn’t want to bother you.” I follow the healer’s fingers upon direction.
“Bother me?” Shadows flood the floor.
The healer notices, blinking quickly. “You’ll be all right. I don’t think you’re concussed, but that’s quite a lump on the back of your head, and I’ll ask that you mind the stitches in your hand.” She arches a silver brow at me.
“Of course.” I lift my wrapped left hand. “Thank you.”
She nods, then dismisses herself, disappearing into the hallway.
I stare at Xaden, and he stares right back, tension emanating from every line of his body. “If you want to fight about the wards, that’s fine, but I’m not taking the blame for fighting my way out of a cave.”
He stalks forward, then bends down into my space and kisses me, soft and slow. “You’re alive,” he whispers against my lips.
“So my heartbeat says.”
“Good.” He stands, folding his arms. “Now we can fight. What the fuck were you thinking, saving Cat?”
I blink. “I’m sorry, you’re mad at me? I fight my way out of a cave against a dragon, and you’re mad at me? For saving a woman in the line of succession to the throne of Poromiel?”
He reels backward, horror flashing into his eyes a second before anger swamps them. “You saved Cat because she’s third in line?”
“First, I would have fought to save anyone—”
“You selfless, reckless—” he accuses, backing away slowly.
“And second, her death would have triggered yours, so hell yes I saved her!” My feet hit the ground and my head swims for a heartbeat, but my pulse steadies as I breathe deeply. “Tecarus would have had you executed if she’d died under your care.”
“Un-fucking-believable.” He laces his hands on the top of his head. “You hate her, and yet you refuse to raise the wards, no doubt so her power won’t be stripped away, and then you put your life in front of hers—”
“For you!”
“All I want is you!” He flicks his hands, and shadows shut the door a little harder than necessary, sealing us in behind the sound shield. “If she dies, then I’ll take the consequences. If they can’t channel, I’ll take those consequences, too. But not you. Never you. Gods, Violet. I’m doing everything in my power to both respect your freedom and keep you safe, and you’re…” He shakes his head. “I don’t even know what you’re doing.”
“Keep me safe.” I laugh, sarcasm biting into my eyes and making them sting. “Is that what you do? I get it all mixed up with just not killing me.”
“There it is.” He retreats until his back hits the wall, and then he folds his arms and leans against it, crossing an ankle casually. “You finally ready to ask me about the deal I made with your mother?”
Nothing kills powerful, unshakable love faster than opposing ideologies.
—THE JOURNAL OF WARRICK OF LUCERAS
—TRANSLATED BY CADETS VIOLET SORRENGAIL AND DAIN AETOS
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
My mouth opens. Then shuts. “You knew…that I knew?” “Of course I knew.” He arches a dark brow as if I’m the problem here. “I’ve just been waiting for you to work up the courage, the trust, whatever you want to call it, to fucking ask me.”
My hands fist at my sides, and I shove my power back behind the Archives door and slam my shields up. Without a conduit, there’s every chance I’ll set the curtains on fire for the entirely wrong reason. “You let me stew in it for months?”
“You didn’t ask me!” He pushes off the wall but stops himself from taking more than a step. “I’ve been begging you for months to ask me what you want to know, to break down that last insurmountable wall you’re keeping between us, but you didn’t. Why?”
He has the nerve to put this on me?
“You’re the one who said you’d never be entirely truthful with me. How am I supposed to know what you will and will not answer? How am I supposed to know what there is to ask?”
“The second you have a question, you ask it. Seems pretty simple.”
“Simple? Brennan is alive. You made a deal with my mother for my life. She put those scars on your back. Tell me, Xaden, is it only the secrets about my family you want me to dig out of you? You holding anything about Mira?”
“Shit.” He shoves a hand through his hair. “I didn’t want you to know about the scars, that’s true, but I would have told you if you’d asked.”
“I asked last year,” I challenge, walking toward the windows to look out over the rebuilt city, my anger heating my blood…but not my skin yet, thank the gods.
“I’m sorry. I can’t change last year, and though you’ve said you understand why I kept you in the dark, I don’t think you’ve actually forgiven me.”