Liam would be alive.

Liam. Guilt pairs with soul-sucking grief, and I can barely inhale around the pain in my chest. I’d ordered my foster brother to keep her safe, and that order got him killed. His death is on me.

I should have known what was waiting for us at Athebyne—

“You should have told her about the venin. I waited for you to impart the information, and now she’s suffering,” Tairn growls. The dragon is the living, fire-breathing embodiment of my shame. But at least the bond that links the four of us is still in place, even if he can’t communicate with her—which means Violet’s alive.

He can yell at me all he wants as long as her heart’s beating.

“I should have done a lot of things differently.” What I shouldn’t have done was fought my feelings for her. I should have grabbed on to her after that first kiss the way I wanted and kept her at my side, should have let her all the way in.

My eyelids scratch like sandpaper each time I blink, but I’m fighting sleep with every bone in my body. Sleep is where I hear her heartbreaking scream, hear her cry that Liam died, hear her call me a fucking traitor over and over.

She can’t die, and not just because there’s a chance I won’t survive. She can’t die because I know I can’t live without her even if I do. Somewhere between the shock of our attraction at the top of that turret to realizing she risked her own life by giving up a boot for someone else on the parapet that first day to her throwing those daggers at my head under the oak tree, I wavered. I should have realized the danger of getting too close the first time I put her on her back and showed her how easily she could kill me on the mat—a vulnerability I’ve allowed no one else—but I brushed it off as an undeniable attraction to a uniquely beautiful woman. When I watched her conquer the Gauntlet, then defend Andarna at Threshing, I stumbled, stunned by both her cunning and her sense of honor. When I burst into her room and found Oren’s treacherous hand at her throat, the rage that made it so easy to kill all six of them without batting an eye should have told me I was headed for a cliff. And when she smiled at me after mastering her shield in mere minutes, her face lighting up as the snow fell around us, I fucking fell.

We hadn’t even kissed, and I fell.

Or maybe it was when she threw her knives at Barlowe or when jealousy ate me alive seeing Aetos kiss the mouth I’d dreamed about countless times. Looking back, there were a thousand tiny moments that pulled me over the edge for the woman asleep in the bed I always pictured her in.

And I never told her. Not until she was delirious with poison. Why? Because I was scared to give her power over me when she already held it all? Because she’s Lilith Sorrengail’s daughter? Because she kept giving Aetos second and third chances?

No. Because I couldn’t give her those words without being totally, completely honest with her, and after the way she looked at me at the lake, the utter betrayal—

The rustle of sheets makes my gaze whip to her face, and I take my first full breath since she fell from Tairn’s back. Her eyes are open.

“You’re awake.” My voice sounds like it’s been dragged across gravel when I thought it’d only been my heart.

I stagger to my feet and take the two steps that separate me from her bedside. She’s awake. She’s alive. She’s…smiling? That must be a trick of the light. This woman likely wants to set me on fire.

“Can I check your side?” The mattress depresses slightly as I sit near her hip.

She nods and stretches her arms up like a cat who’s been napping in the sun before reaching for the blankets.

Drawing back the covers, I untie the robe covering the short nightdress I changed her into that first evening and slowly lift the hem above the silken skin of her hip, preparing myself for the black tendrils that discolored her veins during the flight but receded slowly since we arrived. There’s nothing. Just a thin silver line an inch above her hipbone. Air gushes from my lungs in relief. “Miraculous.”

“What’s miraculous?” she croaks, looking down at her new scar.

Shit. I would be a horrible healer. “Water.” My hand shakes with exhaustion, or relief, I don’t even care which, as I pour a glass from the pitcher on my bedside table. “You must be parched.”

She pushes herself to sit, then takes the glass, drinking the entire thing down. “Thanks.”

“You are.” I set the empty glass on the nightstand and then turn back to her, gazing into the hazel eyes that have haunted me since Parapet. “You are miraculous,” I finish in a whisper. “I was fucking terrified, Violet. There aren’t adequate words.”

