“Violet.” It’s part plea, part moan, and the war in his eyes makes my chest tighten. “You have no idea how badly I want to peel these pants off your amazing ass and fuck you until you’re hoarse from screaming my name, so limp from orgasms that you can’t fathom leaving my bed ever again, and every tree around here goes up in flames from lightning strikes.” His hand slides from behind my head to the nape of my neck. “Until you remember exactly how good we are together.”

“I never forgot.” It’s a whimper. My body is still humming.

“I’m not talking about physically.” He leans in and kisses me softly.

It’s sweet. Tender. Everything I don’t want to feel. Not when it comes to him. Heat and lust, I can cope with. But the rest? “Xaden,” I whisper, shaking my head slowly.

He studies my face for a heartbeat and masks the flash of disappointment with a half smile.

“Exactly.” He gently lowers me back to my feet, then steadies me, holding on to my waist when my knees wobble. “I want you more than my next breath, but I can’t fuck you into looking at me like you used to. I refuse to use sex as a tool to get you back.” He takes my hand and presses it to my chest. “Not when I want to be here.”

My eyes widen, and apprehension knots my stomach.

“That’s what I thought.” He sighs, but it’s not defeat tightening his mouth. It’s frustration. “You still don’t trust me, and that’s all right. I told you I’m not in this for a battle. I’m winning the damned war. I’m a fucking fool for saying this, but when haven’t I been a fool when it comes to you?”

“Excuse me?” I bristle. His memory must be faulty, because I’m the one who’s been the fool for him.

“Let me get this out.” He glances at my mouth. “I’ll kiss you whenever you want because my self-control is shit where you’re involved—”

“Whenever I want?” My brows shoot up. What the hell is happening right now?

“Yes, whenever you want, because I’ll live with my mouth attached to yours if I do it whenever I want.” He retreats a couple of steps, and I immediately miss the feel of his hands, the warmth of his skin. “But I’m begging you, Violet. Don’t offer me your body unless you’re offering me everything. I want you more than I want to fuck you. I want those three little words back.”

I stare at him, my mouth dropping open slightly. He’s not asking to hear that I want him. He wants to hear that I love him.

“It’s new territory for me, too.” He rakes his hands through his hair. “No one is more surprised than I am, trust me.”

“I’m sorry, but weren’t you the one last year who said we could have all the sex we wanted as long as we kept feelings out of it?” I fold my arms across my chest.

“See? Fucking fool.” He looks up at the rough-beamed ceiling like it has the answers. “Last year, I would have used any method it took to win you back, but for those three days you were unconscious, all I did was sit there and watch you sleep, thinking of everything I would have done differently.” Determination is etched on every line of his face when he brings his gaze back to mine. “This is me doing things differently.”

Somehow in the last month, we’ve managed to switch roles.

“This is me proving myself to you.” He steps back and pulls the door open, gesturing for me to walk out first, then rests his hand on the small of my back as we walk down the hall. “We’re not there yet, but you’ll trust me again at some point.”

“Sure, as soon as you agree to stop keeping secrets from me.” How the hell is this my fault?

His sigh sounds like it’s ripped out of his very soul. “You need to trust me even with secrets for this to work.”

I grab onto the stair railing and take the stairs two at a time. “That’s not going to happen.”

“It will,” he says as we near the ground floor, then changes the subject. “Are you hungry?”

“I need to wash up first.” My nose crinkles. “Pretty sure I smell like I’ve been flying eight hours.”

“Why don’t you head on into my room, and I’ll bring food.” His hand slips from my lower back as we make our way into his barracks room. He points to the left and says, “That door leads to a private bathing chamber.”

“There’s no way you got a private bathing chamber as a brand-new lieutenant,” I sputter. “Mira doesn’t even have one.”

“You’d be amazed what you can get when no one wants to share space with Fen Riorson’s son,” he answers quietly.

My stomach sinks. I can’t think of a single thing to say to that.

