The halls of Basgiath teem with chaos as we pass by a line of gryphons and enter the guarded side door beneath the bell tower. My stomach drops. Wounded infantry and riders sit against the wall near this level’s entrance to the infirmary in various states of injury, but mostly burns, their cries of pain filling the stone corridor as second- and third-year healers race from patient to patient.

“They ran out of beds twenty minutes ago,” Cat tells us quietly. “Infantry is the heaviest hit so far.”

“They usually are,” Xaden notes, keeping his gaze focused across the hall on the door that leads to the courtyard and off the dozens of wounded to our right.

We stop abruptly as a platoon of infantry races by. The insignia on their collars show them as first-years.

“Violet.” Cat grabs hold of my elbow, and I turn toward her, pausing as Xaden pushes open the door. “Tell your mother we’ll fight in the air if she can stop the rain, and if not, deploy us like the infantry. We have more experience fighting venin than almost anyone here, and gryphons are exceptionally quick on the ground.”

There’s only sheer determination in her brown eyes, so I nod. “I’ll tell her.” She drops her hand, and Xaden and I walk into the courtyard.

It’s pure fucking mayhem as we make our way through the lines of squads in dark blue being briefed by trembling second-years. It’s as though their ranks have broken and they’re cobbling together units with whoever hasn’t been injured.

Once we reach the center, we have a clear view of the leadership meeting going on just in front of the open gate.

“At least they could shut the damned gate!” one of the infantry cadets shouts at Xaden and me as we pass.

“Shutting the gate isn’t going to help you,” Xaden replies, pointing left to the dead body of a wyvern poking through the partially demolished roofline. “Even if they were on foot, the five seconds it will take for them to get through isn’t worth losing the necessary egress.”

I shoot the second-year a sympathetic look and follow Xaden out. “You could be a little…”

“Nicer? Softer?” he counters. “Kinder? How the hell is that going to help them?”

He’s not wrong.

“Hey,” a second-year in dark blue says from a squad on the right, her gaze flicking over my shoulder.

“I’m sorry, but he’s right. Shutting the gate isn’t going to help.” I say it as gently as I can.

“That’s not why I stopped you.” She points behind me. “There’s a scribe chasing you down.”

I turn to see Jesinia jogging toward me in the rain, her hand hidden beneath her robes.

She’s keeping the journal dry.

“See if you can talk her into getting somewhere safe,” Xaden suggests. “In the meantime, I’ll start picking the fight without you.” He walks into the thirty-footthick archway that serves as Basgiath’s gate, crossing under the first portcullis and continuing on, immediately gaining the attention of my mother, General Melgren, and three of his aides standing at the edge of the second portcullis. The tails of their dragons swing just past them, forming a wall half the height of the fortress itself, even more in the case of Codagh.

“You should be—” I start signing to Jesinia, then drop my hands when I realize there’s nowhere safe for her to be.

She grasps my elbow with her free hand and pulls me into the archway, under the portcullis. Leaving the journal within the robes, she pulls her other hand free to sign. “I think I found the difference between the two, but I think Lyra’s journal is the lie.”

“What did you find?” I sign, keeping my back turned toward Melgren and raising my shields, blocking everyone out, even Tairn and Andarna.

“I think it’s a seven.” She lifts her brows at me. “But it can’t be.”

“I don’t understand.” I shake my head. “Seven what?”

“That’s the only difference between the two journals. I thought at first maybe it meant runes, that we’d mistranslated that part, since there are seven runes on the wardstone in Aretia,” she signs, two lines furrowing in her forehead. “But I’ve checked and double-checked.”

“Show me.”

She nods, then pulls Lyra’s journal free and flips to the middle, tapping a symbol in the middle of the page and handing it to me, freeing her hands. “That symbol there, it’s a seven. But Warrick’s says six, remember.”

My heart sinks, and I nod slowly.

She has to be wrong.

“This reads, ‘The breath of life of the seven combined and set the stone ablaze in an iron flame.’”

Shoulders drooping, I sigh. Seven dragons is impossible. There are only six dens: black, blue, green, orange, brown, and red.

I hand her the journal. “Then maybe it’s not a seven. Maybe you mistranslated?”

She shakes her head, flipping to the very first page of the journal, then gives it back. “Here.” She taps the symbols, then lifts her hands. “‘Here is recorded the story of Lyra of the First Six.’” She taps the six, then turns the pages to the previous spot in the middle. “Seven.”

My lips part. Shit. Shit. Shit.

“They’re close,” she signs. “But that’s a seven. And there are seven circles on the wardstone in Aretia. Seven runes. Seven,” she repeats that last word, as if I could have possibly misunderstood.

Seven. Thoughts spin in my head too quickly to grab ahold of just one. “This journal has to be…wrong,” she signs when I remain silent.

I close the book and hand it to her. “Thank you. You should go to the infirmary. Sawyer is there, and if we—”

She shoves the journal into her robes and begins signing before I finish. “Why is Sawyer in the infirmary?” Her eyes fly wide.

“A wyvern took his leg.”

She inhales swiftly.

“Go. If we evacuate the wounded, Maren said she’d watch over him, so if we evacuate, that’s the safest place for you to be. She’ll get you both out.”

Jesinia nods. “Be safe.”

“You, too.”

She picks up her robes and sprints across the courtyard, cutting toward the southernmost door.

My head swims as I turn toward leadership gathered at the end of the archway and begin walking.

Could it mean a gryphon? Is that what it meant by six and the one? No. If a gryphon contributed to the wards, flier magic would work within the boundaries. But there aren’t seven breeds of dragon—

I stumble, catching myself with a hand along the stone wall, while my brain trips down the path that makes the only sense. Even if that path is ludicrous.

But…

Holy shit.

I immediately shut the thoughts down before anyone connected to me can break through my shields and catch me thinking them.