Tairn growls low in his throat and lowers his head at Sgaeyl as a rush of something bitter and sick floods our bond. Betrayal. I slam my shields up, blocking him out before I’m lost to his emotions, already struggling with mine.
He didn’t know.
Another rumble of anger vibrates his chest scales, and my heart lurches with pangs of sympathy.
Sgaeyl draws back in retreat, shocking me to the core, but holds her head high, exposing her throat to her mate.
The same way Xaden just metaphorically exposed his to me. All I have to do is tell someone—anyone—and he’s dead. A soft roaring fills my ears.
“There are some secrets even mates can’t share,” Xaden says, his eyes locked on mine, but his words are meant for Tairn. “Some secrets that can’t be spoken of even behind the protections of wards.”
“And yet you know everyone’s secrets, don’t you? Everyone’s intentions?” That’s why inntinnsics aren’t allowed to live. The implications of his signet hit me with the force of a battering ram, and I stagger backward like the blow is a physical one. How many times has he read me? How many pre-thoughts has he eavesdropped on? Do I actually love him? Or did he just say what I wanted to hear? Do the things I needed in order to—
“Less than a minute,” Xaden whispers as Sgaeyl moves toward him— toward us. “That’s how long it took for you to fall out of love with me.”
My gaze flashes to his. “Don’t read my…whatever!”
Tairn stalks toward me, his head low and his teeth bared as he places himself at my back.
“I didn’t.” The saddest smile I’ve ever seen tugs at Xaden’s mouth. “First, because your shields are up, and secondly because I didn’t have to. It’s all over your face.”
My heart struggles to beat regularly, torn between slowing and sluggishly admitting defeat, and racing—no, rising to fight—in defense of the simple yet agonizing truth that I love him anyway.
But how many more blows can that love take? How many more daggers are there in that metaphorical armoire? Gods, I don’t know what to think. Nausea washes over me. Has he ever used it on me?
“Say something,” he begs, fear streaking through his eyes.
The roaring grows louder, the sound like a thousand soft drops of rain on a roof.
“My love isn’t fickle.” I shake my head slowly, keeping my gaze locked on his. “So you’d better live, because I’m ready to ask you all the fucking questions.”
“Silver One, mount!” Tairn bellows, demolishing the barrier of my shields like they’re thinner than parchment. “Wyvern!”
Xaden and I both spare a single glance to the edge of the cliffs. My stomach drops as I realize that the approaching gray cloud isn’t a storm and that roaring in my ears is actually wingbeats. One heartbeat, that’s all I wait, and then I’m turning, moving, sprinting across the frozen ground and racing up the ramp Tairn makes of his foreleg to his shoulder.
“How many?” I lower my flight goggles and blast the question down the mental pathway that connects the four of us as I climb into my saddle.
“Hundreds,” Sgaeyl answers.
“That’s unfortunate.” I force air through my lungs in measured breaths to keep calm, but my hand still trembles as I buckle the belt across my lap. The second I’m secure, Tairn swings his body parallel to the cliffs and launches, throwing my weight back into my seat as he climbs rapidly with heavy, forceful wingbeats.
When we have enough altitude for air superiority, Tairn banks left, flying in a tight circle until we face the flying horde. Then he pushes his wings back against the wind, abruptly halting our momentum and sending my body forward into the pommel as he hovers a hundred feet above the frozen field, leaving twice his body length between us and the cliff’s edge. “A little warning next time?” I use our private bond.
“Did you fall?” he challenges along the same, his wings rising and falling only often enough to keep us relatively in place.
I decide to keep my retort to myself as Xaden and Sgaeyl arrive on our right, keeping a noticeable distance from the edge of Tairn’s wing. “I’m sorry she didn’t tell you.”
“We will settle matters of emotion after matters of life.”
Noted.
My stomach twists when I can make out individual shapes in the horde, then outright sours as evening sky appears between their wingbeats.
“Thirty seconds,” Tairn estimates.
I release the pommel and turn my palms up, opening the Archives door to Tairn’s power and letting it fill every cell in my body until the hum of energy I pick up on at the edge of the wards is replaced by the hum of energy that I’ve become.
“They’re slowing,” Xaden remarks as the horde spreads into a grouping I’m terrified to acknowledge looks like a formation.
Bile rises in my throat as I count one, two, three, four—“I count at least a dozen venin.”
“Seventeen,” Tairn corrects in a growl.
Seventeen dark wielders and a horde that rivals the riot at Aretia against…us. “We’re dead if the wards aren’t up, if I messed up the translation.”
“You didn’t,” Xaden replies, sounding infinitely more confident than I feel. Heat flushes my skin as my power seeks an outlet, but I keep it contained, ready to be wielded as three wyvern break away from the grouping and fly closer. They hover a tail’s length beyond the edge of the cliffs, their scales dull and gray, holes peppered through their wings as though they hadn’t quite finished forming.
“They can feel the wards,” I manage to say before my stomach abandons my body, plummeting like a rock. The rider on the center wyvern…
“Then they can die in them, too,” Sgaeyl replies.
I can only make out vague facial features from this distance, but I know in my very bones it’s him. The Sage from Resson, the one who’s taken up residence in my nightmares.
His head turns noticeably from me…to Xaden.
“He was in Resson,” I tell him.
“I know.” White-hot rage shimmers along the bond.
The Sage lifts his staff, then swings it like a club, pointing toward us.
“I love you,” Xaden says as the wyvern closest to me banks away from the wards, falling into a turning dive, only to gain speed and climb again, leveling out behind the lead two before flying straight for us. “Even if you believe nothing else I ever say, please believe that.”
“Do not speak to her as if death is a possibility,” Tairn snaps, slamming his own shields around us both, an impenetrable wall of black stone, blocking out Xaden and Sgaeyl.
I breathe deeply, using every ounce of concentration to keep my power contained and my emotions under control as the wyvern accumulates speed and flies past the lead two, heading for the wards.
Time slows to heartbeats, my breath freezing in my heated chest.
Then the wyvern crosses the invisible barrier, and my heart stops beating altogether as its wings flap once. Twice.
“Prepare to dive.” Tairn swivels his head, his jaw opening as the wyvern closes the distance to less than a body length, and I brace for the maneuver. “Never mind.”
The wyvern’s wings and head sag, and its body follows suit—as though someone plucked out its life force—and then it falls, propelled only by its previous momentum, passing forty feet beneath us and crashing into the field below, leaving a deep furrow before stopping.