Oh shit. What if he’s like Cat? What if he’s been manipulating my emotions this whole time? I swallow back the bile inching its way up my throat.
“I would never do something like that,” he retorts, sending a sideways, wounded glare at me as he continues to watch the sky.
“Shit.” I rub my hands over my face. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”
He doesn’t respond.
“Just tell me what it is.” I reach for him, curling my fingers around the back of his arm. “You said that you trust me to stay because even if I don’t know your darkest deeds, I know what you’re capable of, but I don’t if you won’t tell me.” Somehow, we’re right back where we were months ago, neither of us fully trusting the other.
His mouth opens, but he snaps it shut, as if he was going to talk, then thought better of it.
“Signets have to do with who we are at our core and what we need,” I think out loud. If he won’t tell me, then I’ll figure it out my damn self. “You are a master of secrets, hence the shadows.” I gesture at the ones curled around his feet. “You’re deadly with every weapon you pick up, but that’s not a signet.” My brow furrows.
“Stop.”
“You’re ruthless, which I guess could have something to do with an ability to shut off your emotions.” I shift my weight and study his face, watching for even the most minute sign that I’m onto something, and keep guessing, trusting Tairn to spot the wyvern before we do. “You’re a natural leader. Everyone gravitates toward you, even against their better judgment.” That last part comes out as a mutter. “You’re always in the right place—” My eyebrows rise. “Are you a distance wielder?” I’ve only read about two riders in all of history who could cross hundreds of miles in a single step.
“There hasn’t been a distance wielder in centuries, and don’t you think if I was one, I would have spent every night in your bed?” He shakes his head.
“But what do you need?” I ponder, ignoring the tense set of his jaw. “You need to question everyone to make your own impressions. You need to be a quick judge of character in order to know who to trust and who not to in order to have run those smuggling missions at Basgiath for years. More than anything, you need control. It’s woven into every aspect of your personality.”
“Stop,” he demands.
I ignore the warning completely, just like I ignored Mira’s warning last year to stay away from him. “You need to fix— Never mind, if you could mend, you wouldn’t have brought me to Aretia. Let’s try eliminating signets instead. You can’t see the future, or you never would have led us to Athebyne. You can’t wield any element, or you would have done so in Resson—” I pause as a thought pushes past the others. “Who knows?”
“Stop before you go somewhere we can’t come back from.” Shadows move across the inches that separate us, winding up my calves as if he thinks he’s going to have to fight to keep me at his side.
“Who knows?” I repeat, my voice rising with my temper. Not that it matters. There’s no one else for miles, and there are no sound-seekers in Aretia capable of hearing across miles of distance like Captain Greely in General Melgren’s personal unit, hence why our communication times lag. “Do the marked ones know? Does the Assembly? Am I the only person close to you who doesn’t know, just like last year?” My hand falls away from his arm.
It’s impossible to have a signet that no one has detected, no one has trained. Has he played me for a fool again? The space between my ribs and my heart shrivels and shrinks, my chest threatening to crumple.
“For fuck’s sake, Violet. No one else knows.” He turns toward me in a move so fast it would intimidate someone else, but I know he’s incapable of hurting me—at least physically—so I merely tilt my chin and stare up into those gold-flecked eyes in blatant challenge.
“I deserve better than this. Tell me the truth.”
“You’ve always deserved better than me. And no one knows,” he repeats, his voice dropping. “Because if they did, I’d be dead.”
“Why would—” My lips part, and my pulse jumps as my head starts to swim.
He has to have full control. He has to make snap character judgments. He has to intrinsically know who to trust and who not to. In order for the movement to have been as successful as it was within the walls of Basgiath, he has to know…everything.
Xaden’s most pressing need is information.
Tairn shifts, angling his body toward Sgaeyl instead of beside her.
Oh gods. There’s only one signet riders are killed for having. Fear churns in my stomach and threatens to bring up what little I’ve had to eat today.
“Yes.” He nods, his gaze boring into mine.
Shit, did he just—
“No.” I shake my head and take a step backward out of his shadows, but he moves as if he takes the step with me.
“Yes. It’s how I knew I could trust you not to tell anyone about the meeting under the tree last year,” he says as I retreat another step. “How I seem to know what my opponent has planned on the mat before their next move. How I know exactly what someone needs to hear in order to get them to do what I need done, and how I knew if someone remotely suspected us while we were at Basgiath.”
I shake my head in denial, wishing I’d stopped pushing like he’d demanded me to.
He crosses the space between us. “It’s why I didn’t kill Dain in the interrogation chamber, why I let him come with us, because the second his shields wavered, I knew he’d had a true epiphany. How would I know that, Violet?”
He’d read Dain’s mind.
Xaden is more dangerous than I ever imagined.
“You’re an inntinnsic,” I whisper. Even the accusation is a death sentence among riders.
“I’m a type of inntinnsic,” he repeats slowly, like it’s the first time he’s ever said the words. “I can read intentions. Maybe I would know what to call it if they didn’t kill everyone with even a hint of the signet.”
My eyebrows jolt upward. “Can you read thoughts or not?”
His jaw flexes. “It’s more complicated than that. Think of that breath of a second before the actual thought, the subconscious motivation you might not even be aware of in your mind, or when instinct drives you to move or you’re looking to betray someone. The intention is always there. Mostly they come across as pictures, but some people intend in really clear pictures.”
Tairn growls low in his throat and lowers his head at Sgaeyl as a rush of something bitter and sick floods our bond. Betrayal. I slam my shields up, blocking him out before I’m lost to his emotions, already struggling with mine.
He didn’t know.
Another rumble of anger vibrates his chest scales, and my heart lurches with pangs of sympathy.
Sgaeyl draws back in retreat, shocking me to the core, but holds her head high, exposing her throat to her mate.
The same way Xaden just metaphorically exposed his to me. All I have to do is tell someone—anyone—and he’s dead. A soft roaring fills my ears.
“There are some secrets even mates can’t share,” Xaden says, his eyes locked on mine, but his words are meant for Tairn. “Some secrets that can’t be spoken of even behind the protections of wards.”
“And yet you know everyone’s secrets, don’t you? Everyone’s intentions?” That’s why inntinnsics aren’t allowed to live. The implications of his signet hit me with the force of a battering ram, and I stagger backward like the blow is a physical one. How many times has he read me? How many pre-thoughts has he eavesdropped on? Do I actually love him? Or did he just say what I wanted to hear? Do the things I needed in order to—
“Less than a minute,” Xaden whispers as Sgaeyl moves toward him— toward us. “That’s how long it took for you to fall out of love with me.”
My gaze flashes to his. “Don’t read my…whatever!”
Tairn stalks toward me, his head low and his teeth bared as he places himself at my back.