“Stop.” I turn my back on Aaric and lower my voice. “And don’t ever ask me that question again. Please don’t make me lie to you.”

Her head draws back, and she stares at me in stunned silence.

“Let’s go,” I say to Aaric, then start walking to the exit, shoving what just happened with Rhi into what’s quickly becoming an overfull box.

He catches up, his long legs covering the distance quickly. The corridor of the academic wing’s first floor is deserted when we enter, and our booted footsteps echo against the windows.

“So where does your father think you are?” I ask as we turn toward the rotunda, trying to take my mind off everything I just let slip to Rhiannon and everything I didn’t.

“He thinks I’m on my twentieth-birthday tour,” Aaric answers, rubbing his hand over his square jawline and light-brown scruff, disgust curling his upper lip. “Drinking and fucking my way across the kingdom.”

“Sounds like way more fun than what we’re doing here.” I push the door open with my good arm.

“What part of this isn’t fun?” he asks, walking ahead and opening the next door with his unbroken hand. “Between the two of us, we have a full set of functioning arms.”

I crack a smile as we enter the dormitory corridor. “Ever the charmer, aren’t you, Cam—” I wince. “Aaric. Sorry. It’s been a hell of a long day.” And all I want is to tell Xaden about it, but he won’t be here for two more days.

We head down the steps, and though Aaric is roughly the same height as Xaden, he shortens his stride so I can keep up easily.

“She’s catching on, isn’t she?” he says when we reach the tunnels.

The hairs on the back of my neck lift as I look up at Aaric. “Catching on to what, exactly?”

“They haven’t hidden it all away as well as they think they have.” His jaw flexes. “It’s easy to figure out if you know what you’re looking for. Personally, it was the daggers my guards started carrying that tipped me off.” He shoots a look at me. “The ones with the little metal discs.”

My heart pounds so loudly I can hear it in my ears. Daggers. Metal discs.

“The guards were the hardest to slip, too,” he says with a grimace. “They won’t tell my father they’ve lost me until they absolutely have to. I’m just hoping it’s after Threshing. He can’t do shit after Threshing. Dragons don’t even answer to kings.”

“Oh shit.” My chest feels like it’s caving in as I grab hold of his good arm, halting our steps before the tunnel. “You know, don’t you?”

He lifts a brow, the mage lights catching on those royally green eyes. “Why else would I be here?”

At some point, probably during your second year, you’ll realize the trust you feel for your friends and family has nothing on the loyalty you develop for your squad.

—PAGE NINETY-ONE, THE BOOK OF BRENNAN

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Faster. I have to run faster. Fear holds my throat shut as a tidal wave of death chases me across the sunburned field to where Tairn waits, his back turned.

Wind roars around me, stealing every other sound, even my own heartbeat. Tairn’s going to die, and he doesn’t even see it coming for him.

Gold flickers near the tip of his wing.

Gods, no. Andarna. She’s here. She shouldn’t be here.

The wave nips at my heels, transforming the ground beneath my feet into an ashen, desiccated wasteland.

“There is nowhere to run, rider.” A hooded figure steps into my path out of nowhere, raising one arm.

I’m yanked off my feet by an unseen force and lifted into the air, completely immobilized. The wave of death halts and the wind falls silent, as if he’s stopped time.

He shifts his staff to the other hand, then pulls back the thick maroon hood of his floor-length robes with gnarled fingers, revealing the white of his scalp under his slicked-back, thinning hair. Shadows mark the gaunt hollows of his cheekbones on an eerily youthful face, and his lips are cracked and dry, just like the land behind me, but it’s his red-rimmed eyes, the distended veins spiderwebbing across his temples and cheeks, that have me fighting to open my mouth, straining to scream.

Venin.

“So disappointing,” he lectures, as if he’s my Sage and not the teacher of the dark wielder I killed on Tairn’s back. “All of that power at your fingertips, and yet you insist on fleeing over and over, using the same failed tactics, and expecting what?” He tilts his head to the side. “To escape?”

My ribs tighten around my lungs as terror takes hold, and I force a garbled sound through my throat, but it does nothing to warn Tairn and Andarna.

“There is no escaping me, rider,” he whispers, his fingers ghosting over my cheek but not quite touching. “Fight me and die, or join me and live beyond the ages, but you will never escape me, not when I’ve waited centuries for someone with your power.”

“Fuck you.” It comes out as a whisper, but I mean it with every bone in my body.

“Death it is.” He looks so…disappointed as he lowers his hand.

Wind howls as I fall to the ground. A scream tears through my body as a wave of agony rolls over my skin and bones, leaching the very essence of my energy until—

I wake, my heart pounding, my skin clammy, my fingers wrapped around my black-hilted dagger.

Just a dream. Just a dream. Just a dream.

“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” I ask Xaden on Saturday as he leads me down the stairs from my dorm room.

“To Basgiath’s forge,” he says as we emerge from the academic wing into the empty courtyard. It’s finally the time of year when the temperature outside matches inside. Autumn is settling in.

My chest tightens as I realize he’s taking me to see where they steal the weapons—and what that means. He’s letting me in.

“Thank you for trusting me.” The words don’t do the feeling justice.

“You’re welcome.” He looks down at me, his expression shifting. “Will I earn a little trust back now?”

I nod, tearing my gaze away from his before I do something reckless like let those three little words he wants spill out just because we’re having a moment. But I can share with him a secret of mine as well. “I found a text that said the First Six didn’t just establish the wards but personally carved the first wardstone.”

“We knew that.”

“Partially.” We cross down to the tunnels to the flight field, and I nod at one of our first-years. Channing? Chapman? Charan? Shit, it’s something like that. I’ll learn it in a couple of weeks—after Threshing. “The text said first wardstone,

which means if they carved the one here, there’s a good chance they carved the one in Aretia. I’m on the right track.”