“Only what I need,” I say to her.

I swallow hard, my good hand clutching the blood-tipped dagger as we fly toward the wall of wyvern. I reach for her golden power, and it spreads down my spine and explodes through me, time pausing around us.

Tairn flares his wing, bringing us to a hover as the wyvern move toward us inch by precious inch, fighting against Andarna’s magic with their own.

I have to want to kill that venin, and gods help me, I do.

“Now!” I push my arms toward the venin and command lightning to split the sky, and it does, branching out in every direction, but I only need to control one of its silver-blue veins. I focus on the one closest to the venin, bringing it down in slow bursts that defy time. My arms vibrate, and I feel Tairn’s power push the boundaries of my body as I yank the branch sideways in its descent, inch by inch with the last of my strength, positioning it over the venin. “More, Tairn!”

He roars and lightning itself rips through me, sizzling my lungs and charring my very breath as Andarna’s gift ebbs. I don’t have to be near her to feel her fatigue, her strength ebbing. But I only take what I need. Andarna will live today, even if she is the only one.

I have only a few heartbeats or this much power will burn through me and take me under.

Xaden screams through the barrier in my mind, and the sounds of his anguish and fear are nearly more than I can bear. But there’s no time to focus on him, to wonder what will happen if I don’t succeed. Because right now, I am focused on vengeance with a coldness that would make even my mother proud.

Finally dragging the lightning down into place as my skin sizzles and burns, I release time and hold myself upright long enough to see it strike true, killing the venin at the first touch of its energy. As if time were still frozen, his body slowly topples from the top of his wyvern.

In the next breath, more than half the monsters fall from the sky, as if they were struck themselves, and, as if it had been waiting for me to accomplish my goal, the wound in my side threatens to burn me alive.

“On the left!” Tairn roars, swinging toward the wyvern and its rider as they barrel toward us with murder in their eyes.

A rope of shadow flies up, wrapping around the venin’s neck as Tairn banks left to avoid the hit, and I barely manage to keep my seat.

Xaden pulls the venin from the wyvern’s back and yanks him downward, right into the dagger he holds in his outstretched hand.

Damn, sometimes I forget just how beautifully lethal he is.

Knowing they’ll all live, I let gravity claim my body and slide from Tairn’s back.

“VIOLET!” I hear Xaden’s scream as I fall.

In the event that you come across a poison you do not recognize, it is best to treat with any and every antidote. Either way, the patient will die, but at least this way you would have learned something.

—Major Frederick’s Modern Guide for Healers

CHAPTER

THIRTY-EIGHT

I think I might die today.

Air rushes by and my stomach feels like it’s somewhere above me.

Because I’m falling.

Endlessly falling.

Tairn roars, and it’s the panic, the pitch of that bellow that forces my eyes open just long enough to see him diving for me, but I can’t feel him in my head, can’t feel my feet on the Archives floor, can’t access my power. I’m cut off, no longer grounded.

My back slams into something, knocking the breath from my lungs, slowing my descent but not stopping it, and shimmering gold rises and ebbs around me. Wind stills, the cries of mayhem and destruction pause, but the burn inside rages on, consuming me with fiery teeth. Time.

Andarna has stopped time with what strength she has left.

I’m on her back, falling…because she isn’t strong enough to carry me, but she’s brave enough to fly into this battle. Now my eyes are burning, too. She shouldn’t be here. She should be tucked away in the outpost, safe from the wyvern three times her size.

Are there any wyvern left? Did we get them all?

When time starts again, wind whipping at my exposed skin, I slip from her back and am gathered close by strong human arms.

“Violet.” I know that deep, panicked voice. Xaden. But I can’t move, can’t even force my lips apart to scream with the pain of it all when he puts pressure on the wound. “Fuck, it must be poison. You have to fight it.”

Poison. The green-tipped dagger.

But what poison could paralyze me not only physically but magically?

“I’ll take care of you. Just…just live. Please live.”

Of course he wants me to live. I’m integral to his survival.

It takes all my strength, but I manage to lift my eyelids for a second, and the blatant fear in his eyes jolts my heart before I lose consciousness.

…

“Maybe it isn’t poison,” someone says in a deep voice as I wake but can’t pry my eyes open. Garrick, maybe? Gods, everything hurts. “Maybe it’s magic.”

“Did you see the way she whipped that lightning straight at that venin’s head?” someone asks.

“Not now,” Bodhi practically growls. “She saved your fucking life. She saved all our lives.”

But I didn’t. Soleil and…Liam are dead.

“Her blood is fucking black,” Xaden snaps and his arms tighten, holding me to his chest.

“It has to be poison,” Imogen cries—a sound I’ve never heard from her. “Look at it! We have to get her back to Basgiath. Nolon might be able to help.”

Yes. Nolon. They need to take me to Nolon. But I can’t say it, can’t make my lips move, can’t even reach out along the mental pathways that have become as familiar to me as breathing. Being cut off from Tairn, from Andarna…from Xaden is a torture all on its own.

“That’s a twelve-hour flight.” Xaden’s voice rises. “And I’m pretty sure her arm is broken.”

I’ll be dead in twelve hours. The promise of sweet oblivion already hovers at the edge of my consciousness, a promise of peace if I agree to just let go.

“There’s somewhere closer,” Xaden says quietly, and I feel his fingers skim over my cheek. The motion is unnervingly tender.

Another wave of fire consumes me, singeing every nerve, but all I can do is lie there and take it.

Make it stop. Gods, make it stop.