Thanks to Liam.
Every inch of my body vibrates with anger, with irritation, with…whatever this electric tension is between us as we stand there, our eyes locked in combat.
“Wingleader Riorson,” Dain starts. “She’s just not used to the bond yet. She’ll learn how to block it out.”
Dain’s words sting like a blow. I inhale sharply and step back from Xaden. Good gods, we’ve been putting on a fucking show. What is it about Xaden that makes me tune out the rest of the world?
“You choose the oddest times to defend her, Aetos.” Xaden all but rolls his eyes as he looks at Dain. “And the most convenient times not to.”
Dain’s jaw clenches and his hands curl into fists at his sides.
He’s talking about Amber. I know it. Dain knows it. Everyone in this whole, awkward room knows it. Our entire squad was there when Dain demanded I call Xaden a liar.
Xaden turns those unfathomable eyes back on me. “Do us both a favor and put the fucking armor back on,” he finishes.
Before I can counter, he turns and walks off the mat, meeting Garrick at the edge.
His back.
My quiet gasp is uncontrollable, and Xaden tenses for a second before taking his shirt from Garrick’s outstretched hand and tugging it over his head, covering the navy-blue relic of a dragon that sweeps from his waist to over both shoulders—textured intricately with raised silver lines I couldn’t see from across the gym.
Silver lines I instantly recognize as scars.
“You held your own and controlled your temper,” Tairn says, an immense swell of pride flooding my chest.
“She’s ready,” Andarna adds with a giddy jolt of joy that makes me instantly light-headed.
“She’s ready,” he agrees.
…
A couple of hours later, I rip my brush through my hair in the privacy of my room, still fully dressed down to my boots and armor. I still can’t believe I made an ass of myself in front of my entire squad simply because Xaden decided to train shirtless.
I really need to get laid.
I pause mid-brushstroke when a rush of energy races down my spine, dissipating in a heartbeat.
Well, that’s…weird.
Maybe it’s… No. It can’t be. It felt completely different when Andarna stopped time through me. That was a full-body flood that expanded through my fingers and toes, then…left afterward.
Another wave ripples through me, stronger this time, and I drop the brush, clutching the edge of the dresser so I don’t fall as my knees threaten to buckle. The energy doesn’t dissipate this time; it sticks around, humming under my skin, ringing in my ears, overwhelming every sense.
Something within me expands, somehow too big for my own body, too vast to be contained, and pain sears every nerve as I crack open, the sound reverberating through my skull like bones shattering. It’s as though I’ve been split at the very seams of the fabric of my being.
My knees hit the floor, and I throw my hands over my temples, trying to shove everything I am back into my skull, forcing myself to shrink.
Energy pours in—a deluge of raw, endless power—eroding everything I was and forging something completely new as it fills every pore, every organ, every bone. My head screams, and it feels like Tairn has flown too high too fast and I can’t pop my ears. All I can do is lie there on the floor and pray the pressure equalizes.
I stare at my brush, the hardwood floor biting into my cheek, and breathe.
In and then out.
In…and then out…surrendering to the onslaught.
Finally, the pain ebbs, but the energy—the power—doesn’t. It’s simply…there, prowling through my veins, saturating every cell in my body. It is everything I am and everything I can be all at once.
I sit up slowly and flip my hands to examine my tingling palms. It feels like they should look different, changed, but they’re not. They’re still my fingers, my slender wrists, and yet they’re so much more now. They’re strong enough to shape the torrent inside me, to mold it into whatever I desire.
“This is your power, isn’t it?” I ask Tairn, but he doesn’t answer. “Andarna?”
There’s only silence.
Go figure, they’re always around, pushing into my head when I could use a little space, then nowhere to be found when it’s the other way around. I’d heard them say I was ready earlier, but I figured it would take a day or two for my mind to fully open that pathway once Tairn started channeling. Guess not.
Rhiannon. I have to tell Rhiannon. She’s going to flip that I can finally go to Professor Carr’s class with her. And Liam? He can stop pretending that he can’t channel just so he isn’t forced to leave me for an hour a day.
Heat washes over me, prickling my skin and centering low in my stomach.
Odd, but whatever. It’s probably just a side effect of the power. I throw open the lock on my door and yank it open.
My vision blurs and need slams into me, robbing me of every logical thought besides satiating the overwhelming—
“Violet?” The fuzzy shape of a man stands in the hallway, and I blink Liam into focus. “You all right?”
“Are you sleeping in the hallway?” I grip the doorframe as an image of falling fills my mind, and I feel the sizzle of flakes as they make contact with my heated skin. It’s gone as quickly as it appeared, but the driving, thundering desire remains.
Oh shit. This is…lust.
