“Their dragons can.”
“If she dies, you will summon the wrath of not only General Sorrengail but General Melgren. Her signet is the weapon generals dream of in this war.” Carr glances between Varrish and me. “And if that’s not enough to encourage a degree of caution, Vice Commandant, then remember her death will cost you two of the most powerful dragons on the Continent and Lieutenant Riorson’s irreplaceable ability to wield shadows.”
“Ah yes, that pesky mating bond.” Varrish clicks his tongue and cocks his head to the side, studying me like I’m nothing but an experiment for him to play with. “One more. Just to prove that you can listen to orders if your dragon will not.”
“Silver One—”
“I can do it.” I stumble to my feet and pray my shoulder will hold if I tuck my elbow in tight to my body. For Andarna, for the other hatchlings protected in the Vale, I can do it.
My muscles shake and cramp, and my shoulder screams as though there’s a dagger in the joint, but I raise my palms and reach for Tairn’s power anyway. I make the connection and let the energy flood through me one more time.
I wield, and lightning crashes.
But my arms cramp as the strike hits the nearest peak, the muscles twisting and bunching in an unnatural way, causing me to physically hold the power I usually release right away.
Fuck! I can’t let it go!
“Silver One!” Tairn shouts.
Power lashes through me, extending the strike, which cleaves a section from the northernmost ridgeline ahead of me. The rock crashes down the mountain’s slope, and still the lightning flows like an incandescent blade, cutting away the terrain.
I can’t move. Can’t drop my hands. Can’t even twitch my fingers.
This is going to kill me.
Tairn. Sgaeyl. Xaden. It’s going to kill us all. Fear and pain roll into one, seizing my mind with the one emotion I can’t afford—panic.
“Cut it off mentally!” Tairn bellows as the strike goes on and on, and in the distance I hear Andarna cry.
My very bones catch fire, and a scream rips from my throat as I shove mentally at the doors to my Archives.
The strike ends, and I stagger backward, falling against Tairn’s foreleg and crumpling between his talons. Every breath is a struggle.
Carr swallows. Hard. “We’re done for the day.”
I couldn’t stand if I wanted to.
Varrish examines the destruction I caused and turns toward me. “Fascinating. You’ll both be indispensable once you come to heel.” He turns then, his cloak billowing in the wind as he walks to Solas. “This is the only warning you’ll get, Cadet Sorrengail.”
The threat hits like a punch to the stomach, but I can’t think around the blistering heat.
Carr hikes over, then puts the back of his hand against my forehead and hisses. “You’re burning up.” He glances at Tairn. “Tell your dragon to carry you directly to the courtyard. You won’t make it from the flight field. Get food and a cold bath.” There’s something suspiciously close to sympathy in his eyes as he looks me over. “And while I agree that we do not command dragons, perhaps you could talk Andarna into making an appearance. You are a rare, powerful signet, Cadet Sorrengail. It would be a travesty to use your training sessions in this manner again.”
I’m not a signet. I’m a person. But I’m too damned hot, too tired to make the words form. Not that it matters—he doesn’t see me that way. Carr never has. To him, we are the sum of our powers and nothing more. My chest heaves, but even the cool air of the mountaintop can’t touch the burn sizzling in my veins.
Tairn wraps his claw around me, securing a talon under each arm to lock my limp body into position, then launches, leaving Carr beneath us on the peak.
We’re airborne in an instant. Or maybe it’s an hour. Time has no meaning. It’s all just pain, beckoning me to let go, to release my soul from the prison of my body.
“You will not let go,” he orders as we fly toward Basgiath, moving faster than I’ve ever felt him go before. The air rushing by feels so damned good, but it’s not enough to reach the furnace in my lungs or the molten marrow of my bones.
Mountains and valleys pass under me in a blur before I recognize the walls of the quadrant, but Tairn blows by the courtyard and then plummets to the valley below.
The river. Water. Cold. Clear. Water.
“I’ve already called for support.”
My stomach lurches as he pulls up to a hover at the last second, my body swaying from the change in momentum.
“Hold your breath.” It’s his only warning before water covers me from head to toe, gushing with bone-crushing force, icy from the last of the summer runoff. The contrast threatens to crack every part of me, to peel me away layer by searing layer.
I’ve lived with pain my entire life, but this agony is beyond my capability to endure.
Soundlessly, I scream, air gushing from my lungs as I dangle from Tairn’s claw, the water forcing the heat from my body, saving me with the same pummeling blows that tear at my skin.
Tairn yanks my head above water, and I gasp for breath.
“Almost there,” he tells me, holding me in the rapids.
The water beats at me mercilessly but lowers the temperature of my body until the last of the flames in my bones extinguish.
“Violet!” someone bellows from the shoreline.
My teeth chatter as my pulse slows.
“There.” Tairn walks to the bank—I hadn’t even realized he’d been standing in the river with me—and deposits me in the long summer grass beneath the row of trees that grow along the Iakobos.
I lie limp, fighting for the energy to take my next breath as my heart beats slower and slower. Summoning all my energy, I force my lungs to expand, to draw in air.
