“Fuck,” Xaden swears. “I need you to stay calm, Violence.”

Calm? Shadows fall away, and I leave my hands loose at my sides in case I need to grab a dagger or wield, sidestepping Xaden so I can see.

A pair of gryphon riders stands in the meadow about thirty feet away, their beasts eerily silent behind them. They’re a third of the size of our dragons, but those beaks and claws look capable of shredding skin and scale just the same.

“Tairn!”

“Coming.”

“Stay with Sgaeyl,” I order Andarna.

“The gryphons look tasty from here,” she responds.

“They’re the same size you are. No.”

“A fucking Sorrengail.” The woman looks only a few years older than me, but she has the look of a veteran rider. She arches a dark brow, looking at me like I’m something that needs to be shoveled out of the horse stalls. The sound of beating wings fills the air as a handful of dragon riders barrel into the space around us. Imogen. Bodhi. A third-year with a scarred lip I recognize. Liam. But no one is reaching for a weapon.

At least the odds are in our favor now. Power unfurls under my skin, and I throw open that Archives door, letting energy rush over me in a torrent of scalding heat. The sky crackles.

“No!” Xaden turns and hauls me against his chest, wrapping his arms around me and pinning my arms to my sides.

“What are you doing?” I throw my weight against Xaden, but it’s no use. He has me locked down tight.

A gust of wind hits my right side as Tairn lands.

“Holy shit, that one is huge,” the woman says. Around Xaden’s immovable arm, I see the gryphon riders retreat with quick steps, their eyes flying wide as they look up.

Xaden lifts one hand to cup the nape of my neck as I look up at him. What the actual fuck is he doing? Kissing me before we die? “If you have ever trusted me, Violet, I need you to do it now.” The plea in his eyes leaves me stunned. Our enemies are feet away and he wants to…have a moment?

“Just stay here. Stay calm.” His eyes search mine for an answer to a question I haven’t been asked. Then he passes me to Liam.

Passes me. Like I’m a damned rucksack.

Liam pins my arms to my sides with careful but unyielding strength. “I’m sorry about this, Violet.”

Why the hell is everyone apologizing?

“Let. Me. Go,” I demand as Xaden strides toward the pair of gryphon riders, Garrick at his side. Fear squeezes my heart like a vise that he thinks he can take on the gryphons and their riders himself.

“I can’t do that,” Liam apologizes, his voice lowering. “I really wish I could.”

Tairn roars from my right so hard that spit flies, smacking Liam in the face and making my ears ring. Liam drops his hands and backs away slowly, putting his palms up. “Got it. Point made. No touching.”

Free from his grip, I spin toward the field as Xaden reaches the riders.

“You’re fucking early,” he says.

And my heart stops.

In his last days of interrogation, Fen Riorson lost touch with reality, railing against the kingdom of Navarre. He accused King Tauri, and all who came before him, of a conspiracy so vast, so unspeakable, that it does not bear repeating by this historian. The execution was swift and merciful for a madman who cost untold lives.

—Navarre, an Unedited History by Colonel Lewis Markham

CHAPTER

THIRTY-FIVE

Somehow, I manage to keep breathing, which is impressive given my heart feels like it might shatter in a million pieces, and narrow my gaze on the enemy.

I’ve never seen a gryphon rider before. The dragons usually burn them to ash, along with their half-eagle, half-lion mounts.

“What happened to meeting tomorrow? We don’t have a full shipment,” Xaden says to the gryphon rider, his voice calm and even.

“The shipment isn’t the issue,” the woman says, shaking her head. Unlike our black, the riders’ leathers are brown, matching the darker feathers of their beasts…who are currently staring at me like I’m dinner.

“If they try anything, they’ll be a snack,” Tairn says.

Shipment. I barely process what Tairn says through the shock of the rider’s words. And Xaden knows them. He’s working with them, aiding our enemy. Betrayal cuts my throat like glass as I try to swallow. This is why he’s been sneaking off from the quadrant.

“So you were waiting nearby to chat on the off chance that we’d fly by a full day early?” Xaden asks.

“We were patrolling from Draithus yesterday—it’s about an hour southeast from here—”

“I know where Draithus is,” Xaden retorts.

“Never know, you Navarrians act like nothing exists beyond your borders,” the male gryphon rider snarks. “I don’t know why we’re bothering to warn them.”

“Warn us?” Xaden’s head cocks to the side.

“We lost a village in the vicinity to a horde of venin two days ago. They decimated everything.”

I startle, my eyes flying wide. She just said what?

“Venin never come this far west,” Imogen says from my left.

Venin. Yep, that’s what they both said. What the actual hell? I’d think someone was fucking with me if not for the two enormous gryphons looming behind the pair of riders. But no one is laughing.

“Until now,” the woman replies, turning her gaze back to Xaden. “They were unmistakably venin and had one of their—”

“Don’t say anything else,” Xaden interrupts. “You know that none of us can know the details or we put everything at risk. All it takes is one of us being interrogated.”

“Are you getting this?” I ask Tairn, glancing left and right to see if anyone else noticed the pure ridiculousness spewing from the woman’s mouth, but everyone else looks…horrified, like they actually believe a village was destroyed by mythical creatures.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Details or not, it looks like the horde is heading north,” the male says. “Straight toward our trading post on the border across from your garrison at Athebyne. Are you armed?”