Chapter Text
By the time we land at Samara just before nightfall, I’m a jittery, frantic mess. I can’t bring myself to care about whatever retribution waits for me at Basgiath. I’ll handle whatever punishment Varrish wants to dish out.
I’ve spent every minute of the eight-hour flight trying to separate my feelings from Tairn’s, but I can’t, and he’s definitively in primal mode.
At first I thought that he had to have been the reason there’s a hollow pit in my stomach threatening to devour all logical thought if I don’t set eyes on Xaden in the next minute. That it was Tairn’s desperation to see Sgaeyl unharmed making my heart pound, not my own concern for Xaden.
But then Sgaeyl reached out to confirm she was unharmed as soon as we came within range, and she shared that Xaden is severely wounded and in critical condition. Tairn was placated ever so slightly, but my own panic absolutely skyrocketed.
Everyone has always assumed that I was the liability in this four-way bond. That my demise would be what brought down two of the most powerful dragons on the continent, and one of the most impressive riders of our generation. But the truth is that with the power Sgaeyl channels and the fierce bond she shares with Xaden, there’s every chance that his death would trigger hers just like mine would Tairn’s.
It’s not even the thought of my own death being secured that has me paralyzed with fear. No. Just the concept that I would be left in a world without Xaden in it rips down every shred of self-control and denial I’ve been living in.
I love Xaden. I love him more than I can put into words. I’d slaughter anyone standing in my way of getting to him or threatening his safety. Rational thought is obliterated as I come to this conclusion and accept it, simultaneously wondering why the fuck I’ve been fighting it so hard now that I could be faced with his name on the death roll.
As soon as Samara comes into view, the enormous navy blue daggertail pacing outside the courtyard grabs my attention. Tairn makes a beeline for her, and the not-knowing of Xaden’s state drives me to access the glimmering blue bond in my mind I normally avoid at all costs.
“How is he?”
The gorgeous, infuriated dragon darts her eyes in our direction as Tairn closes in, but her gaze snaps back rapidly toward where I assume she can sense her rider. “He is fading. One of those vile birds got too close when he was defending me. The gash is deep and the blood loss heavy. And they’ve moved him so I cannot see him.”
The agony in her voice is so unlike the indifferent creature I know that it steals my breath away. Right along with confirmation that Xaden is apparently circling death.
How is this happening? Xaden has always seemed like such an infallible force. I guess even he can be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers he would have faced with so few fellow riders within the outpost.
Tairn lands next to her with an earth-shaking thud, clearly not remembering my presence as he brings his forehead to rest against his mate’s. The snapping fury from the blue bond in my archives quiets just a tad, as does the desperation from the onyx door.
While their reunion is touching, I still haven’t gotten any reassurance of my own.
As much as I’d love to throw caution to the wind and dismount independently, I won’t be any good to Xaden if I break something. There’s a good chance I won’t be any good to him no matter what , whispers traitorously through my mind, but I slam that down. I won’t finish fighting for Xaden until my heart stops beating.
It takes a couple nudges from me to remind Tairn to extend his foreleg into my customary ramp. I slide down with a less than graceful landing, but pay no attention to it. The dread and agony in my chest that demands I get to the man I love is far more vital than anything else.
“You will help him.” The command from Sgaeyl leaves no room for argument. I’m not a healer or a mender, but I’ll do anything I can to get him through this.
The second the portcullis is high enough for me to duck under, I do so. For once, my size works to my advantage. I’m inside the outpost before it’s even a quarter of the way open. It took the sentries longer to open it than I would have liked. Guess they were distracted by the two behemoths who could breathe fire at any moment and currently refuse to budge from the adjacent area.
Organized chaos reigns within. Chunks of masonry ranging from half my size to double it lay scattered around the courtyard, and a quick glance upward is all it takes to see where they fell from. There are scorch marks on the northern wall, too. The fliers must have breached the perimeter. How many of them were there to have done such damage?
The healers work a triage station on the southern end of the fortress, the area around them thick with wounded infantry. But there are no black uniforms among the blue.
“Violet?” Mira calls out, emerging from the northwestern staircase I know leads to their operations room. No limp, no slings, no blood that I can see. She’s all right. Just like Devera said, only one has been wounded, and it’s not Mira. It’s the man who owns my heart.
“Where is he?” I yank my flight goggles from the top of my head and shove them into my bag without breaking my stride.
“What are you doing here?” She grabs hold of my shoulders, looking me over with her customary inspection. “You’re not supposed to arrive until Saturday.”
“Are you unharmed?”
“Yes.” She nods. “I wasn’t here. I was out on patrol.”
