…
Brennan sighs, rubbing his blood-shot eyes as he interrogates me, and I fight the urge to punch him in the face like I had yesterday. His nose is healed despite the fact that twin bruises stain the skin beneath both of his eyes, evidence of it being just difficult enough that he decided to only mend the worst of it, and I can't keep from taking in every single detail of his face.
A face I never thought I would see again - let alone looking six years older.
I focus on what's the same and what's changed, and when a loose red-brown curl drops over his forehead, the way he first blows at it before swiping with his hand makes me grin. Not much has changed while simultaneously, everything is different.
"Tell me exactly what the General said when she landed at Samara."
The General. Not, Mom. My heart both rages and hurts when I think about her.
Yes - the choices she made for us was tantamount to betrayal of the worst degree, but she's still my mother. She'll never stop being my mother. Even so, I know that I've always been the one closest to her. Brennan pushed her away because he became a teenager that didn't need his mommy any longer, and Violet was kept at arm's length, Mom thinking that anything she did would break the fragile little thing, so that left me.
Gods…I so wanted to be her when I grew up.
"How tragic that would have been," Teine offers his opinion. I agree.
"Like I said, she gathered us all in the briefing room and told us the truth. Venin were real, not just fairytales, which wasn't hard to believe seeing as there was a fucking wyvern carcass just outside the front gate."
Fucking. Venin. Gods…Violet had tried. I don't know what it would have cost her to be less subtle with me, but I have a hunch that since I'm sitting in Riorson House at Aretia, the former capital of Tyrrendor, probably a lot.
"That's it?"
"I mean…what else was there to say, it was pretty convincing. She showed us the daggers in the containers and explained the alloy that extends the wards and that they're also what kills venin. That was why the gryphon fliers attacked outposts despite being sorely outmatched and at altitude. Desperate people do desperate things."
His quill scratched the parchment as he took notes, and I'm again annoyed and want to hit him. I wonder when that will go away.
"Not anytime soon. I still feel the need to pick his bones from my teeth with a sapling."
Teine isn't too happy to find my brother alive either.
"That's not very logical," my chiding is playful, but if there's one thing my dragon excels at, it's logic.
"You let your emotions overrule your logic continuously. Why can I not do the same from time to time?"
Fair point so I'll let him have it.
"So gracious."
"Did you interrogate Violet like this? Holed up in your tastefully minimalistic office answering question after question?"
He looks confused. "Gods…no. I - couldn't do that to her. Not after -"
"Oh, but you can do it to me."
The frown seems to be a permanent addition to his face now, and I'm not sure what I've said to frustrate him.
"Did the General tell you what happened at Basgiath?"
I nod by bouncing my head up and down dramatically slowly. "Yes. I already said that she did. Leadership had given the cadets the same option at the college before spreading to the outposts once they'd learned what Riorson and the other marked ones had done."
He looks even more confused and his frown deepens.
"Which, what the fuck, by the way. Was that your plan? Because it was a really shitty plan."
I'm getting sick of the confusion on his face and I'm about ready to re-break his nose.
"The whole," I pause and wave my hand in a circle, "wyvern tossed onto outposts giving up the game plan, plan."
"Wait. She didn't tell you?" He holds his hand up to silence me, which I hate, and I think about reminding him of that fact when Teine butts in once more.
"You're going to want to listen very carefully to this part. It…will be hard not to be emotional. For us both."
Shit. Now I'm the one confused. He sounds downright mournful.
"Did the General mention the Vice Commandant in her speech? Or…pull you to the side and talk only to you before she left?" He acts like my answer is everything.
The shake of my head takes his face from confused to incredulous, and my ire rises higher.
"Isn't that just so fucking like her." He's talking to himself.
"You know I hate that shit. Stop dancing around the words and just fucking tell me."
"Basgiath got a new Vice Commandant just after graduation. Major Burton Varrish. Do you know him?"
The exhale I exude is pure annoyance. "No, but he sounds like an asshole."
