“Don’t tell me what you think they are—tell me what you’re sure of,” Xaden orders.
“The letter says this is a test of your command,” the section leader reads behind us. “You have the choice of abandoning the village of our enemy or abandoning command of your wing.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Bodhi reaches back and takes the letter.
“They’re testing our loyalty without actually saying it.” Xaden folds his arms over his chest, standing at my side. “According to the missive, if we leave now, we’ll make it to the new location of headquarters for Fourth Wing at Eltuval in time to carry out our orders for War Games, but if we leave, the trading post of Resson and its occupants will be destroyed.”
“By what?” Imogen asks.
“Venin,” Liam responds.
My stomach drops.
“You’re positive?” Xaden asks.
Liam nods. “As sure as I can be without having actually seen them before. Four of them. Purple robes. Distended red veins spidering all around bright red eyes. Creepy as shit.”
“Sounds about right.” Xaden’s weight shifts.
“I liked it better when we just delivered the weapons,” Bodhi mutters.
“Oh, and one guy with a giant-ass staff,” Liam continues. “And I swear to Dunne, one second the plain was clear and the next they were just…there, walking toward the gates.” His eyes are wide, his pupils blown as he uses his signet to see to the bottom of the valley.
“Red veins?” Imogen asks.
“Because magic corrupts their blood as they lose their souls,” I murmur, looking up at Xaden, wondering if he remembers what Andarna said the night we took the tunnel to the flight field. “Nature likes everything in balance.”
Every head but Liam’s swings my way.
“If the fables are true, at least.” A part of me hopes they are, or I know next to nothing about the enemy below. Of course, if they’re true…
“Seven gryphons have landed next to us,” Tairn tells me.
Everyone else stiffens, no doubt receiving the same message from their dragons.
“Andarna, stay with Tairn,” I say. Xaden might trust the fliers, but Andarna is damn near defenseless.
“All right,” she answers.
“The guy with the staff just—” Liam starts.
An explosion sounds, echoing up the sparsely treed valley, followed by a plume of blue smoke. My heart jolts at the sight.
“Those were the gates,” he finishes.
“How many people live in Resson?” Bodhi asks.
“More than three hundred,” Imogen answers as another boom cracks through the valley. “That’s the post they do the yearly trades at.”
“Then let’s get down there.” Bodhi turns and Xaden steps back, blocking his path with an outstretched hand. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“We have no idea what we’re walking into.” Xaden’s tone reminds me of that first day after Parapet. He’s in full command mode.
“So we should just stand here while civilians die?” Bodhi questions, and I tense. We all do, watching Xaden.
“That’s not what I’m saying.” Xaden shakes his head. He has to choose. That’s what the War Games missive said. He can abandon that village or his command, who’s now waiting for him at Eltuval. “This isn’t a fucking training exercise, Bodhi. Some—if not all—of us are going to die if we go down there. If we’d been assigned to an active wing, there would be far older, more experienced leadership making this decision, but there aren’t. If we weren’t marked with rebellion relics, if we hadn’t been aiding the enemy”—his gaze darts to mine briefly—“we wouldn’t even be here with this choice. So, all command structure aside, what are your thoughts?”
“We have the numbers,” Soleil says, narrowing her brown eyes on the field and tapping her bright green fingernails rhythmically on the stone crenelations of the battlement. “And air superiority.”
“At least there aren’t any wyvern.” I scan the skies just to be sure.
“Uh. What?” Bodhi’s eyebrows rise.
“Wyvern. Fables say venin created them to compete with dragons and, instead of channeling from them, channel power into them.” Let’s hope there’s something in that book that isn’t true.
“Yeah, let’s not borrow trouble.” Xaden shoots a look sideways at me, then studies the sky.
“There are four venin and ten of us,” Garrick says, walking away from the edge of the battlement.
“We have the weapons to kill them,” Liam says, turning his back on the valley. “And Deigh told me seven gryphon fliers—”
“We’re here,” the older brunette from the lake says, striding down the battlement from the southeast corner of the outpost. “I left the rest of the drift outside once we noticed that your outpost seems to be…abandoned.” She glances over the rampart at the clouds of smoke rising from the valley beneath with a look of resignation, her shoulders dipping. “I’m not going to ask you to fight with us.”
“You’re not?” Garrick’s eyebrows rise.
“No.” She gives him a sad smile. “Four of them is tantamount to a death sentence. The rest of my drift are making peace with our gods.” She turns toward Xaden. “I came to tell you to leave. You have no clue what they’re capable of wielding. It only took two of them to bring down an entire city last month. Two. Of. Them. We lost two drifts trying to stop them. If there’re four down there…” She shakes her head. “They’re after something, and they’re going to kill every single person in Resson to get it. Take your riot and go home while you can.”
Fear squeezes my chest, but my heart aches at the thought of leaving them to die. It goes against everything we stand for, even if they aren’t Navarrian civilians.
