His first true action of rebellion was to seek allies, the first of which was Viscount Tecarus of the Poromish province of Krovla.
—THE TYRRISH REBELLION, A FORBIDDEN HISTORY
BY COLONEL FELIX GERAULT
CHAPTER FORTY
Xaden vetoed my second pitch to head to Cordyn like an overprotective asshole, and then I happily took him to bed, content with my own plans. He was gone again to look for more Navarrian deserters before I woke up this morning.
If I didn’t feel him in my swollen lips and every sore muscle in my body, I’d almost think I dreamed him coming back yesterday.
Guess this is our new normal.
“Well?” Felix folds his arms over his barrel chest and lifts a silver brow at me.
Crisp, snow-scented wind whips at my cheeks as we stand between our dragons, a thousand feet over the tree line on a bowl-shaped mountainside about a ten-minute flight from the valley above Aretia.
“Those boulders?” I point across the ridge to a stack of three boulders as Tairn shifts his weight, the snow crunching under his claws.
“Would it help if I painted them?”
I refrain from rolling my eyes. “No, it’s just that Carr never cared where I struck, as long as I increased the number of strikes in an hour.” I roll my shoulders and open the gates on Tairn’s power, feeling it rush through my veins and heat my skin.
Felix looks at me like I’ve grown another head. “Well, I guess we’ll see what that technique has gotten us.”
“I can wield twenty-six an hour on a good day, and I’ve been pushed over forty, but that last strike broke that mountain and… ” The memory steals my words.
“And you were nearly burned alive?” he asks. “Why in Malek’s name would you ever push yourself to that limit?”
“It was a punishment.” I lift my arms as power rises to a sizzling hum.
“For what?” He watches me with an expression I’m too jaded to call compassion.
“I ignored a direct order so I could protect my dragon.” The sizzle heats to a burn, and I flex my hands, letting the strike rip free.
The cloudy sky cracks open and lightning strikes on the opposite side of the bowl, hitting far above the tree line, easily a quarter mile from the boulders.
Felix blinks. “Try again.”
Reaching for Tairn’s power, I repeat the process, letting it fill me, then overflow and erupt, wielding another strike that lands halfway between the first and the stack of boulders. Pride makes my lips curve. Not bad timing. That was a pretty quick strike after the first.
But when I look at Felix, he isn’t smiling. He slowly brings his stunned gaze to mine. “What was that shit?”
“I did that in less than a minute after the first strike!” I counter.
“And if those boulders were dark wielders, you and I would be dead by now.” Two lines knit between his eyebrows. “Try again. And this time, let’s try the revolutionary tactic of aiming, shall we?”
His sarcasm fuels my frustration, and another strike rips free, hitting between us and the boulders.
“It’s a wonder you haven’t hit yourself,” he mutters, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“I can’t aim, all right?” I snap at him, reevaluating my previous thoughts that he and Trissa—the petite, quiet one—were the nice members of the Assembly.
“According to the reports filed about Resson, you can,” he retorts, his deep voice rising with that last word. “You can aim well enough to hit a dark wielder atop a flying wyvern.”
“That’s because Andarna stopped time, but she can’t do that anymore, so I’m left with what got us through the other portion of the battle—the good old strike-and-pray method.”
“And I have no doubt that in a field of that many wyvern, you did some damage with sheer luck.” He sighs. “Explain how you hit that last strike in Resson.”
“I… It’s hard to explain.”
“Try.”
“I pulled it. I guess.” I wrap my arms around my waist to ward off the worst of the chill. Usually, I’d be warming up right about now, not feeling my toes start to lose feeling. “I released the strike, but I wrestled it into place while Andarna held time.”
“What about smaller strikes?” He turns fully to face me, his boots crunching the rock beneath us. “Like those that flow from your hands?”
What the fuck? My face must read the same because his eyes flare.
“Are you telling me that you’ve only wielded full strikes”—he points upward—“from the sky? That you just started throwing around bolts and never refined the skill?”
“I brought down a cliff on a classmate—that didn’t kill him—and from then Carr’s concern was how big and how often.” I lift my hands between us. “And lightning comes from the sky, not my hands.”
“Wonderful.” He laughs, the sound deep and… infuriating. “You just might wield the most devastating signet on the Continent, but you know nothing about it. Nothing about the energy fields that draw it. Instead of shooting your power like an arrow—precise and measured—you’re just heaving it around like boiling oil, hoping you hit something. And lightning comes from the sky or the ground depending on the storm, so why not your hands?”
Anger reddens my skin, raises my temperature, prickles my fingers, and pushes the power within me to a roar.
“You are slated to be the most powerful rider of your year—perhaps your entire generation—and yet you are just a glorified light show—”
Power erupts, and lightning flashes close enough that I feel the heat.
Felix glances to the right, where a scorch mark still smokes about twenty feet away.
Fuck. Shame races in to overpower the last vestiges of anger.
“And not only can you not aim, but you have no control,” he says without skipping a beat, like I didn’t almost torch us both.
“I can cont—”
“No.” He drops down to the pack at his feet and begins sorting through it.
“That wasn’t a question, Sorrengail. That was a fact. How often does that happen?”
Whenever I’m angry. Or in Xaden’s arms. “Too often.”
“At least we found something to agree on.” He stands and holds something out to me. “Take it.”
“What is it?” I glance at the offering, then pluck it gingerly from his outstretched hand. The glass orb fits comfortably in my palm, and the decoratively carved silvery metal strips that quarter it meet at what appear to be the top and the bottom, where a silver medallion of alloy the size of my thumb rests upright inside the glass.
“It’s a conduit,” Felix explains. “Lightning may appear from various sources, but Tairn channels his power through you. You are the vessel. You are the pathway. You are the cloud, for lack of a better term. How else do you think you can wield from a blue sky? Did you never realize it’s easier for you to wield during a storm, but you’re capable of both?”
“I never thought about it.” My fingers tingle where they meet the metal striping.
“No, you were never taught it.” He gestures around the mountainside. “Your lack of aim, of control, is not your fault. It’s Carr’s.”
“Xaden only moves shadows that are already there,” I argue, fighting down the rising emotions I’m worried will lead to another embarrassing strike.
“Xaden can control and increase what already exists. It’s why he’s more powerful at night. No two signets are alike, and you create something that was not there before. You wield pure power that takes the form of lightning because that’s what you’re most comfortable shaping it as. Apparently Carr never taught you that, either.”
“Why wouldn’t he?” I look from the orb up to Felix as the first flakes of snow flutter down. “If I was the best weapon?”
A corner of his mouth lifts into a wry smile. “Knowing Carr, I’d say he’s scared shitless of you. After all, you just took half of their cadets without even a plan. You brought down Basgiath on a fucking whim, no less.” His laugh is more incredulous than mocking this time, but it still rubs me the wrong way.