“Love!” he shouts, stopping me in my tracks and earning us a glance from every rider within hearing distance. “You love me.”

One of those little embers in my chest tries to come back to life, and I squash it before it has the chance to burn.

Slowly, I turn to face him. “Everything I feel—” I swallow, fighting to hold on to the anger so I don’t fall apart. “Felt for you was based on secrets and deception.” Shame burns in my cheeks that I was naive enough to fall for him in the first place.

“Everything between us is real, Violence.” The intensity with which he says it hurts my heart even more. “The rest, I can explain with enough time. But before we get to our assigned outpost, I need to know if you believe me.”

I glance at the dagger and hear the words in my father’s letter as surely as if he’d spoken them. I know you’ll make the right choice when the time comes. He warned me the only way he could have: through books.

“Yes,” I say, handing the dagger back to Xaden. “I believe you. That doesn’t mean I trust you anymore.”

“Keep it.” His posture softens in relief.

I sheathe it at my thigh. “You’re giving me a weapon after just telling me that you’ve been deceiving me for months, Riorson?”

“Absolutely. I have another, and if what the fliers say is true, and venin are headed north, then you might need it. I never lied when I said I can’t live without you, Violence.” He backs away slowly, his lips curving in a sad smile. “And defenseless women have never been my type, remember?”

I’m not remotely ready to joke around with him. “Let’s just get to Athebyne.”

He nods, and a few minutes later, we’re midflight.

“We know we didn’t lie. We just didn’t tell you everything,” Andarna says, flying in the pocket of air behind Tairn with the least wind resistance as we make our way to the outpost.

“That’s lying by omission,” I argue. There’s a lot of that going around today.

“She’s right, Golden One.” Tension radiates through every line of Tairn’s body and the very beats of his wings. “You have every right to be angry.” He banks, following the mountain range along the border. The straps on my saddle bite into my thighs. “We made a choice to protect you—without your consent. It was an error, and one that I won’t make again.” The guilt he feels overwhelms my own emotions, melting the hottest of my anger, and I begin to think.

Really, truly think.

If venin exist, we’d have record. And yet there weren’t any copies of The Fables of the Barren in the Archives—the one location Navarre should have a copy of every book written or transcribed in the last four hundred years, which means Dad didn’t just give me a rare book…but a forbidden one.

Four hundred years of tomes and not a single one—

Four hundred years. But our history spans over six. Everything is a copy of an earlier work. The only original text in the Archives older than four hundred years—around the time we fell into war with Poromiel—are the original scrolls from the Unification over six hundred years ago.

It only takes one desperate generation to change history—even erase it.

Gods, Dad spelled it all out for me. He’d always told me scribes hold all the power.

“Yes,” Tairn says as we curve around the last peak, its jagged top bare of snow from the summer heat, and the mountainside outpost of Athebyne comes into view at the same time as the Cliffs of Dralor. “One generation to change the text. One generation chooses to teach that text. The next grows, and the lie becomes history.”

He banks left, following the curve of the mountain, then slows as we approach the outpost’s flight field.

My hands grip the pommels when we land in front of the looming structure perched on the side of the last peak in this range. Its design is identical to Montserrat, a simple square fortress with four towers and walls barely thick enough to launch a dragon. The military is nothing if not uniform.

I unbuckle from my saddle and slide down his foreleg. “And somehow we’re supposed to be able to concentrate on the War Games,” I mutter, adjusting my pack on my shoulders, thinking about a trading post that may or may not be under attack from mythical creatures soon.

The others dismount, and I look back to see Andarna already curled up between Tairn’s feet.

Xaden walks with Garrick, looking my way with what feels like longing. I gave him everything, and he never truly let me in. Pain rips through my chest with the kind of cut that only heartbreak can give, sharp and jagged. I imagine this is what it feels like to be cleaved apart with a dull, rust-covered blade. It’s not honed enough to slice quickly, and there’s a one hundred percent chance the wound is going to fester. If I can’t trust him, there’s no future for us.

It’s more than tense as the ten of us walk beneath the open portcullis and into the outpost. The very empty outpost.

“What the hell?” Garrick strides across the courtyard in the center of the structure, looking along the gathering spaces that should line the interior just like Montserrat.

“Stop,” Xaden orders, surveying the walls that rise on every side above us. “There’s no one here. Divide and search.” He glances at me. “You don’t leave my side. I don’t think this is a War Game.”

I start to argue that he couldn’t possibly know that, but the whip of wind through the open gate makes me pause. The only sounds in a fortress that should house more than two hundred people are our footsteps on the rocky ground—and he’s right. Everything feels off.

“Awesome,” I reply with more than a small dose of sarcasm, and everyone but Liam—who’s my shadow once again—scatters in groups of two or three, climbing various staircases.

“This way,” Xaden says, beelining for the southwest tower. We climb and climb, finally reaching the top of the fourth floor, where the door leads us to an open-air observation point that overlooks the valley below, including the Poromish trading post.

“This is one of the most strategic garrisons we man,” I say, looking for any sight of the infantry and riders who should be here. “There’s no way they’d abandon it for War Games.”

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.” Xaden looks out over the valley, then narrows his eyes on the trading post a thousand feet below. “Liam.”

“On it.” Liam moves forward, leaning on the stone battlement as he focuses on the structures in the distance beneath us. The trading post is maybe a twenty-minute walk along the wide gravelly path winding down the mountainside our outpost is perched on. The roofs of several buildings just poke out above the circular stone wall of its defenses, a drift of gryphons and their fliers approaching from the south.

Xaden turns on me, and the look in his eyes is anything but welcoming. “What did Dain say to you before we left? He leaned in and whispered something.”

I blink, trying to remember. “He said something like…” I search my memory. “I’ll miss you, Violet.”

His body goes tense. “And he said I was going to get you killed.”

“Yes, but he always says that.” I shrug. “What would Dain have to do with emptying an entire outpost?”

“I have something!” Garrick calls from the southeast tower, holding what looks to be an envelope as he and Imogen cross the thick rampart, coming in our direction.

“Did you tell him about my trips here?” Xaden questions, his eyes hardening.

“No!” I shake my head. “Unlike some people, I never hid anything from you.”

He draws back, his gaze shifting left and right as he thinks before settling on me again and widening. “Violence,” he says softly, “did Aetos touch you after I told you about Athebyne?”

“What?” My brow furrows, and I shove an errant strand of hair out of my face as the wind swirls around us.

“Like this.” He lifts his hand to my cheek. “His power requires touching someone’s face. Did he touch you like this?”

My lips part. “Yes, but that’s how he always touches me. He would n-never…” I sputter. “I would know if he read my memories.”

Xaden’s face falls, and his hand slips downward, cradling the back of my neck. “No, Violence. Trust me, you wouldn’t.” There’s no accusation in his tone, just a resignation that hurts what’s left of my heart.

“He wouldn’t.” I shake my head. Dain is a lot of things, but he would never violate me like that, never take something I hadn’t offered. Except he tried once.

“It’s addressed to you,” Garrick says, handing the envelope to Xaden.

Xaden drops his hand from my face and breaks the seal. I can read the lettering as he opens the missive.