“Stop,” he demands.
I ignore the warning completely, just like I ignored Mira’s warning last year to stay away from him. “You need to fix— Never mind, if you could mend, you wouldn’t have brought me to Aretia. Let’s try eliminating signets instead. You can’t see the future, or you never would have led us to Athebyne. You can’t wield any element, or you would have done so in Resson—” I pause as a thought pushes past the others. “Who knows?”
“Stop before you go somewhere we can’t come back from.” Shadows move across the inches that separate us, winding up my calves as if he thinks he’s going to have to fight to keep me at his side.
“Who knows?” I repeat, my voice rising with my temper. Not that it matters. There’s no one else for miles, and there are no sound-seekers in Aretia capable of hearing across miles of distance like Captain Greely in General Melgren’s personal unit, hence why our communication times lag. “Do the marked ones know? Does the Assembly? Am I the only person close to you who doesn’t know, just like last year?” My hand falls away from his arm.
It’s impossible to have a signet that no one has detected, no one has trained. Has he played me for a fool again? The space between my ribs and my heart shrivels and shrinks, my chest threatening to crumple.
“For fuck’s sake, Violet. No one else knows.” He turns toward me in a move so fast it would intimidate someone else, but I know he’s incapable of hurting me—at least physically—so I merely tilt my chin and stare up into those gold-flecked eyes in blatant challenge.
“I deserve better than this. Tell me the truth.”
“You’ve always deserved better than me. And no one knows,” he repeats, his voice dropping. “Because if they did, I’d be dead.”
“Why would—” My lips part, and my pulse jumps as my head starts to swim.
He has to have full control. He has to make snap character judgments. He has to intrinsically know who to trust and who not to. In order for the movement to have been as successful as it was within the walls of Basgiath, he has to know…everything.
Xaden’s most pressing need is information.
Tairn shifts, angling his body toward Sgaeyl instead of beside her.
Oh gods. There’s only one signet riders are killed for having. Fear churns in my stomach and threatens to bring up what little I’ve had to eat today.
“Yes.” He nods, his gaze boring into mine.
Shit, did he just—
“No.” I shake my head and take a step backward out of his shadows, but he moves as if he takes the step with me.
“Yes. It’s how I knew I could trust you not to tell anyone about the meeting under the tree last year,” he says as I retreat another step. “How I seem to know what my opponent has planned on the mat before their next move. How I know exactly what someone needs to hear in order to get them to do what I need done, and how I knew if someone remotely suspected us while we were at Basgiath.”
I shake my head in denial, wishing I’d stopped pushing like he’d demanded me to.
He crosses the space between us. “It’s why I didn’t kill Dain in the interrogation chamber, why I let him come with us, because the second his shields wavered, I knew he’d had a true epiphany. How would I know that, Violet?”
He’d read Dain’s mind.
Xaden is more dangerous than I ever imagined.
“You’re an inntinnsic,” I whisper. Even the accusation is a death sentence among riders.
“I’m a type of inntinnsic,” he repeats slowly, like it’s the first time he’s ever said the words. “I can read intentions. Maybe I would know what to call it if they didn’t kill everyone with even a hint of the signet.”
My eyebrows jolt upward. “Can you read thoughts or not?”
His jaw flexes. “It’s more complicated than that. Think of that breath of a second before the actual thought, the subconscious motivation you might not even be aware of in your mind, or when instinct drives you to move or you’re looking to betray someone. The intention is always there. Mostly they come across as pictures, but some people intend in really clear pictures.”
Tairn growls low in his throat and lowers his head at Sgaeyl as a rush of something bitter and sick floods our bond. Betrayal. I slam my shields up, blocking him out before I’m lost to his emotions, already struggling with mine.
He didn’t know.
Another rumble of anger vibrates his chest scales, and my heart lurches with pangs of sympathy.
Sgaeyl draws back in retreat, shocking me to the core, but holds her head high, exposing her throat to her mate.
The same way Xaden just metaphorically exposed his to me. All I have to do is tell someone—anyone—and he’s dead. A soft roaring fills my ears.
“There are some secrets even mates can’t share,” Xaden says, his eyes locked on mine, but his words are meant for Tairn. “Some secrets that can’t be spoken of even behind the protections of wards.”
“And yet you know everyone’s secrets, don’t you? Everyone’s intentions?” That’s why inntinnsics aren’t allowed to live. The implications of his signet hit me with the force of a battering ram, and I stagger backward like the blow is a physical one. How many times has he read me? How many pre-thoughts has he eavesdropped on? Do I actually love him? Or did he just say what I wanted to hear? Do the things I needed in order to—
“Less than a minute,” Xaden whispers as Sgaeyl moves toward him— toward us. “That’s how long it took for you to fall out of love with me.”
My gaze flashes to his. “Don’t read my…whatever!”
Tairn stalks toward me, his head low and his teeth bared as he places himself at my back.
“I didn’t.” The saddest smile I’ve ever seen tugs at Xaden’s mouth. “First, because your shields are up, and secondly because I didn’t have to. It’s all over your face.”
My heart struggles to beat regularly, torn between slowing and sluggishly admitting defeat, and racing—no, rising to fight—in defense of the simple yet agonizing truth that I love him anyway.
But how many more blows can that love take? How many more daggers are there in that metaphorical armoire? Gods, I don’t know what to think. Nausea washes over me. Has he ever used it on me?
“Say something,” he begs, fear streaking through his eyes.
The roaring grows louder, the sound like a thousand soft drops of rain on a roof.
