All six of us exchange glances and quick nods.
“It is time,” Tairn says.
The dragons inhale as one and then exhale fire into the chamber in six separate streams, instantly warming the air around us. This is exactly why they built it open to the sky—not as some kind of worship of the stars but because the dragons needed access for this.
I look away, turning my head to the side when the heat triggers my hypersensitive skin, still stinging from Solas’s assault. A heartbeat later, a pulse of magic vibrates through me in a wave, dredging my power to the surface with a feeling slightly softer than the one that had rippled out at the emergence of Aretia’s first hatchling.
The fire ceases, and the blazing heat dissipates into the winter air, leaving us all staring at the stone, at our dragons, at one another.
That leveled, anchored sensation I’ve only felt within the wards at Basgiath has returned, and the wild, unleashed magic that’s crawled under my skin since leaving Navarre seems to sit back, not weaker but infinitely more…tame. I lean over the edge to look, but the stone looks exactly the same as it did before.
Maybe the fire is more symbolic?
I glance over at Dain, and he smiles wider than I’ve seen in years, nodding to me. My quick grin mirrors his, and my chest swells with excitement. We did it. All the long nights and the cold days spent imbuing, all the squabbles over translation, and even my initial failure are worth it for this moment.
“Is that it?” Brennan asks, looking across the chamber’s opening at me.
“We don’t exactly have time to test it.” Xaden points upward, where the drifts have already taken to the sky, then locks his gaze with mine. “Let’s fly.”
Tairn has never flown faster, leaving Sgaeyl and Xaden behind as he surges for the cliff with the best vantage point for spotting wyvern—the edge of the high plains—usually a two-hour flight for Tairn, but this evening we make it a few minutes under that mark.
“They’re fifteen minutes behind us,” he tells me as he sails over miles and miles of agricultural fields, gradually descending until we land fifty yards from the edge of the cliffs. “Use it to center yourself.”
“Don’t tell me you’re taking Xaden’s side of this argument.” I unbuckle from the saddle and wince as I climb out of my seat. “I need to stretch my legs.”
“I don’t take the lieutenant anywhere.” He chuffs. “As if I have nothing better to do than listen to your romantic issues.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to jump to conclusions.” I navigate his spikes, and he dips his shoulder.
“Though I do take offense at your insult,” he notes as I slide down his leg.
“Insult?” My knee protests when my boots collide with the frozen ground, but the wrap holds tight.
“You doubt your judgment as if I did not choose you for it.”
“But you weren’t listening. Right.” Rolling my shoulders, I walk toward the edge of the cliff and summon just enough of my power that my skin warms even though my breath puffs out in clouds of steam.
There’s a hum here, too, and I instinctively know that this is where the wards end, twenty feet short of the cliff’s edge. This point is a four-hour flight from Aretia for average dragons—if such a creature exists.
Would this be the natural border of Basgiath’s wards if they weren’t extended by the outposts? That distance would leave Elsum, Tyrrendor, and even most of Calldyr unwarded.
Gods, we’re not even shielding most of Tyrrendor if this is the wardstone’s natural range.
“What’s the news?” I ask Tairn.
“The nearest riot of three is twenty miles to the north, and the same to the south.”
“No sightings?” We don’t have the strength Xaden wants in each unit tonight, but we can cover more of the border in groups of three, or in our case, two. Deploying in smaller but closely spaced units gives the stronger dragons a better chance at communicating as well.
Every bonded pair has been recalled from the lines across Poromiel to defend the cliffs, but there’s no hope of those stationed in Cordyn, or beyond at the border with the Braevick province, making it back in time.
“Not from the cliffs.”
“But beyond?” I look out across the darkening landscape, searching for any sign of gray wings.
“I’d estimate we have a quarter hour.” He huffs a hot breath of steam that billows past me. “Prepare yourself. Sgaeyl approaches.”
“Do you think he’s right?” I ask, folding my arms across my chest as wingbeats break the relative silence of the night.
“I know he thinks he is.”
That’s helpful.
Sgaeyl lands close to Tairn, and I breathe in my last moments of peace and prepare myself for the battle to come before the actual war reaches us.
It isn’t long before I hear his familiar footsteps coming my way.
“No sightings on this side of the cliff,” I tell him as he reaches my side, keeping my shields firmly in place. “Tairn thinks we have fifteen minutes.”
“There’s no one else out here.” His words are clipped.
“Right. We’re the only pair.” I shift my weight, energy tingling in my fingers, slowly filling my cells, saturating me in preparation instead of drowning me as usual. “I know that goes against your full riot—”
“That’s not what I mean.” He shoves his gloves into his pockets, leaving his hands bare and ready to wield, the perfect picture of composure and control. “There’s no one within miles to hear us.”
My eyebrows shoot up, and I turn toward him in sheer incredulity. “I’m sorry, are you suggesting that the reason you didn’t answer my question back in Aretia was because you don’t trust your own sound shield on our room?”
“There is always someone better at something than you, including wards.” He winces. “And maybe that wasn’t the entire reason.”
“Spare me from whatever bullshit you’re about to impart.” My stomach twists, and I lower my voice into my best Xaden impression. “‘Ask me.’” I shake my head. “Yet, the first real question I pose, you duck out the door like a coward.”
“It never occurred to me that you’d ask about a second signet,” he argues.
“Liar.” I whip my gaze forward, studying the sky for movement and fighting the scalding anger that tests the Archives doors of my power. “You wouldn’t have told me that Sgaeyl bonded your grandfather if you never wanted me to know. Whether it was a conscious or unconscious choice, you made it. You knew I’d figure it out. Was it just another one of your ask me tests? Because if so, you failed this one, not me.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” he shouts, the words coming out strangled, like they had to be ripped from his throat.
The admission earns him my full attention, but his outburst is quickly smothered by his self-control, and we fall into strained silence as he stares off into the distance.
“Sometimes I feel like I don’t know you.” I study the harsh lines of his face as his jaw flexes. “How am I supposed to really love you if I don’t know you?”