I finally look him in the face and all my attitude drains at the way his eyes, those amber eyes, flash with barely contained rage. All he'd said was the man's name. He sets down the quill and stands, moving over to a bookcase to pull a worn leather journal from a special box. It slams into me just how much he looks like Dad now that he's older, especially as he cradles a book in his palms. Gingerly, he sets it on the small wooden desk between us, looking expectantly at me as if I know what the hell is going on.
I pull it close and open the cover, but it's in a logosyllabic language that I'm sure Violet can read thanks to Dad. "That's the personal journal of Warrick of Luceras, one of the First Six."
I immediately yank my hand back, cursing that he'd even let me put my gloveless finger on any of the pages. This fucking thing is over 600 years old. I didn't learn much past that from Dad, but that was enough.
"How the hell did you get this?"
"Violet stole it from Basgiath's Archives, along with a second journal written by Lyra."
My jaw would have hit the floor if it were possible. "This is, what - Old Lucerish? Can you read the other one? Is it in Navarrian?"
He shrugged. "No clue. She never read it. Violet and Riorson split the books up, sending this one back with him and keeping the other one in Basgiath with her so we could translate them faster. They detail how the wards were created, and our plan is to activate the dormant wardstone here in Aretia to at least provide some safety from the venin hoards banging at the gates."
"No shit! Gods, she's fucking brilliant." Endless pride blossoms in my chest, and my first thought brings tears to my eyes. "Dad would be so proud of her. I mean…not the stealing from the Archives shit, but I'm proud of her for that one."
"You're not hearing me, Mira."
It takes me a moment to realize that he's not celebrating like I am, and it doesn't seem like it's because it's old news to him.
"Truth takes time." Teine says again, the same as when he'd said it to me after I'd gotten my orders to hunt down Riorson for deserting. Those words kept me from following those orders, and I haven't had a clue why. Apparently, I'm about to get some answers - answers that he's had the whole time.
"Lyra's journal was never opened. Violet never had a chance to read it. After she and Xaden split them up, Major Varrish had Nolon drug her with a new serum they've created that severs a Rider's connection to their dragon, their magic. They took her for interrogation. She'd broken through royal wards and accessed the King's Private Library, which none of us even knew existed. She got caught."
"Like…R.S.C.? With professors?"
I feel a single drop of sweat slide down the side of my neck below the leather collar of my jacket, and I know what he's going to say.
I don't want him to say it.
"Burton Varrish tortured our sister for information. On this place, the revolution…Xaden. Broke bone after bone, ripped apart her joints, then had Nolon mend her to do it all over again." What breaks next is his voice. "For five days."
Emotion drops from the clogged back of my throat into my stomach like a lead weight, and my mouth waters at the sudden nausea thinking of how easy Violet would be to break. How even the most simple moment of running her leg into a table fractured the bone or dislocated a joint.
"Tairn flew to tell Sgaeyl and went to hunt Varrish's dragon leaving the rescue plan to Riorson. He and Garrick decided that in order to guarantee the emptying of Basgiath's leadership in any helpful quantity to make rescue possible, they had to do something drastic."
I don't stop the tears, I don't hold back the tremble in my chin or hands as they clasp one another for dear life atop the biting edge of the wood desk. "Dropping mythological beasts on the outposts. To show Navarre's lies."
"Yes."
"Brilliant."
Yes, I know that two minutes ago I had said it was a shitty plan, but I didn't have all the facts then. And I fucking hate when I don't have all the facts. I finally look back up at him and see a streak of tears down his cheeks that disappear into the scruff of his beard. It looks like this is the first time he's allowed himself to cry over this, his rage and sorrow written on every line of his face as I'm sure it is on mine.
Maybe it's because it's me he's talking to. That I'm the only other person that would fully understand how he feels.
"I know. I was where you are four days ago. It still fucking hurts."
"Did you know?" My question is more accusation, and I feel my bond with Teine flood with guilt and parental comfort.
"Why do you think I told you to spend more time with our sister?"
"Teine! How could you keep this from me?"
"It was not my story to tell. It is not his story to tell."
"Where is she?" I'm standing before I realize my legs are underneath me and already headed for the door. I don't know where anything is in this fortress of a house, but that won't stop me.
Brennan looks over to the clock on his wall seeing that it's early evening and that he, and I, missed dinner. "Probably the sparring gym. Second Squad usually practices in the evenings a few times a week."
