My breath seizes as my head swings toward the back of the theater, as if the small windows there will give me any clue of what’s coming.

“Yes. They’re not just consuming but occupying territory for the first time. Good—” Brennan quiets, no doubt talking to Marbh, then focuses as the entire theater falls silent. “Everyone get to the great hall and wait there,” he orders, turning to Devera as the auditorium descends into quiet chaos.

“How many?” I force myself to breathe through the terror and shove everything into my pack and stand as everyone around me does the same in a hushed panic.

“Are they coming for us?” Ridoc asks quietly. “Navarre?”

I thought we’d have more time. How can this already be happening?

“I don’t know,” Rhiannon answers.

“Can Tairn take Codagh?” Aaric asks as I throw my pack onto my back.

My mouth opens and shuts as I think of General Melgren’s dragon. I don’t even want the answer to that question.

And Tairn is suspiciously quiet.

“Shortest revolution in history.” Sawyer mutters a swear word and yanks the drawstrings of his pack tight.

“Forty. Sgaeyl is approaching as well, but she’s too far out to—” Tairn pauses. “Wait. Teine leads the riot.”

Teine?

Mira. Fear knots my stomach.

Fuck waiting.

I push past Sawyer to the outer aisle of the theater and then run, ignoring every voice that calls after me, even Brennan’s. Running every morning for the past three months has bolstered what advantage I already had on most of the riders in this room—speed.

“Ready the crossbolts!” Brennan shouts above the fray.

Mira will get herself killed. Or maybe she’s come here to kill us. Either way, she’ll have to look me in the eye before she does it.

Legs pumping, I race across the back of the theater, cutting First Wing off from the exit and sprinting through to the main hallway. Statues and tapestries blur as I run by, my lungs burning as I dart past the guards and riders flowing into the thoroughfare.

Please, Dunne, do not let her incinerate this house before I get the chance to talk some sense into her.

I sprint past Emetterio as he shouts for me to get into the great hall, then nearly slip turning into the foyer, not daring to break my stride even when my heart pounds hard, protesting the altitude. The guards hold the doors open, no doubt so riders can mount, and I fly straight through, my feet barely skimming the marble steps into the courtyard just in time to see Teine’s wings flare directly in front of me to halt a rapid descent.

That knot of fear lurches into my throat, and I skid to a stop about thirty feet outside the front door, my feet making furrows in the gravel.

Rock flies in a dusty barrage from the impact of the Green Clubtail’s claws, and I throw up my arms to cover my face as Teine lands directly in front of the courtyard doors, blocking the exit into the town, and two others flank him, their landings just as abrupt.

I cough as the dust clears and immediately spot an angry-looking orange and glaring red facing me, their teeth bared.

Fuck me, four more land on the outer walls, shaking the masonry. They’re everywhere.

My stomach sinks. We’ve been betrayed. Someone’s told Navarre our location.

“Tairn—”

“Here,” he answers a moment before dropping out of the sky like a damned meteor. The ground shudders with the force of his landing to my left, and the shade of his wing blocks out the sun overhead. He roars so loudly my teeth rattle, then lowers his head, his neck only inches from my shoulder, and streams a river of fire in a clear warning shot across the legs of the dragons.

Heat blasts my face for the length of a heartbeat before he draws back, his head darting in a serpentine motion.

Teine steps forward, and time feels like it slows to milliseconds as Tairn lunges, opening his massive jaw and latching onto Teine’s throat just like he had Solas’s.

“Tairn!” I scream in raw fear. If Teine dies, so does Mira.

“For fuck’s sake, Violet!” Mira shouts.

“I have his throat, but I have not broken his scales,” he assures me like I’m the dramatic one here.

“Well, as long as it’s just a threat,” I reply sarcastically. “Dismount peacefully and Teine lives!” Others rush into the courtyard behind me, their feet loud on the gravel, but I keep my eyes locked on Teine and Mira.

She dismounts with enviable ease and strides toward me. Her cheeks are red with windburn, and her eyes are wild as she lifts her flight goggles to the top of her head. “We all come peacefully. It was Riorson who came for us. How else would we have found you?” She glances up at the house without breaking pace. “Gods, I thought this place was ash.”

Xaden?

“It’s not.” My fingertips brush the hilts of my daggers. I’m not sure I can lift them to kill my sister, but I sure as hell won’t be killed by her.

“Sgaeyl confirms,” Tairn says, releasing Teine’s throat and drawing back to my side. “They’re in range.”

Oh, thank the gods. My breath rushes out in a sigh of relief a second before Mira wraps her arms around me. “I’m sorry,” she says into my hair, squeezing me tight. “I’m so sorry I didn’t listen to what you were trying to tell me at Samara.”

My shoulders dip, and I relax into her, slowly returning the hug. “I needed you,” I whisper, unable to keep the hurt from leaching into my voice. There are so many other things that need to be said, and yet that’s what comes out. “I needed you, Mira.”

“I know.” Her chin bumps the top of my head before she pulls back, clasping my shoulders. For the first time since I started at Basgiath, she doesn’t scan my frame to see if I’m injured. She looks me straight in my eyes. “I’m so sorry. I let you down, and I promise it won’t happen again.” A ghost of a smile pulls at her lips. “You really stole half of Basgiath’s cadets? And killed the vice commandant?”

“Dain killed the vice commandant. I just finished him off. Well, Xaden helped. It was more of a team effort,” I admit, shaking my head to clear it. “Did you know? When I tried to tell you and you said I needed more sleep, did you know?” The thought of her trying to convince me it was all in my head if she knew better is unbearable.

“I didn’t know. I swear, I didn’t know.” Her wide, brown eyes search mine. “Not until the wyvern was dropped at the front gates of Samara. Mom arrived about ten hours later and told me the truth—told all of the riders the truth.”

I blink through the shock. “She just…told you.”

“Yes.” Her chin dips as she nods. “She probably figured out there was no lying her way around a giant dead wyvern.”

And we’d already been on our way here.

“Xaden.” I reach out, not because I don’t trust my sister, but because I trust him more.

“If she said your mother confessed, then she’s telling the truth. We’re at the edge of the city now, just flying with the stragglers.”

“And what, she just let all forty of you leave?” I step out of her hug and gesture at the dragons perched on the walls around us. There’s no way they’d let dozens of riders desert.

“She gave us an hour to decide, and half of us chose to leave. We flew into other riders on the way who’d been given the same ultimatum. Leadership decided letting us go was a safer choice than letting us stay and talk the others into leaving, or worse, leaking information, and besides, it wasn’t really our choice, was it?” She glances back at Teine.

That’s… not right. Why would Mom and Melgren let them just… go?