“Good, then tell me where he is.” My tone sharpens as my gaze swings wildly, looking for him. Fuck, I can’t even sense him with Tairn overriding everything.
“You don’t have leave, do you? Gods, you’re going to be so fucked when you get back.” She sighs. Have to give it to Mira, she doesn’t fight battles she can’t win. “He’s in the healing ward in the southern hall. It was too exposed to treat him out here. From what I hear, your man is the reason we still have an outpost.”
He is mine. He just doesn’t know it yet because I’ve been a godsdamned fool.
Without looking at her, I start to sprint toward the directed healing ward. I’m unsurprised it’s the part of the outpost closest to where Sgaeyl has stationed herself. “How bad is it?” I ask, knowing without checking that she would have followed me. Call it little sister intuition, but there’s no way she’s leaving me alone with this if I look like half as much of a mess as I feel.
Her response is grim. “Bad. I was assigned to get the wards back up and functional, so I didn’t see much of him. But there was a lot of blood, and he wasn’t walking without aid.”
I suck in a breath. For that stubborn asshole to accept help in front of other people like that means he’s worse off than I thought.
I follow the steady stream of healers in pale blue toward their ward. Then jolt to a stop as soon as I reach the threshold.
There’s a figure in black who captures my attention instantly, but it’s not Xaden. It’s Garrick. He’s standing next to one of the elevated cots with a sombre expression on his normally lighthearted face. There are smears of blood across his neck and his hands are absolutely covered in it. My heart races at the thought of how much more blood is probably hidden by his black flight leathers.
I move forward into the chamber. It’s a safe bet that when you find Garrick, you find Xaden.
I’m not prepared for the sight of him lying prone on the bed. His shirt has been removed to bare his back, which is currently covered with bandages soaked in blood. Two of the healers scurry forward to change out the binding as I watch, and I’m horrified by the gash they reveal. Starting just below the base of his neck, the cut is deep and runs all the way across his shoulder to nearly his elbow. By some miracle it left the beautiful relic from Sgaeyl entirely untouched, but with a distinct pulse of nausea I realize I can see a part of the bone of his spine.
Instinct drives me forward with the need to be beside him. Garrick startles when he notices me, but then somehow doesn’t seem surprised after the initial moment. He just gives me a resigned nod and tightens his grip on his best friend’s good shoulder.
The thick black hair that I love is plastered to Xaden’s face with sweat, his expression twisted into a mask of raw pain. His breaths are sharp and heavy, his good arm fisted below the thin pillow on the cot as he struggles against the agony. Gods, how is he still conscious? With the time it took Tairn to fly here, plus the report to be received at Basgiath for Battle Brief, he’s probably been suffering like this for a full day.
I don’t hesitate as I card my fingers through his hair with one hand and cup his scarred cheek with the other, brushing against the grime and tension there. “ Xaden ,” I whisper, both out loud and through our bond. I’m not sure which he’s more likely to respond to right now.
Those enchanting onyx eyes flutter open, landing on me with a struggle to focus mixed with disbelief. “Violence?” The mental pathway it is.
“I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I love you.” I punctuate my declaration with a soft kiss to his lips.
His eyes widen. “If I knew it only took me nearly dying to coax those three words out of you, I would have done it months ago.”
“Don’t even joke. You are not dying.”
“I love you, Violet.” The solemn response startles me. He tries to give me one of his signature smirks, but it turns into a grimace as a healer does something to his wound. He’s trembling slightly with the pain and what I’m sure is shock, but somehow keeps going. “I have for longer than you could imagine. Just didn’t want you to think I was manipulating you into saying it back.”
I take his good hand into mine when he slides it out from under the pillow. I press a long kiss to his palm, then scatter them over the rest of his face. I don’t give a fuck about the healers and other injured people running around us who are obviously watching.
“I should have said it before now. I was scared. You were only trying to protect me and everyone else.”
“Still… should have… told you. Sorry…” His mental voice is starting to drift and slur, just as his eyes close. Panic floods my veins.
“Xaden?” I switch to speaking out loud, hoping it will help rouse him. “Come on, stay awake.”
The fierce scream of a dragon about a hundred feet away confirms he’s out cold. The younger, inexperienced healers flinch. I reach with frantic fingers for the pulse point in his neck.
“He’s still with us, just out from the blood loss and adrenaline. Really I’m surprised he stayed coherent this long, but you riders are a different category of stubborn," the healer by his hip offers. By the insignia on his uniform it looks like he’s the one in charge of his quadrant at this outpost.
“Why the hell hasn’t he been stitched yet?” I demand. My voice is a far cry from polite, but I can’t seem to care right now.