I'm gone. I know where that is, at least. I'm only semi aware that I probably look like a crazy person, tears still leaking down my face as I mentally send every curse word I know and many I make up to my dragon, my brother, my mother, Dunne and Malek.
All eyes are on me as I thrust the doors open, but I don't see her. I do, however, see Xaden and take a direct path toward him. His observation skills have always surprised me, and he meets me halfway with panic on his face.
"What happened?"
"Where is she?"
"Who?"
I growl and slap at the hand he sends to my shoulder to steady the wobble in my legs that I'm trying to ignore. My voice is watery despite trying to swallow every emotion down. "You fucking know who. My sister. Where is she?"
His eyes glaze for a moment, and I realize that Teine is probably talking to Sgaeyl, who in turn is relaying my insanity to her rider. Once that clears, he reaches again and I smack him again, but the man is determined. The grip he takes at my biceps makes me rethink my want to grab his tree-trunk of an arm and use my height to bend it over my shoulder and snap it the wrong way.
I know anger isn't useful, but I don't know how else to feel right now. Maybe I do need to spar…maybe that would help. Riorson and I had half a dozen great matches at Samara after we'd cleared our differences up.
He yanks me across the gym into a nook away from the prying eyes of everyone else. Just when I think he's going to push me away and hit me with that patented Riorson death glare, I turn to face him in defiance and crumble into a whimpering mess at the understanding and pain on his face.
"I know."
Those massive arms that have thrown punch after punch my way wrap around my shoulders and pull me into a tight hug, and gods it feels good. When the fuck was the last time anyone gave a shit about me enough to hug me? And how is it Xaden fucking Riorson.
My arms dangle limply, my forehead pushed into his shoulder, and I quietly sob into the black of his sparring shirt. He doesn't say anything, doesn't rub my back and whisper that everything is going to be alright like Brennan would. It's a hug between warriors that have buried too many other warriors, and it lasts just as long as it needs to last.
I pull away, but feel his hand cup the back of my head as he brings his face down to mine. The intensity in those black and gold eyes makes me shiver as I wonder how many people have had them as the last thing they ever saw?
And was Burton fucking Varrish one of them?
When I try to pull away, he holds fast. "She's okay."
My head shakes on its own and it only makes him tighten his hold.
"She's. Okay."
I instantly feel better when I accept his words into my heart.
He's right. I…saw her this morning laughing with her friends at breakfast. Teine and I flew with her and Tairn this afternoon for maneuvers after lunch.
She is okay.
I know that - knew that already.
"How is she okay?"
He lets me go and crosses his arms over his broad chest in a move all too familiar - defense. If I hold the emotions in then no one will know I have any. It's also my go-to, so I replicate the stance and we look like we're fighting though that couldn't be farther from the truth.
"Ask whatever you want to know. If I can answer it, I will."
"It's not his story to tell." Teine interrupts, but I ignore him.
"Did he really…break her?"
He struggles with the answer and I don't know why. "Yes and no."
The sadness quickly turns to anger. "Fuck you, that's not an answer."
Xaden inhales so deeply that his arms nearly unfold, the sigh coming out rushed and hard. "Yes, he broke her body. No, he didn't break her mind. Hence the yes and no."
She didn't break. Violet. Didn't. Break.
"How did she not break? Five days?"
"She's the smartest person we know and has dealt with overwhelming pain her whole life. She learned to shield against Tairn in five minutes and wields lightning from her damn hands. She's tougher than most."
I simply nod in agreement and I know the pride shining between us is reflected in both sets of eyes.
"Where is she?" I know he knows how I feel. "Can - can you ask Tairn? Or ask Sgaeyl to ask him?"
His cocky grin is back and I realize that I just went through a whole conversation with Xaden Riorson without it being front and center. A first for us. His eyes glaze a bit like before and he turns his head to the side. A moment later the grin goes from cocky to a full-on smile before he turns his attention back to me.
"She's in the library, and says she can't wait for your help searching through book after book with her until the dead of night. Why do you think I'm in the sparring gym?"
