Because right now, standing near the dead body of my friend and his dragon—all I want is to show these assholes exactly how violent I can be.

I pull my goggles down as I turn to Tairn’s shoulder, mounting quickly. There’s no need to ask him to launch, not when our emotions are aligned like this. We want the same exact thing. Revenge.

I buckle the straps across my thighs as Tairn springs upward, taking off with heavy beats of his massive wings. The bloodied wyvern has doubled back, and Tairn flies straight at it. I don’t even care if it’s the same one that just killed our friends. They’re all going to die.

As soon as we get close enough, I throw my hands out, letting all my power loose with a guttural scream. Lightning hits the wyvern on the first shot, sending the monster plummeting to the ground near the city walls.

But I never see the one coming at us from the left.

Not until I feel Tairn’s roar of pain.

But it was the third brother, who commanded the sky to surrender its greatest power, who finally vanquished his jealous sibling at a great and terrible price.

—“The Origin,” The Fables of the Barren

CHAPTER

THIRTY-SEVEN

I whip around in the saddle and see a venin—the one who killed Soleil, distended, branchlike veins spreading from her red eyes—grasping the sword she’s stabbed in between Tairn’s scales in the area behind his wings.

“There’s a venin on your back!” I shout at Tairn as the venin whips a ball of fire toward my head. It comes so close that I feel the singe of heat along my cheek.

Tairn rolls, executing a dizzying climb that throws my weight back into the saddle, and yet the venin holds fast, grabbing on to the embedded sword as her feet fly out from under her. The second Tairn levels off, the venin stares at me like I’m her next meal, striding for me with nothing but resolve in her eyes and fisting serrated green-tipped daggers.

“Three more riderless ones on my tail!” Tairn shouts.

Fuck. There’s something I’m missing. It’s taunting me from the edge of my mind like the answer to a test I know I’ve studied for.

“Aren’t you a little small for a dragon rider?” the venin hisses.

“Big enough to kill you.” Tairn and I are dead if I don’t do something.

“I need you to stay level,” I tell Tairn, unbuckling my thigh straps.

“You will not unseat!” Tairn growls.

“I won’t let her kill you!” I climb to my feet and unsheathe the two daggers Xaden gave me today. Every challenge, every obstacle, every hour Imogen spent in the weight room, every single time Xaden has taken me to the mat has to be worth something, right?

This is just a challenge…with a not-so-fictitious dark wielder…on the parapet.

A moving, flying parapet.

“Get back in your seat!” Tairn orders.

“You can’t shake her. She’ll cut into you again. I have to kill her.” I shove the fear aside. There’s no room for it here.

By the dying sunlight and the eerie glow of the burning city below us, I dodge the first swipe of her knife, then the second, ducking low and throwing up my forearm to block a downward thrust, halting the plunge of metal jabbing toward my face. The force of impact results in a snap I know is one of my bones.

Excruciating pain momentarily freezes me as the dagger flies out of my hand. I’m down to only one. My heart pounds as my feet catch on one of Tairn’s spikes, and I stumble.

I can’t even cradle my ruined, throbbing arm as she advances, gaining on me with every lunge and swipe of her green-tipped daggers. It’s as if she knows exactly what I’m going to do before I do it. She counters every one of my attacks with a quicker one of her own, as if she’s adapting to my fighting style from mere moments of combat. She’s unnaturally quick. I’ve never seen Xaden or Imogen move this fast.

I manage to parry each of her attacks, but there’s no question that I’m on the defense. She’s not even in leathers, just a fluttering sail of a robe, and still—

Pain flares in my side, hot and sharp, and I fall back in disbelief when I find one of her daggers protruding low in my side, just beneath the edge of the dragon-scale armor.

Tairn roars and Andarna shrieks.

“Violet!” Xaden screams.

“She’s too fast!” I doubt the dagger has struck anything vital from its position, and I fight through mouthwatering nausea to balance the only venin blade I have left and yank hers out. But something isn’t right. The wound begins to burn, and I immediately battle to keep my balance as acid races through my veins. The tip on the knife is no longer green as it falls from my fingers.

“Such untapped power. No wonder we were called here. You could command the sky to surrender all its power, and I bet you don’t know what to do with it, do you? Riders never do. I’m going to split you open and see where all that astonishing lightning comes from.” She waves the other dagger at me, and I realize she’s playing with me. “Or maybe I’ll let him do it. You’ll wish for death if I hand you over to my Sage.”

She has a teacher?

She’s a damn student, just like me, and I’m lethally outmatched. I can barely keep track of which hand her blade is in. My arm has its own heartbeat, and my side screams.

“Level the playing field,” Xaden orders. He’s split his power and shadows rush in from the cliffs at my left, throwing the world around me—and the venin—into a cloud of complete darkness.

And I have the power of light.

I’m the one in control now, and I know the terrain of Tairn’s back like my own hand. Moving to the right, where I can feel the slope of his shoulder, I take up a fighting stance, grip my dagger in my good hand, and let my power explode through the dark, illuminating the sky for one crackling, priceless second.

The venin is disoriented, her back turned toward me. I plunge the runed dagger between her ribs—right where Xaden showed me all those months ago—and yank it out so I don’t lose it. She staggers backward, her face turning an ashen gray before she falls from Tairn’s back.

I falter, swaying as the acid in my veins burns brighter, harsher, incinerating me from the inside out.

“She’s dead,” I manage to tell them, throwing the word out toward Tairn, Xaden, Andarna, Sgaeyl…whoever might be listening.

The shadows fall away, letting in the fading light of dusk as I stumble toward the saddle, holding my side to stanch the flow of blood from the stab wound.

“You’re hurt,” Tairn accuses.

“I’m fine,” I lie, staring with wide eyes as dark-black blood sludges through my fingers. Not good. So not good.

I won’t be able to fight another in hand-to-hand, not with the wound in my side, and soon I’ll be too weak to wield. The strength is flowing out of me with my blood. I sheathe the dagger. My best weapon now is my mind.

Taking a deep breath, I fight to steady my heartbeat and think.

“They’re falling,” Tairn says, and I jerk my gaze from my side to see three wyvern tumble from the sky and crash to the earth.

Riderless wyvern.

Created by venin.