“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.
And they all died because I killed one venin.
That’s what Liam was trying to tell me. When a dragon dies, so does its rider. But apparently when a venin dies, so do the wyvern they created. All of them. That’s how we can save everyone on this battlefield.
There are two riders among the horde Xaden is holding back.
“We have to take out the riders,” I whisper.
“Yes,” Tairn agrees, following my thoughts. “Excellent idea.”
“You’re willing to gamble your life on it?” If I’m wrong, we’re both dead, and so are Xaden and Sgaeyl.
“I will bet my life on you as I have from the first day,” he says, banking to fly back to the valley as the other dragons rush with their riders to follow us, no doubt following Tairn’s command. Only Garrick and his Brown Scorpiontail are ahead of us, flying low and fast toward Xaden. “Three of the venin are dead, but one is—”
I watch in horror as a venin with a staff as tall as he is strides out of the darkness, his menacing gaze locked on Xaden.
“To the left!” I scream at Xaden.
Sgaeyl spins and blasts fire at the venin, but he doesn’t so much as pause.
