I don’t need to ask. Liam is gone.
Liam, who never complained about being my shadow, never hesitated to help, never bragged about being the best of our year. He died protecting me. Oh gods, and I just asked him if we’d ever really been friends an hour ago.
Just one of those beasts managed to kill my friend; what the hell can that many accomplish?
A bloodied wyvern dives for us, and Tairn throws his wing over me. I hear the sound of his teeth snapping and a sharp cry above me before his wing retracts.
“We’re targets on the ground,” Tairn says as the wyvern flies away.
“Then let’s be the ones who hunt.” I stumble to my feet in time to see Xaden running my way.
“Violence!” Xaden grasps my shoulders, determination lining his features. “Liam told me to tell you that there are two riders with that horde.”
“Why would he tell me and not—” An anvil sits on my chest.
“Because he knew I’d have to be the one who holds off the wyvern as long as possible.” He studies my face like he’ll never see it again.
“And I’m the one who can kill them all.” It will kill me to wield that many times, but I’m the best shot we have. The best shot he has to survive.
“You can kill them.” He yanks me close and kisses my forehead. “There is no me without you,” he says against my skin.
Before I can react, he turns toward the valley and lifts his arms—throwing up a wall of shadow that consumes the space between the ridgelines. “Go! I’ll give you as much time as I can!”
Every second matters, and these are bound to be my last—our last.
In the span of one heartbeat, I look over my shoulder, past Tairn, and see the flaming ruins of the trading post. Townspeople run from the city walls, fleeing the wyvern that circle above. My stomach drops at our failure—we haven’t managed to evacuate all the civilians.
At the second beat, I draw a stuttered breath of smoke-laden air as a lone gryphon flies through the haze, followed by Garrick and Imogen on their dragons, and I can only hope the others are still alive.
In the third heartbeat, I turn back toward Liam’s and Deigh’s lifeless bodies, and rage floods my veins faster than any lightning strike I’ve ever wielded. The horde of wyvern behind Xaden’s wall will tear into Tairn and Sgaeyl just like Deigh.
And Xaden… No matter how strong he is, Xaden won’t be able to hold them forever. His arms already shake with the effort of controlling so much power. He’ll be the first to die if I’m not exactly what he called me under that tree all those months ago. Violence.
There are dozens of wyvern and one of me.
I have to be as strategic as Brennan and as confident as Mira.
I’ve spent the last year trying to prove to myself I’m nothing like my mother. I’m not cold. I’m not callous. But maybe there is a part of me that’s more like her than I care to admit.
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.
