My heart rises just to fall. Well, that’s…great.

“Why? Can it not be imbued?”

“Marbh is not keen on details.” Tairn lands on three claws in the small field between the back of the school and the cliff, gently opening the one that holds us.

What the fuck does that mean? Icy slush greets me as rain continues to fall, and I push Sawyer to his back and roll to my knees, putting my fingers to the pulse of his pale, freckled neck.

“Somebody help us!” I scream, my voice echoing off the stone walls of the administration building. The sluggish beat of his pulse jolts my own. He’s losing too much blood too quickly, and there’s no help in sight, though it’s obvious we’re not the first wounded to have landed here.

“I will call for aid,” Tairn replies.

You can’t have him, I tell Malek, shifting to kneel in the scarlet snow. You took Liam. You may not have Sawyer.

“Sawyer?” I wrench the buckle on the belted sheath around my left thigh, and mercifully, it gives. Knives and all, I wrap it over the wrecked leather beneath Sawyer’s knee, inches above raggedly torn flesh, thread the leather through the buckle, and pull as hard as I can, crying out when pain sings through my left shoulder. “You have to wake up! Open your eyes!”

The bitter taste of fear floods my mouth as I force the metal prong through a smooth section of leather by sheer will. “Please?” I beg him, my voice breaking as my fingers search for his pulse at his wrist, then his neck, leaving crimson fingerprints on his bloodless skin. “Please, Sawyer, please. We said we’d all live until graduation, remember?”

“Aid comes,” Tairn announces.

“I remember,” Sawyer whispers, his eyes fluttering open.

“Oh, thank the gods!” I smile down at him, my lower lip trembling uncontrollably. “Hold on—”

“Violet!” Maren calls from across the field, and I look up to see her on Daja’s back, the gryphon sprinting forward through the rain, covering the distance quickly with Cat and Bragen on foot a bit behind.

Tairn’s head snaps upward toward the battlefield. “Sgaeyl—”

“Go!” If she’s in danger, so is Xaden, and given the giant tendrils of shadow emanating from within a wall of gray on the edge of our sector…

Tairn crouches, then springs upward, launching with heavy beats of his wings against the morning sky as Daja reaches us, dragging a litter behind her.

“What happened?” Maren slides from Daja’s back, her tan leathers streaked with blood.

“Wyvern took his leg.” I glance between them as Bragen and Cat arrive. “Are you all right?”

“It’s not ours,” Bragen says, crouching on the other side of Sawyer. “You’re going to be all right,” he assures him. “Just need to get you to the healers.” He slides his arms under Sawyer, then lifts and carries him to Daja.

The healers. Because mending isn’t an option, not without his leg.

“We’ve been ferrying the wounded,” Maren says over her shoulder, rushing back to Daja as Cat helps Bragen lower Sawyer to the litter.

“Thank you.” I sit back on my heels and look to the sky, letting the strength of my bond with Xaden assure me that he’s well instead of possibly distracting him by asking.

“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.