“The wound is severe enough we’ve sent for the eastern wing mender. She was called to a different outpost than normal which has caused a delay, but should be here shortly. Stitching it would just hinder her ability to mend, so we’re keeping the blood loss minimal until that can happen.”
“What am I missing?” I ask Garrick quietly. Summoning a mender for a single severe casualty is unusual for a country at war. Normally the present healers will stabilize the injured enough for them to be transported to the rider directly. And while I’m grateful he’ll be mended, it sends alarm bells off in my head.
Garrick scrubs a hand over his face. “The fucking gryphon slashed his spine. He was having trouble walking when it first happened and now he can’t feel his legs.
Oh gods .
Not only was the blood loss a life-threatening problem, but he was succumbing to paralysis. From what I’ve read and picked up from my extensive stays in the healing quadrant, there’s a good chance it would keep creeping up until it reached the site of injury. Stopping his breathing and his heart.
I can feel Sgaeyl rage in my mind. No doubt she’s watching through my eyes to see her rider.
I think I might throw up.
But that’s not what Xaden needs right now. So instead I swallow down the bile creeping up the back of my throat and just tighten my grip on his limp hand.
An unknown amount of time passes as I stay beside him. Mira has to leave to get back to coordinating repairs in the chaotic aftermath of the attack. Garrick finds a stool and practically shoves me down onto it, so I guess I don’t look very steady. He looks pretty unsettled himself. I’m sure we make quite the pair. Hopefully it’ll be something we can joke about in the distant future; that time we bonded by Xaden’s bedside while he was being dramatic and trying to die. It’s too soon to even think like that though, as I feel a tear streak down my cheek before I furiously rub it away.
I think it’s about two hours later when Tairn cuts into my spiraling thoughts proclaiming that the mender is within a few miles of the outpost. With the way the head healer is stopping by more frequently, I conclude Xaden is in worse shape than anyone is comfortable with.
A woman somewhere around forty with short cropped, grey streaked black hair comes jogging into the healing ward dressed in flight leathers. If the slightly frazzled expression she wears is any indication, I’d bet Sgaeyl gave her a threatening welcome to alert her to the stakes. Active duty riders are usually unimpressed by dragon threats, but that blue daggertail is a special kind of ruthless.
As the only wounded figure in rider black, she narrows in on Xaden instantly. She’s pulling off her gloves and reaching for his back even before the healer starts to list off his injuries. She nods absentmindedly, and I hold my breath as her signet flares to light with a faint green tint. I see her eyes catch on his rebellion relic, but to her credit she doesn’t pause or pull back in her task.
Minutes tick by as I watch the bronze skin knit itself back together. The rider pauses for a long while, staring unblinkingly at the spot that the bones of his spine are faintly visible. I don’t know that many details about mending, but I’m sure something as delicate as a spinal column requires a little more finesse. I can only be thankful that Xaden passed out before the mending. Gods only know how badly it would have hurt him.
When she pulls away, she offers me a small smile as she reaches for the waterskin attached to her hip. If she’s anything like Brennan, she would have laced it with fruit juice or a spicy tea - something to help ground her after wielding for so long. “He’s going to be okay. Probably just out cold for a good day or so. You were lucky I got here when I did. Otherwise I’m not sure he would have walked again. Nerves are funny like that.”
The sting of tears floods my eyes as relief surges through me, compounded by the same feelings from our dragons. I’m sure it’s a testament to how tired I am too. “Thank you.” I want to say more, but my throat is too tight. Seriously, how can I be expected to function when I have the feelings of relief flowing through me from three beings. Even Tairn is weighing me down, though I’m sure it’s just out of gratitude for me and his mate rather than her pesky rider.
Luckily Garrick takes over. “He’s an unbearable ass who might not thank you even if he were conscious before you leave, so I’ll say it for him. Thanks. If you ever need a favor, all you need to do is ask.”
The still nameless mender shrugs. “All part of the job. From the description in the missive they sent, sounds like he saved more than a few lives and this entire outpost while he was at it.” Her voice lowers then. “I was stationed in the Tyrrendor Province for a few years right after I graduated. I knew Fen, and if his son is anything like him, I’m glad I could help.”
Her eyes convey a deeper meaning, and I do my best to not openly gap at her. Literally everyone loathes the Great Betrayer, and here we happen to have a mender with a clear head. Garrick lets out a similarly disbelieving laugh, sticking out his arm with the relic to shake her hand with enthusiasm.
She leaves us then, going to the other occupied beds in the ward to mend what she can. I wonder if they’ll recruit her to repair some of the damaged walls of the outpost too. Probably depends on how much the foundation was impacted. People always think of menders as miraculous healers, but I’ve seen Brennan do some incredible things outside of that.
I return my own attention to the man I love and settle in to wait out his recovery.