A/N: A/N: Sorry - I got kinda mean with this one. Yeah Violet almost died at the end of Fourth Wing…but…how almost? *evil grin #1* Quite a few people asked to do the Xaden brings Violet to Aretia after Resson for Brennan to mend her, and he finds out about their relationship - so I put my own angst-goblin twist on it. *evil grin #2*
Don't come at me, I'd just finished Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass) when starting this one…my heart was (is) still raw.
…
My breath is stuck in my throat as I figure out who is cradled against Xaden's chest - my sister. My fucking, sister. My little sister.
A thousand questions blaze through my mind as I try to recall his last letter sent through back channels searching for a clue. How did this happen and how the hell was Aretia the best place for them to escape to? Where had they been? Why were they beyond the wards? Why was she beyond the wards?
Clearly something had gone very wrong, very far away from Basgiath.
"What the fuck happened?" I wince at the black tendrils wending up Violet's neck to her jaw, a mockery of the relic mark on the heir apparent clutching her in his shaking arms. "Gods, she's barely breathing. When - how - I don't…"
"Brennan!" Xaden's voice is a snapped, frayed thing and I drag my eyes away from the sickly sight to see panic on every inch of his blood, dirt, and ash-covered face.
But it's his eyes that gut me. The pain and fear and hurt in them echoes my own.
"Inside. Now." Cold lethal calm pours ice through my veins as I shed the terror for my sibling and turn to my training. My signet. That's what will save her now. I'm well aware of the cluster behind us, the six other cadets that are matching us stride for stride as we make for the healing wing on the opposite end of Riorson House.
"Tell me what this is," I demand."
Someone answers. "A poisoned dagger."
I feel the flare in the small of my back as Marbh's power pulses at my relic while I race through every type of poison I know from the Krovla Province. "Since when does Poromiel use poisoned daggers?"
Garrick supplies the answer. "It was venin."
My steps falter, but we don't lose much speed. I do slam an accusing glare at the lot of them, their leader most of all. "Why the hell were you all fighting venin? And why the hell was my first-year fucking sister fighting them with you?"
The long line of our rooms pass one at a time, the healer wing at the end just beyond. I'm trying to focus on the answers to my questions, which none of the cadets are bothering to give.
"Long story. Right now, we -"
We don't make it.
Xaden stumbles as if he's been punched in the gut by an invisible opponent, and I wince at the sound of his knees cracking against the stone floor. He manages to keep her from tumbling out of his grasp somehow, but I reach for her all the same.
"No, Violet! No, no," his growls are pleading, his free hand clutching at her cheek, and in just the minute or two from where I'd met them on the steps to this hallway, her skin has gone from a bloodless pale to a sickly gray, and there's a terrifying blue tinge to her lips. "It's fading!"
"What is?" Someone else's panicked voice asks the question on all our tongues, but my eyes are on my sister as I hit the floor and pull her out of Xaden's grip to lay her between us. His hand lands over his heart as if it's falling out of his chest, and everyone but him winces at the furious, pain-laced roar from the courtyard that rattles the windows.
She's not breathing. Not really.
The tiny twitching gasps aren't getting air past the poison that's seized her lungs. "Get into the infirmary and get me the Ulmaria vial and a syringe." I'm yelling at whomever will listen while yanking the zipper of her flight jacket down and wrenching it open, only to find the uniform beneath. I've got to get to her skin - close enough to her lungs to fix this. Every button pops and skitters to gods know where as I grab the sides and tear them apart to reveal custom dragonscales sewn into a sleeveless corset of armor. I know exactly where she got it too, the green tinge shining in the mage lights of the hallway.
It's good enough, though I'm not the only one that gasps at the spider webbing black veins of death that have spread from the black blood leaking wound at her side. They crawl across her abdomen, up beneath her armor, over her shoulder, up her neck, and even from where it was cresting her jaw when they landed, it was now dragging up her cheek nearing her temple.
Her skin is chilled and clammy against my palms, but I wedge one hand underneath the armor flat to her stomach as my other goes skin to skin beneath her collarbones, fingers pressing against her throat.
Diving headlong into my power, I ground in Dad's study and fling open every door, every window to Marbh's power, my dragon's panic merging with my own as I roar every ounce of mending into my Violet's lungs.
Please don't take her, I plead to whichever of the gods will listen, but Malek especially.
I can feel the poison leaching through her body, my signet chasing it. Gods…it goes so deep. Too deep. I don't know if I have enough power to drag it all out of her before I burn out.
"Guess we'll find out." My dragon decides for us.
I dimly hear Xaden say that he can't feel her anymore, whatever the hell that means since they're not even touching at the moment. The hall is deathly quiet a moment later, and we all hear those gasping breaths stop.
"Don't you fucking dare, Violet," the words snarl out of me as my vision blurs with the tears hot on my cheeks, and I feel the cramping in my arms and the heat boiling in my stomach as I flare white hot against her skin.
