The shadowy, shimmering bond at the edge of my mind strengthens and pulls gently. “In fact, Xaden’s walking this way,” I tell Brennan.

“That’s really fucking weird.” He folds his arms across his chest and looks behind us. “Can you two always sense each other?”

“Kind of. It has to do with the bond between Sgaeyl and Tairn. I’d say you get used to it, but you don’t.” I walk into the copse, and Sgaeyl does me a solid favor and doesn’t make me ask her to move, taking two steps to the right so I’m in between her and Tairn, directly in front of…

What. The. Fuck?

That can’t be… No. Impossible.

“Stay calm. She’ll respond to your agitation and wake in a temper,” Tairn warns.

I stare at the sleeping dragon—who is almost twice the size she had been a few days ago—and try to get my thoughts to line up with what I’m seeing, what my heart already knows thanks to the bond between us. “That’s…” I shake my head, and my pulse begins to race.

“Wasn’t expecting that,” Brennan says quietly. “Riorson left out some details when he reported in this morning. I’ve never seen such accelerated growth in a dragon before.”

“Her scales are black.” Yeah, saying it doesn’t help make it feel any more real.

“Dragons are only gold-feathered as hatchlings.” Tairn’s voice is uncharacteristically patient.

“‘Accelerated growth,’” I whisper, repeating Brennan’s words, then gasp. “From the energy usage. We forced her to grow. In Resson. She stopped time for too long. We—I—forced her to grow.” I can’t seem to stop saying it.

“It would have happened eventually, Silver One, if at a slower pace.”

“Is she full-grown?” I can’t take my eyes off her.

“No. She’s what you would call an adolescent. We need to get her back to the Vale so she can enter the Dreamless Sleep and finish the growth process. I should warn you before she wakes that this is a notoriously…perilous age.”

“For her? Is she in danger?” My gaze swings to Tairn for the length of a terrorizing heartbeat.

“No, just everyone around her. There’s a reason adolescents don’t bond, either. They don’t have the patience for humans. Or elders. Or logic,” he grumbles.

“So, the same as humans.” A teenager. Fabulous.

“Except with teeth and, eventually, fire.”

Her scales are so deeply black they glimmer almost purple—iridescent, really—in the flickering sunlight that filters through the leaves above. The color of a dragon’s scales is hereditary—

“Wait a second. Is she yours?” I ask Tairn. “I swear to the gods, if she’s another secret you kept from me, I’ll—”

“I told you last year, she is not our progeny,” Tairn answers, drawing up his head as if offended. “Black dragons are rare but not unheard of.”

“And I happened to bond to two of them?” I counter, outright glaring at him.

“Technically, she was gold when you bonded her. Not even she knew what color her scales would mature to. Only the eldest of our dens can sense a hatchling’s pigment. In fact, two more black dragons have hatched in the last year, according to Codagh.”

“Not helping.” I let Andarna’s steady breathing assure me that she really is fine. Giant but…fine. I can still see her features—her slightly more rounded snout, the spiral twist carved into her curled horns, even the way she tucks her wings in while sleeping is all…her, only bigger. “If there’s a morningstartail on her—”

“Tails are a matter of choice and need.” He huffs indignantly. “Don’t they teach you anything?”

“You’re not exactly a notoriously open species.” I’m sure Professor Kaori would salivate over knowing something like that.

That shadowy bond wrapped around my mind strengthens.

“Is she awake yet?” The deep timbre of Xaden’s voice makes my pulse skip like always.

I turn around to see him standing beside Brennan, with Imogen, Garrick, Bodhi, and the others flanking him in the tall grass. My gaze catches on the cadets I don’t know. Two men and one woman. It’s more than awkward that I went to war with them and yet I’ve only seen them in passing in the halls. I couldn’t even chance a guess at their names without feeling foolish. It’s not like Basgiath is made to foster friendships outside our squads, though.

Or relationships, for that matter.

I’ll spend every single day of my life earning back your trust. The memory of Xaden’s words fills the space between us as we stare at each other.

“We have to go back.” I fold my arms across my chest, preparing for a fight. “No matter what that Assembly says, if we don’t go back, they’ll kill every cadet with a rebellion relic.”

Xaden nods, as though he’d already come to the same conclusion.

“They’ll see right through whatever lie you’re going to tell, and they’ll execute you, Violet,” Brennan retorts. “According to our intelligence, General Sorrengail already knows you’re missing.”

She wasn’t there on the dais when War Games orders were handed out. Her aide, Colonel Aetos, was in charge of the games this year.

She didn’t know.

“Our mother won’t let them kill me.”

“Say that again,” Brennan says softly. He tilts his head at me and looks so much like our father that I blink twice. “And this time try to convince yourself that you mean it. The general’s loyalties are so crystal-fucking-clear that she might as well tattoo Yes there are venin, now go back to class on her forehead.”

“That doesn’t mean she’ll kill me. I can make her believe our story. She’ll want to if I’m the one telling it.”

“You don’t think she’ll kill you? She threw you into the Riders Quadrant!”

Fine, he has me there. “Yeah, she did, and guess what? I became a rider. She may be a lot of things, but she won’t let Colonel Aetos or even Markham kill me without evidence. You didn’t see her when you didn’t come home, Brennan. She was…devastated.”

His hands curl into fists. “I know the atrocious things she did in my name.”

“She wasn’t there,” one of the guys I don’t know says, putting up his hands when the rest turn to glare at him. He’s shorter than the others, with a Third Squad, Flame Section patch on his shoulder, light-brown hair, and a pinkish, round face that reminds me of the cherubs usually carved at the feet of statues of Amari.

“Seriously, Ciaran?” The brunette second-year lifts a hand to her forehead, shielding her fair skin from the sun and revealing a First Squad, Flame Section patch on her shoulder, then lifts a pierced eyebrow at him. “You’re defending General Sorrengail?”

“No, Eya, I’m not. But she wasn’t there when orders were handed out—” He cuts off the sentence as two eyebrows slash down in warning. “And Aetos was in charge of War Games this year,” he adds.

Ciaran and Eya. I look to the lean guy, who pushes his glasses up his pointed nose with a dark-brown hand, standing next to Garrick’s hulking build. “I’m so sorry, but what is your name?” It feels wrong to not know them all.

“Masen,” he replies with a quick smile. “And if it makes you feel better”— he glances at Brennan—“I don’t think your mom had anything to do with the War Games this year, either. Aetos was pretty loud about his dad planning the whole thing.”

Fucking Dain.

“Thank you.” I turn toward Brennan. “I would bet my life that she didn’t know what was waiting for us.”

“You willing to bet all of ours, too?” Eya asks, clearly not convinced, looking at Imogen for support and not getting any.