“Don’t look so sad. Garrick has to share with four other riders. Go.” He motions to the door again. “I’ll be right back.”

An hour later, I’m clean and fed, and Xaden is sitting at his desk, fiddling with something that looks like a crossbow but smaller, as I sit on his bed and run a brush through my damp hair. I can’t help but smile at the steady feeling of what’s becoming routine, Xaden preparing a weapon while I sit on a bed.

“But they didn’t search Tairn?” he asks without looking up.

“Nope, just dumped my stuff on the ground.” My gaze catches momentarily on a palm-size gray stone with a decorative black rune on his nightstand before I spot a piece of grass that made the journey here from the flight field and flick it off my arm. “Did they search Sgaeyl?”

He shakes his head. “Only me. And Garrick. And every other new lieutenant leaving Basgiath with a rebellion relic.”

“They know you’ve been smuggling something out.” I lean over the edge of the high bed and drop my brush into my bag. “Toss me a sharpening stone.”

“They suspect.” He reaches into the top right drawer of his desk, taking out the heavy, gray sharpening stone. He leans over to hand it to me, careful not to brush his fingers along mine, and then goes back to tinkering with his weapon.

“Thank you.” I grip the stone, then take the first knife from my thigh sheath and begin sharpening. They’re only as good as they are honed. But no amount of busying my hands is going to make the next question any easier to ask without feeling like I’m now the one keeping things from Xaden.

I choose my words carefully. “When we were at the lake, before Resson, you said the only thing that can kill a venin is what powers the wards.”

“Yes.” He leans back in his chair, one eyebrow raised, his bow forgotten.

“The daggers are made of the material that powers the wards,” I guess. “The alloy Brennan mentioned.”

Xaden opens the bottom drawer and moves some things around before pulling out a replica of the dagger I used to kill the venin on Tairn’s back. He walks over to me and holds it out, hilt first.

I take it from his hand, and the weight and hum of power coming from the blade are instantly nauseating—whether from the energy or the memory of the last time I held one, I’m unsure. Either way, I breathe deeply and remind myself I’m not on Tairn’s back. There’s no one trying to kill me or him. I’m in Xaden’s bedroom. Xaden’s very warded bedroom. Safe. No safer place on the Continent, really.

The blade itself is silver, sharpened on both edges, and the hilt is the same matte black of the one I used in Resson, the same that had been in my mother’s desk last year. I run my finger along the medallion in the hilt that’s a duller gray and decorated with a rune.

“That piece is the alloy.” He sits next to me on the bed. “The metal in the hilt. It’s a specific blend of materials smelted into what you see there. It’s not power in itself, but it’s capable of…holding power. The wards themselves originate from the Vale, near Basgiath, but they only reach so far. These”—he taps the medallion—“hold extra power to boost the wards and extend them. The more material, the stronger the wards. There’s an entire armory of them downstairs, boosting the wards. The details are classified, but that’s why outposts are placed strategically, to keep our borders from developing weak points.”

“But how could the wards ever falter if these power them constantly?” I brush my thumb over the alloy, and my own power rises, charging the air.

“Because they only hold so much power. Once it’s used, it has to be imbued again.”

“Hold on. Imbued with power?”

“Yes. Imbuing is a process of leaving power in stasis, in an object. A rider has to pour their own power into it, which is a skill not a lot of us have.” He glances meaningfully at me. “And don’t ask. We’re not getting into how that works tonight.”

“Have they always been placed in daggers?”

He shakes his head. “No. That started right before the rebellion. My guess is Melgren had a vision of how an upcoming battle is going to go and these were central to his victory. Once Sgaeyl chose me at Threshing, we started to work to smuggle out a few daggers at a time to supply what drifts we could make friendly contact with.”

“Aretia needs a forge to smelt the alloy, to make more weapons.”

“Yes. It takes a dragon to fire a crucible, which we have, and a luminary to intensify dragonfire hot enough to smelt,” he says.