The sludge of the poison almost reacts to my magic, but I focus the mending on pushing it from the bottom to top of her lungs - up and up and up and out.
The shuddering cough that arches her back and sends the black, blood-thick fluid from her lips to spray at stark attention against the pallor of her skin is followed by another as more is pushed out, and the most beautiful sound I've ever heard fills the hallway. A gasping inhale as she sucks a starving breath of air into her chest.
Then a second.
Then a third.
Shaking hands and two vials of the demanded Ulmaria are in my face, and I drag away from her long enough to snap the glass tip, jam in the needle, and force my shaking, sweaty hands to calm enough to find the fluttering artery at her neck and slide the needle in. This will course through her veins and thin the poison muck while simultaneously forcing her heart to push it out, and I ignore the droplet of black-tinged blood that pearls at her neck when I pull the needle free and hand it off to whomever got it in the first place.
Xaden scoops her up, his boot kicking open the door we landed in front of, and I feel someone else yank me to my feet and hold me upright until I recenter myself.
Hands grip my tunic and I find myself staring into Garrick's pale eyes. "Tell me what else you need." His command is sharp, ever the second in command, and I give him a list of things before moving into the room.
Thankfully, she's still raggedly breathing, slouched and unconscious atop the plush massive bed. Xaden has one hand against her chest to hold her upright as the other pulls the flight leathers off of each arm, flinging them to land somewhere behind him.
"Can you do this?" His voice is like steel, his face streaked with just as many tears as my own. In response, I wipe at them with the back of my hand and nod.
"I can do this. You should go," I order as the uniform also lands somewhere on the floor of what I just now realize is his room, and I want to slap the back of his hands when he deftly begins to unlace the corset of armor at Violet's back.
"It's nothing I haven't seen. You worry about mending, I'll worry about this."
Something clicks in my mind as the armor opens, and he trades holding her up from the front to cradling the back of her head and laying her back onto his pillow, hands gentle as the armor slips loose and she's left in nothing but the wrap around her breasts.
"Nothing you haven't seen because you've been with women or nothing you haven't seen because you slept with my sister?"
His eyes snap to mine, his fists pressing into the downy coverlet.
"Mend her!"
He's right, but I can't help but feel supremely overprotective right now.
"Do your job." Damn. Even Marbh is chiming in.
Garrick and Imogen come in, the latter slowly as she deftly carries a kiln-fired bowl of steaming hot water, a stack of linens of all shapes and sizes, and a medical bag brimming with all the other things I'd rapidly fired off at the section leader. I dimly hear a 'good luck' and their exit is marked by the closing of the door.
It takes an hour, and I feel like my bones are on fire as I chase the last drop of that black shit out of her veins, strangling it with the last dregs of my power. I slam the doors and windows closed as I ground, locking them all to keep from burning out as sweat pours from every inch of my skin into my already soaked tunic.
Only Xaden's clutch at the front of my shirt keeps me upright and not toppling backwards onto the floor. The blanket beneath me is cool and comfortable, and blackness edges out my consciousness when I give into the exhaustion.
…
My mouth is like a desert, and I have no idea where or when it is.
Light doesn't burn my eyes to a crisp the moment they open, so I know some time has gone by since I passed out. Memory slams into me, raw and hard, and my stomach twists with nausea as I sit up too quickly.
"Easy," the voice calls, and two hands steady my shoulders in a hard, unforgiving grip.
Xaden. He's still here. Of course he is.
"How…long?" Gods I need a drink.
"A few hours."
"Is she -" He lets me go and I manage not to fall over again, some of the dizziness going away as my vision gets less and less blurry. A glass hits my palm and I greedily guzzle the water down until there's nothing left, and only then do I start to feel human again.
"Sleeping. I sewed up the wound until you could pull the twine and mend it."
"Blood?"
"Red."
Thank the gods. I do feel bad for passing out before I could actually finish the job, but at least the poison is gone. I know neither of us will forget seeing that black sludge eke out of that once hideous wound, her mouth, her ears, her nose. But there's no trace now, only pale skin and slight bruises beneath her eyes, and I watch her breathe a few times just to be sure.
I lean in and brush a kiss to her forehead before standing on shaking legs. She's in a nightgown now, something apparently Xaden had or found, and tucked in beneath the warm blanket. Still too pale, but not at Malek's door, or worse, two steps past the threshold as she'd been a few hours ago.
I feel the pang of grief in my heart anyway. Despite the fact that I didn't lose her, a watery sigh spears from my chest. "That was too fucking close. What the hell happened out there?"
Xaden matches my posture, hands on his hips and arms akimbo, his eyes meeting mine from the other side of the bed. "I fucked up."
"You're responsible for this?"
"Yes." His answer is hollow, and I feel my stomach drop as rage back-fills the empty space. The horror and tears for him were just as present as mine as I'd worked over her. I know I should calm down.
