Garrick breathes in deeply, moving away from her and putting his back to the wall.

“Here.” She reaches into the rib pocket of her uniform and draws out a vial of clear liquid. “It’s the antidote for the serum.”

I stare at the vial, and my heart speeds from a dull thud to a gallop. How do I know that’s what’s actually in there?

“I would have come sooner if I’d known,” my mother says, her voice softening along with her eyes. “I didn’t know, Violet. I swear it. I’ve been in Calldyr for the last week.”

“So your return is just what? Coincidence?” I ask.

Her mouth purses, and her fingers curl around the vial. “I’d like a moment alone with my daughter.”

“That’s not happening,” Xaden counters.

Her eyes harden when she looks at him. “You of all people know the lengths I’ll go to in order to protect her. And since I’m pretty sure you’re the reason we’re getting reports of dragons dropping wyvern carcasses at every outpost we have along our border, the reason this college is emptying itself of most of the leadership in a rush to contain the problem, the least you can do is give me a chance to say goodbye to her.”

“You what?” My gaze swings to Xaden’s, but he keeps his locked on my mother.

“Would have done it sooner, but it took a couple of days to hunt them down and kill them,” Xaden replies to her.

“You’ve threatened our entire kingdom.” Her eyes narrow.

“Good. You allowed her to be tortured for days. I don’t give a shit whether it was by your absence or your negligence. It happened on your watch.”

“Three minutes,” she orders. “Now.”

“Three minutes,” I agree.

Xaden’s gaze flies to mine. “She’s a fucking monster.” His voice is soft, but it carries.

“She’s my mother.”

He looks like he might fight me for a second, but then he slowly lowers me to stand and braces me against the wall. “Three minutes,” he whispers. “And I’ll be at the top of this staircase.” That warning is given to my mother as he starts up the steps with Garrick leading the way. “Aetos, did you decide to follow?”

“Apparently,” Dain says, waiting a few steps beneath me.

“Then fucking follow,” Xaden orders.

Dain grumbles, but he marches up the steps, leaving my mother alone with me.

She’s the picture of composure, her posture straight, her face expressionless as she holds out the vial. “Take it.”

“You’ve known what’s happening out there for all these years.” I white-knuckle my weapon.

She steps forward, her gaze jumping from the dagger in one of my hands to the splint on the other, then selects a pocket in my uniform top and slides the vial in. “When you have children, we can discuss the risks you’ll take, the lies you’ll be willing to tell in order to keep them safe.”

“What about their children?” My voice rises.

“Again.” She hooks her arm around my upper back, sliding her hand under my shoulder, and hauls me against her side. “When you are a mother, talk to me about who you’re willing to sacrifice so your child lives. Now walk.”

I grit my teeth and put one foot in front of the other, fighting the dizziness, the exhaustion, and the waves of pain to climb the stairs. “It’s not right to let them die defenseless.”

“I never said it was.” We take the first turn, climbing slowly. “And I knew you’d never see it our way. Never agree with our stance on self-preservation. Markham saw you as his protégé, the next head of the scribes, the only applicant he thought smart enough, clever enough to continue weaving the complicated blindfold chosen for us hundreds of years ago.” She scoffs. “He made the mistake of thinking you’d be easy to control, but I know my daughter.”

“I’m sure you think that.” Each step is a battle, jarring my bones and testing my joints. Everything feels abominably loose yet so tight I might split open from the pressure.

“I might be a stranger to you, Violet, but you are far from a stranger to me. Eventually, you’d discover the truth. Maybe not while in the Scribe Quadrant, but certainly by the time you made captain or major, when Markham would start bringing you into the fold, as we do with most at those ranks, and then you would unravel everything in the name of mercy or whatever emotion you’d blame, and they would kill you for it. I’d already lost one child keeping our borders safe, and I wasn’t willing to lose another. Why did you think I forced you into the Riders Quadrant?”

“Because you think less of the scribes,” I answer.

“Bullshit. The love of my life was a scribe.” Steadily, we climb, twisting along the staircase. “I put you into the Riders Quadrant so you’d have a shot at surviving, and then I called in the favor Riorson owed me for putting the marked ones into the quadrant.”

I stop as the door at the Archives level comes into view. “You did what?” She didn’t just say what I think she did.

She tilts her head to look me in the eye. “It was a simple transaction. He wanted the marked ones to have a chance. I gave him the quadrant—as long as he took responsibility for them—in return for a favor to be named at a later date. You were that favor. If you survived Parapet on your own, all he had to do was see that no one killed you outside of challenges or your own naivete your first year, which he did. Quite a miracle, considering what Colonel Aetos put you through during War Games.”

“You knew?” I’m going to be sick.

“I discovered it after the fact, but yes. Don’t give me that look,” she chastises, pulling me up another step. “It worked. You’re alive, aren’t you? Though I’ll admit I didn’t foresee the mated dragons or whatever emotional entanglement you’ve involved yourself in. That was disappointing.”

It all clicks into place. That night at the tree last year when he should have killed me for catching the meeting of the marked ones. The challenge where he had every opportunity to exact his revenge on my mother by ending me—and instructed me instead. Nearly intervening at Threshing...

My ribs feel like they’re cracking all over again. He’s never had a choice when it came to me. His life—the lives of those he holds dearest—has always been tied to mine. And suddenly, I have to know. “Are those your knife marks on his back?”

“Yes.” Her tone is bland. “It’s a Tyrrish cust—”

“Stop talking.” I don’t want to hear a single explanation for such an unforgivable act.

But of course she doesn’t listen. “It seems that by putting you into the Riders Quadrant, all I did was hasten our own end,” she remarks as we climb the last four steps, coming out in the tunnel by the Archives.

Xaden reaches for me, and my mother’s arm falls away.

“I trust you’ll use the chaos to get her out?” she asks him, but we both know it’s an order.

“Planning on it.” He tucks me in against his side.

“Good. Don’t tell me where. I don’t want to know. Markham is still in Calldyr with the king. Do with that information what you will.” She looks at Dain, who waits off to the side with Garrick, his face ashen. “Have you made your choice now that you know?”

“I have.” He squares his shoulders as a group of scribe cadets runs by, their hoods in disarray, panic written on their faces.

“Hmm.” She dismisses Dain with a single sound, then looks at Xaden. “And so the war of the father becomes that of the son. It is you, right? Stealing the weaponry? Arming the very enemy trying to rip us apart?”

“Regret letting me into the quadrant yet?” He keeps his voice deceptively calm, but there are shadows rising along the tunnel walls.

“No.” Her gaze drops to me. “Stay alive, or this all will have been for nothing.” She skims the backs of her fingers along my swollen face. “I’d tell you to take arnica and see a healer, but you already know that. Your father made sure you’d know everything you needed or where to find it. You’re all that’s left of him, you know.”

But I’m not. Mira has his laugh, his warmth, and Brennan...

She doesn’t know about Brennan, and in this moment, I have no regrets about keeping that secret.