Category: Fiction

Acknowledgments First and foremost, thank you to my Heavenly Father for blessing me beyond my wildest dreams. Thank you to my husband, Jason, for being the best inspiration an author could ever have for the perfect book boyfriend and for your endless support of my dream-chasing ways. Thank you for holding my hand when the

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE XADEN “She’ll be all right.” Sgaeyl’s voice is gentler than she’s ever deigned to use with me. Then again, she didn’t choose me because I needed coddling. She chose me for the scars on my back and the simple fact that I am the grandson of her second rider—the one who didn’t make

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT I think I might die today. Air rushes by and my stomach feels like it’s somewhere above me. Because I’m falling. Endlessly falling. Tairn roars, and it’s the panic, the pitch of that bellow that forces my eyes open just long enough to see him diving for me, but I can’t feel him

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

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX Xaden hands Garrick the missive, and the rest of us rush to the battlements to see what we’re up against, but I can’t spot any threat in the valley below or the plains that stretch beyond for miles before the Cliffs of Dralor. “Something is off,” Tairn says. “I felt it at the

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE Somehow, I manage to keep breathing, which is impressive given my heart feels like it might shatter in a million pieces, and narrow my gaze on the enemy. I’ve never seen a gryphon rider before. The dragons usually burn them to ash, along with their half-eagle, half-lion mounts. “What happened to meeting tomorrow?

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR We fly into the morning and then the afternoon, and when Andarna can’t keep up, she hooks on to Tairn’s harness midflight. She’s asleep by the time Xaden chooses to skirt the thousands-foot-high Cliffs of Dralor that give Tyrrendor a geological advantage over every province in the kingdom— over every province on the

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE I’ve never gotten dressed so fast in my entire life, and I’m not even bothering with the thigh sheaths. “What time is it?” I ask Xaden, pulling on my formal dress and slippers and blowing my hair out of my face. Mandatory, urgent formation for the entire quadrant means now. The wards are

we’ll see how it goes. “I’m just…his.” For the first time since last year, I step up onto the parapetCHAPTER THIRTY-TWO Walking the parapet on Conscription Day is a certifiable risk. Walking the parapet in a dress uniform, barefoot, in the dark? Now this is madness. The first ten feet, while I’m still inside the