“It’s an Assembly meeting,” Bodhi whispers to me. “Only a quorum of five is required to call a vote, since all seven are almost never here at one time, and four votes carry a motion.”
I file that information away. “Are we allowed to listen?”
“Meetings are open to whoever wants to attend,” Imogen replies just as quietly.
“And we’re attending…in the hallway?” I ask.
“Yes,” Imogen answers with no other explanation.
“Returning is the only option,” Hawk Nose continues. “Not doing so risks everything we’re building here. Search patrols will come, and we don’t have enough riders—”
“It’s a little hard to recruit while trying to stay undetectable,” a petite woman with glossy black hair like a raven counters, the umber skin at the corners of her eyes crinkling as she glares down the table at the older man.
“Let’s not get off topic, Trissa,” Brennan says, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Our father’s nose. Their resemblance is uncanny.
“No point increasing our numbers without a working forge to arm them with weapons.” Hawk Nose’s voice rises above the others. “We’re still short a luminary, if you haven’t noticed.”
“And where are we in negotiations with Viscount Tecarus for his?” a large man asks in a calm, rumbling voice, his ebony hand tugging at his thick silver beard.
Viscount Tecarus? That isn’t a noble family in any Navarrian records. We don’t even have viscounts in our aristocracy.
“Still working on a diplomatic solution,” Brennan answers.
“There’s no solution. Tecarus isn’t over the insult you delivered last summer.” An older woman built like a battle-ax locks her gaze on Xaden, her blond hair brushing just past her square alabaster chin.
“I told you, the viscount was never going to give it to us in the first place,” Xaden replies. “The man only collects things. He does not trade them.”
“Well, he’s definitely not going to trade with us now,” she retorts, her gaze narrowing. “Especially if you won’t even contemplate his latest offer.”
“He can fuck right off with his offer.” Xaden’s voice is calm, but his eyes have a hard edge that dares anyone at the table to disagree. As if showing these people they aren’t worth his time, he steps around the arm of the massive chair facing them and settles into it, stretching his long legs and resting his arms on the velvet armrests—like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
The quiet that falls on the room is telling. Xaden commands as much respect from the Assembly of this revolution as he does at Basgiath. I don’t recognize any of the other riders besides Brennan, but I’d bet Xaden is the most powerful in the room, given their silence.
“For now,” Tairn reminds me with the arrogance only a hundred years of being one of the most formidable battle dragons on the Continent can provide. “Instruct the humans to bring you up to the valley once the politics are finished.”
“There had better be a solution. If we can’t supply the drifts with enough weaponry to really fight in the next year, the tide will shift too far to ever hope of holding the venin advance at bay,” Silver Beard notes. “This all will have been for nothing.”
My stomach pitches. A year? We’re that close to losing a war I knew nothing about a few days ago?
“As I said, I’m working on a diplomatic solution for the luminary”— Brennan’s tone sharpens—“and we’re so wildly off topic I’m not sure this is the same meeting.”
“I vote we take Basgiath’s luminary,” Battle-Ax suggests. “If we’re that close to losing this war, there’s no other option.”
Xaden shoots Brennan a look that I can’t decipher, and I breathe deeply as it hits me—he probably knows my own brother better than I do.
And he kept him from me. Of all the secrets he hid, that’s the one I can’t quite swallow.
“And what would you have done with the knowledge had he shared it?” Tairn asks.
“Stop bringing logic into an emotional argument.” I fold my arms across my chest. It’s my heart that won’t fully let my head forgive Xaden.
“We’ve been over that,” Brennan says with finality. “If we take Basgiath’s forging device, Navarre can’t replenish their stores at the outposts. Countless civilians will die if those wards fall. Do any of you want to be responsible for that?”
Silence reigns.
“Then we agree,” Hawk Nose says. “Until we can supply the drifts, the cadets have to return.”
Oh.
“They’re talking about us,” I whisper. That’s why we’re standing out of their direct sight.
Bodhi nods.
“You’re uncharacteristically quiet, Suri,” Brennan notes, glancing at the wide-shouldered brunette with olive skin and a single streak of silver in her hair, her nose twitching like a fox, sitting next to him.
“I say we send all but the two.” Her nonchalance skates a chill down my spine as she drums her bony fingers on the table, a giant emerald ring catching the light. “Six cadets can lie as well as eight.”
Eight.
Xaden, Garrick, Bodhi, Imogen, three marked ones I’d never gotten a chance to know before we were thrown into battle, and…me.
Nausea rises like a tide. The War Games. We’re supposed to be finishing the last competition of the year between the wings of the Riders Quadrant at Basgiath, and instead, we entered deadly battle with an enemy I’d thought were only folklore last week, and now we’re…well, we’re here, in a city that isn’t supposed to exist.
But not all of us.
My throat tightens, and I blink back the burn in my eyes. Soleil and Liam didn’t survive.
Liam. Blond hair and sky-blue eyes fill my memory, and pain erupts behind my ribs. His boisterous laugh. His quick smile. His loyalty and kindness. It’s all gone. He’s gone.