But I can't. I move to the end of the bed and fix him with what I hope is a death glare that puts his and the General's to shame.
"What. Happened?"
War Games.
Five days - the bond between Sgaeyl and Tairn - his reasoning behind taking Violet with them. It's a lie, and one I see him instantly regret.
"Don't fucking lie to me." The finger I point at my unconscious sister slumps his shoulders. "You do know what would have happened if you were five minutes later, right?"
Xaden's defense mechanism sinks in and he folds his arms across his wide chest.
"Right?!
"I didn't know our assignment was a trap."
I scoff. "Oh really? You genuinely thought that Athebyne, where so many of our runs met up, wasn't the tip off that it was?"
His silence pisses me off.
"You should have left her with Dain."
"Fuck that. Aetos and his prick of a father are the reason this happened in the first place."
That's going to take some getting used to. Dain is Violet's best friend. Or - he was, at least. I'm not sure how Violet took his betrayal as it seems like she's a completely different person now since the last time I saw her. I do know that at fourteen or something years old, the brown-eyed boy could do no wrong in her eyes.
Not in mine, of course, but no one was good enough for my sister.
"I told you. I fucking told you to stay away from my sister. That it was going to be hard enough for her to survive Basgiath without having you and all your bullshit to deal with."
"And I'm sure Mira told her to stay away from me, but we didn't. Okay? We didn't stay away from each other."
My fist is moving before my brain registers that I threw it, and the thock of my knuckles against his mouth along with the spurt of blood from the newly split lip brings glimmering satisfaction to my heart.
To my endless surprise, he doesn't put me on my ass like we both know he can. He closes his eyes against the sting and throb I know well and I see his fists clench at his sides. Still, he just rights himself and takes it - accepting the hit. When those black pools open, the guilt hasn't dulled and it's almost like he wants me to hit him again.
I probably will before this conversation is over.
"She's the most powerful rider at Basgiath - or…will be if Carr can get her aim under control. Train is the best dragon in the sky during combat."
"So your justification was that this particular first-year has the ability to be very powerful so I'll take her beyond the wards where magic is harder to control?"
He stutters, blood leaking down his chin. "I -" he pauses, fidgeting from one foot to another in a way I haven't seen in years. "I didn't think about that."
"There it is. There's the fucking truth. You. Didn't. Think. You've jeopardized this entire movement with this little stunt."
Something in what I've said shoves him out of the 'stand and take it' column and decisively into the 'time to fight back' column, and the flaring, icy, black fire backing his glare steals a little bit of my rage.
"Is that why you're upset, Brennan? Not that she almost died? That I almost got her killed?"
I don't stop my hands from gesturing wildly. "How the fuck are we going to explain this to her, Xaden? Me, the movement, Aretia not being a pile of burned wood and stone? She's immediately going to know the moment she looks out that window and sees that fucking temple. You shouldn't have brought her here."
The menacing step he takes tenses my stomach. "Violet would have died. Aretia - you - were her only options."
"No. Keeping everything secret the way you were fucking supposed to never stopped being an option!" My heart plummets into my stomach, and the burning shame of bile rises in the back of my throat. He can see the horror on my face at my own words, and while I wish that would have prompted him to back off, he seems angrier than before.
"How Lilith Sorrengail of you, Brennan. Like mother, like son."
I swing again on instinct, and the clutch of his hand around mine, the squeeze I know he could have doubled to shatter the bones, and the slight spin he pushes me into when tossing my arm back to my side reminds me of how outmatched I am against him in hand to hand.
"I am nothing like my mother." The coldness in my voice makes it almost unrecognizable even to my own ears.
Turning toward the door I can't keep the anger from my steps as I make to leave, but the clench of his fist as it shoots out to snag my tunic beneath my chin makes me flinch. Xaden drags me close, close enough that I have to angle up to look into those furious onyx eyes. His lip is still bleeding, though it's gone unnoticed. His other hand points to the bed.
"Pull the stitching and mend her wound. Then you can get the fuck out."
The fact that I'd forgotten brings a new level of fury to a boil in my stomach, and when he shove-releases me, I stagger to the edge of the bed looking at the young man as if seeing him for the first time.
My hands are gentle and she doesn't wake, and I know she won't for at least a full day after all the mending I put her body through. Once it was taken care of, I pull the blankets back up under her chin, the same as when she was a little girl being tucked in after a nightmare would bring her scurrying to my room, and I know the full weight of what I'd said hadn't fully settled into my soul yet.
"It will," Marbh growls, and I can feel his anger and disappointment simmering along our bond.
Still, I pause at the doorway and turn as Xaden slides the plush chair closer to the side of the bed and perches at the edge, his forearms against his knees as his leg bounces in his nervousness. His eyes are fixed on Violet.
"Do you want me to mend your damn lip?" Gods help me. Despite it all, I'm still so angry.
He doesn't bother to look my way when he says, "you know I don't have you mend injuries I deserve."
…