“Don’t thank us,” Maren says, mounting quickly and settling between Daja’s shoulders before taking off for the Healers Quadrant, Bragen following after her.
“You look like shit.” Cat crouches in front of me, her braid as sodden as mine as she looks me over. “I heard what you did up there. Well, Kira saw, and she told me. That took guts.”
“You would have done the same.” Exhaustion sweeps in, my shoulders drooping as adrenaline fades.
“I would have run faster.” She slips one of her alloy-hilted daggers free and hands it to me. “Looks like you’re missing one. I have another.”
“Thank you.” I take it like the peace offering it is.
“I’ll look after Sawyer,” she promises as she stands. “And don’t you dare thank me for that,” she calls back over her shoulder, walking toward the southwest tower without another word.
The conduit falls along my forearm as I wipe the rain from my eyes. I’d completely forgotten the damned thing was even there. Glancing left, then right, I note the scattered wyvern bodies, and one Green Clubtail that makes my heart stumble—
Teine?
“Is alive,” Tairn promises, already flying back to me. “They are holding the last wave back, and your mother— Behind you!”
I stumble to my feet and whip around to face the cliff…and the venin who stands about twenty feet away, watching me with a curious look on a heart-shaped face that had at some point been undeniably beautiful.
My stomach twists, and my grip tightens around the dagger Cat left me. Cat. I don’t want to draw attention to the retreating flier if the venin doesn’t already see her.
“There’s no point running,” the dark wielder says, walking forward slowly, as if I’m no more of a threat than a butterfly. “We both know I’ll drain the very ground underneath you, and then this all will have been for nothing.” She throws her arms out, gesturing to the mayhem around us.
“Sorrengail!” Cat yells, and I hear the sloshing sound of her running toward me.
“Run, Cat!” I shout, glancing up at Tairn and spotting him mid-dive, about a minute out, but the footsteps don’t slow.
The dark wielder’s eyes flare as she spots Cat, and she drops to a knee, splaying her hand out over the icy ground.
“Stop!” I yell, my heart lurching into my throat and lodging there. This is so much worse than my nightmare. Even if I could run, there’s no telling what she’d do to Cat. Flicking my wrist, I grasp the conduit in my left hand and lift my right—dagger and all—throwing open the doors to Tairn’s power I’d never fully closed.
Slush melts at my feet and steam lifts from my skin as Cat reaches my side. “You have to get out of here.”
“Shut up.” She pulls a dagger from her thigh sheath.
“Oh, you are a powerful one, aren’t you?” The dark wielder cocks her head to the side, a slow, insidious smile curving her mouth as she rises, studying me. “The lightning wielder.”
Thunder booms in the cloud above us as energy gathers in my veins, hot and crackling. I don’t have to run. I can wield.
“Her, I don’t care about.” She glances at Cat. “But you, I’m under orders not to kill, so let’s not make this difficult.”
“Me?” What the hell?
She takes a step forward, and I release a strike, hitting the ground right in front of her, stopping her in her tracks. “You’ll be so much fun for him to wield.”
The nightmare comes back full force, the Sage’s words tumbling over me just enough to make my hand tremble.
A wild look comes over her narrow-set eyes. “And I will be his favorite for delivering you. I will be more than just an asim soon.” Her words flow faster and faster. “I will be given the Vale when this is over!”
Delivering me?
“You can kill her at any time now,” Cat reminds me, her gaze locked on the dark wielder.
“I want to know what the hell she means about delivering me,” I murmur under my breath.
“You will turn for something much more dangerous…” Wasn’t that what he said in the nightmare?
“It will be me! Me!” The venin shoves her shaking hand into her scraggly red hair.
Cat’s doing this, heightening the woman’s greed, spinning her out on her own emotions. Have to admit, it’s a pretty badass ability when she’s not using it on me.
“Enough, Wynn.” A dark wielder in leathers the same color as the pulsing veins beside his eyes appears from the left, walking around the body of the fallen green and throwing out his hand.
Cat flies backward with a shout, slamming into the ground behind me. Shit. No more time for curiosity. I wield, heat erupting from every inch of my skin as I draw the strike from the cloud above, hitting Wynn instantly. She falls where she stood, her eyes open and vague, smoke rising from her corpse.
“Fascinating.” The new one strides for me, closing his fist.
The conduit flares with intolerable heat.
I drop it, watching in horror as it disintegrates, leaving nothing at the end of the bracelet. He flips his hand, palm upward, and I’m lifted off my feet, suspended in midair, completely immobilized.
Just like the dream, but that isn’t the Sage.
My throat closes. I can’t lift a hand to wield or even yell for Cat to run while she can. This isn’t a dream. There’s no waking up from this.
“Stay calm!” Tairn orders, nearly on us but not close enough.
“I’m on my way!” Xaden shouts as the venin steps over the body of his counterpart like she’s a feature of the landscape and continues toward me.
They won’t make it in time.
I won’t, either.
Which means I’ve killed us all.
But Andarna can live. She just has to hold on, has to choose to survive.
“He’s almost here, so let’s move this along, shall we?” the dark wielder says, less than a dozen feet away now. “The horde tires of hovering, waiting for permission to attack.”
A shape moves in the cliff behind the dark wielder. No, not a shape; part of the cliff itself; a giant…boulder?
A boulder with slivers of golden eyes.
It springs forward from the cliff like a projectile, expanding, changing colors, sprouting wings and claws and black scales.
I am alone in thinking the knowledge of wards, the protections they provide, should not solely benefit Navarre, and it has cost me everything.
—JOURNAL OF LYRA OF MORRAINE —TRANSLATED BY CADET JESINIA NEILWART
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
The dark wielder turns, but he isn’t fast enough. Andarna lands directly in front of him, then opens her mouth and breathes fire down upon him, roasting the dark wielder before she snaps her jaws down and rips his head straight off his body.
I fall into the melting slush at the same time his corpse does, and she spits out the decapitated, smoking head, then huffs a hot breath of sulfur-laced steam.
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
“You…” I scramble to my feet and stumble toward her. “You just…”
“I breathe fire.” She preens, flaring her wings.
“Did you just eat him?” Cat stands but keeps her distance.
“You do not speak to dragons you do not ride, human.” Andarna snaps her teeth in Cat’s direction.