Oh. Shit.
Nothing comes to mind, and we’re clearly in imminent danger. Um… Many Navarrian defense posts exist beyond the safety of our wards. Such posts are considered to be in a zone of imminent danger and should only be staffed by military personnel and never the civilians who usually accompany them.
“And you!” Jeremiah turns, his gaze locking on Garrick. “Damn it all to hell. He’ll know about—” The shadows around Jeremiah’s feet snake up his legs in a heartbeat, winding around his chest until they cover his mouth in bands of black.
I swallow the boulder in my throat.
A professor pushes through the crowd, his shock of white hair bouncing with every step of his large frame.
“He’s an inntinnsic!” someone shouts, and that seems to be all that’s necessary.
The professor grips Jeremiah’s head with both hands, and a crack echoes off the walls of the silent courtyard. Xaden’s shadows melt away and Jeremiah falls to the ground, his head at an unnatural, macabre angle. His neck is broken.
The professor bends down and lifts Jeremiah’s body with surprising strength, carrying him into the rotunda.
Xaden inhales sharply beside me, then walks away with Garrick, headed toward the academic wing. Nice to see you, too.
“Maybe I don’t want a signet power after all,” Ridoc murmurs.
“That death is merciful compared to what will happen if you don’t manifest one,” Dain says, and I swear I start to feel my relics burn across my back even though my dragons haven’t started channeling.
“And that,” Sawyer says from Rhiannon’s side, “was Professor Carr.”
…
“You always have to check your sources,” Dad tells me, ruffling my hair as he stands beside me at the table in the Archives. “Remember that firsthand accounts are always more accurate, but you have to look deeper, Violet. You have to see who is telling the story.”
“But what if I want to be a rider?” I ask with the voice of a much-younger version of me. “Like Brennan and Mom?”
“WAKE.” A familiar, consuming voice rumbles through the Archives. A voice that doesn’t belong here.
“You’re not like them, Violet. That’s not your path.” Dad offers me an apologetic smile, the usual kind that says he sympathizes but there’s nothing he can do, the kind he gives me when Mom makes a choice he doesn’t agree with. “And it’s for the best. Your mother has never understood that while riders may be the weapons of our kingdom, it’s the scribes who have all the real power in this world.”
“Wake before you die!” The bookshelves in the Archives tremble, and my heart jolts. “Now!”
My eyes fly open, and I gasp as the dream disintegrates. I’m not in the Archives. I’m in my room in the Riders—
“Move!” Tairn bellows.
“Fuck! She’s awake!” Moonlight reflects off a sword slicing through the air above me.
Oh. Shit. I roll toward the opposite side of my bed, but not fast enough, and the blade slams into the side of my back with a force even my thick winter blankets can’t diffuse.
Adrenaline camouflages the pain as the sword rebounds, unable to split the dragon scales.
My knees slam into the hardwood floor, and I thrust my hands beneath my pillow, drawing back two daggers as I untangle from the covers and gain my feet. How the hell did they get my door unlocked?
Blowing my unbound hair out of my face, I meet the wide, shocked eyes of an unbonded first-year, and he’s not the only one. There are seven cadets in my room. Four are unbonded men. Three are unbonded women—I gasp with recognition—make that two as she runs for the door and slams it on the way out.
She opened the door. There’s no other explanation.
The rest are all armed. All determined to kill me. All standing between my unlocked door and me. My hands curl around the hilts of my daggers and my heart rate skyrockets. “Guess it won’t do me much good to ask you to leave nicely?”
I’m going to have to fight my way out of here.
“Get away from the wall! Don’t let them trap you!”
Good point. But there’s not exactly a lot of places to go in this tiny room.
“Damn it! I told you her armor is impenetrable!” Oren hisses from the other side of the room, blocking my exit. Fucking asshole.
“I should have killed you during Threshing,” I admit. My door is closed, but surely someone will hear if I sc—
A woman lunges for me, scrambling across my bed, and I dodge, sliding along the icy pane of the window. The window!
“It’s too high. You’ll fall to the ravine, and I can’t get there fast enough!”
No window. Got it. Another woman throws her knife, rending the fabric of my nightgown’s sleeve as it lodges in the armoire, but she missed any flesh. I spin, leaving the sleeve behind as it rips away, and flick my dagger as I round the end of my bed. It lands in her shoulder, my favorite target, and she goes down with a cry, clutching her wound.
The rest of my weapons are stored near the door. Shit. Shit. Shit.
“No more throwing things. Keep ahold of that weapon!”
For someone who can’t help, Tairn has no problem dishing out opinions.
“You have to go for her throat!” Oren shouts. “I’ll do it myself!”
I move my blade to my right hand and fend off one attack from the left, slicing her down her forearm, and then another to the right, stabbing into a man’s thigh. I kick out with my heel and catch another in the gut as he attacks, sending him careening back onto my bed, his sword tumbling after him.