“I’m fine, Xaden,” she says softly, her hand rising to rest above my pounding heart.

“I thought I was going to lose you.” The confession comes out strangled, and maybe it’s pushing my luck after all I’ve put her through, but I can’t keep from leaning forward and brushing my lips over her forehead, then her temple. Gods, I’d kiss her forever if I thought it would keep the coming argument at bay, keep us in this one pristine moment where I can actually believe that everything might be all right between us, that I haven’t irrevocably fucked up the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

“You aren’t going to lose me.” She gives me a puzzled look, smiling like I’ve said something peculiar. Then she leans in and kisses me.

She still wants me. The revelation makes my heart fucking soar. I take the kiss deeper, swiping my tongue over her soft lower lip and gently sucking on the tender curve. That’s all it takes for need to flood my system, hot and demanding. It’s always like this between us—the slightest spark sets off a wildfire that consumes every thought that isn’t related to how many ways I can make her moan. We’ll have a lifetime of these moments ahead of us, when I can strip her down to her skin and worship every curve and hollow of her body, but this isn’t one of them, not when she’s barely been awake for five minutes. I draw back, slowly releasing her mouth. “I’ll make it up to you,” I promise, holding her delicate hands between my rough ones. “I’m not saying we won’t fight or you won’t want to throw those daggers at me when I’m inevitably an ass, but I swear I will always strive to do better.”

“Make what up to me?” She pulls away with an inquisitive smile.

I blink as my brow furrows. Has she lost her memories? “How much do you remember? By the time we got you here, the poison spread to your brain and—”

Her eyes flare, and something shifts, something that sinks my stomach like a rock as she tugs her hands from mine.

She glances away, and her eyes glaze in that way that tells me she’s checking in with her dragons.

“Don’t panic. Everything is fine. Andarna isn’t quite the same, but she’s…her.” She’s fucking huge now, but I’m not about to say that to Violet. Her gift is also gone, according to Tairn, but there’s plenty of time to share that news. Instead, I say, “The healer told me he isn’t sure what lasting effects the poison might have, because it was something he’s never seen, and no one really knows how long it will take to get your memories back if there’s any lasting damage, but I’ll tell you—”

She throws up her hand and looks around the room, as if noticing where we are for the first time, then scrambles backward out of bed, pulling her robe closed. The look in her eyes puts a vise around my chest as she stumbles to the large windows that line my bedchamber.

The windows that look out over the mountain this fortress is built upon down to the valley below and its line of charred trees marking where the earth was scorched all the way to stone and the quiet town—which used to be a city—of Aretia beneath us.

The town we’ve worked our asses off to rebuild from a pile of cinder and ruins.

“Violet?” I keep my shields up, trying to respect her privacy as I walk to her side, but gods, I need to know what she’s thinking.

Her eyes widen as her gaze sweeps over the town, each structure with its identical green roofs, then pauses on the Temple of Amari, which was the most noted landmark besides our library.

“Where are we? And don’t you dare lie to me,” she says. “Not again.”

Not again. “You remember.”

“I remember.”

“Thank gods,” I murmur, shoving my hand into my hair. It’s a good thing, proving that she’s truly healed, but…fuck.

“Where. Are. We?” She bites out every word, her eyes narrowing on me. “Say it.”

“The way you’re looking at me says you already know.” There’s no way this brilliant woman doesn’t recognize that temple.

“This looks like Aretia.” She gestures to the window. “There’s only one temple with those particular columns. I’ve seen the drawings.”

“Yes.” Brilliant. Fucking. Woman.

“Aretia was burned to the ground. I’ve seen those drawings, too, the ones the scribes brought back for the public notices. My mother told me she saw the embers with her own eyes, so where are we?” Her voice rises.

“Aretia.” It feels incredibly freeing to tell her the truth.

“Rebuilt or never burned?” She turns her back on me.

“In the process of rebuilding.”

“Why haven’t I read about this?”

I start to tell her, but she holds up a hand and I wait. It only takes her a minute to work it out, too.