"Tairn's sure? I don't want to fucking chase her around, Riorson."
His laugh is soft and genuine, and I realize that the only time this man is soft is when he's talking about or is with my sister. "I wasn't talking to Tairn." He turns away, and I gawk and glare at the vast expanse of his muscled shoulders.
"Riorson!"
He turns to walk backwards, the first few steps between us confident despite the equipment lying around. The infuriating man winks, his voice low to keep anyone but me from hearing.
"I was talking to Violet."
Then his back is to me and he's gone, striding over to the mats to rejoin the others as if he hadn't just dropped that into my mind. Gods. Can he connect to her directly?
"Can he connect to her directly?"
"Who?"
Gods, damn it, Teine. His chuckle doesn't help.
"Do you want me to ask? I am fairly sure the surly one's answer will be that it is none of my business, but I'm willing if you are."
If I'd known that Xaden could just…connect to her mind in Montserrat I think I would have done more than scold him for being an untrustworthy prick. Now when I look at him, my feet carrying me to the door, I know how he saved her - and I know I trust him with her life probably more than I trust myself at the moment.
"A fascinating change of heart, and the only logical conclusion you could make."
Fucking Teine.
The library isn't hard to find, though my first stop was the Temple of Amari. All I'd ever seen were the sketches of the pillars outside of both, and while I'm sure Violet would argue, to me they look the gods damned same.
Dusk settles over Aretia, and I do another double-take at the recognizable but unrecognizable landscape surrounding the sleepy little town that was once a bustling capital city. Chilly air nips at my fingertips so I shove them into the pockets of my leathers, the library looming ahead. It looks closed, and for the hundredth time, I wonder if Riorson was telling the truth.
He probably had asked Tairn, right?
"Probably."
"Don't you have somewhere else to be? Get out of my damn head for a while, Teine."
"Tell our sister that I'm proud of her and that I love her."
The bond goes dark and I know he's shielded me out - an impenetrable forest of thick trees blocking the large gated entrance of the fortress walls that encircle my grounding courtyard.
The library is warm and completely different from the Archives. High vaulted ceilings and a spiraling ornate wood staircase that leads up to an empty second floor pull my attention, and I marvel again at just how much detail is put into…well…detail here. Navarre outside of Calldyr is - efficient, not beautiful. While I could argue that there is beauty in the symmetry of our outposts and forts, and Basgiath's towers have their own kind of statuesque charm, all of that is bullshit compared to just the entrance of their library or temple. Colorful tapestries hang from the railing of the second floor depicting dragons, gryphons, mountains, everything scenic around this place immortalized through artisanal weaving.
"Did you get lost?"
Her voice is clear and my eyes snap to a table covered in books, Violet in the middle with her feet up on a chair and hands folded over her stomach. Waiting.
"Maybe." I don't feel like being dishonest but I don't feel like admitting fault. It's difficult in my head right now.
I want to grab her and never let her go. I see flashes of the little five-year-old with a fresh cast on her arm as I braid her hair for her in the mornings until she can do it again herself. The teenager who screamed her sorrow with me at the loss of our brother. The look on her face when I left for my Conscription day mingled with when I walked her to the tower leading to the Parapet for hers.
"Xaden mentioned you were on your way."
"So you can talk directly to one another."
She laughs and nods. "He said you probably wouldn't believe him. It's our little secret.
"I won't tell anyone. Did -" I freeze, my thighs bumping into the edge of the table as I look down at her. "Did he tell you why I was looking for you?"
The smile slips a bit, as does the confidence, but she nods.
"I'm sorry."
It wasn't what I'd planned on saying first because it's a stupid fucking thing to lead with. I had no clue, there was nothing I could have done. I have nothing to actually be sorry about other than the fact that I know what getting the shit kicked out of you feels like. But…as much as I know those things, I know that torture is nothing like that.
She does. My little sister does.
"Sit." It's an order and an offer, and I land in the wood chair opposite the table from her. As much as I want to drag her against my chest as I've always done when I've needed her comfort, I lift my legs onto the empty adjacent seat and match her stance. Maybe if I look comfortable, the conversation won't wreck me.
"I…don't know what to ask. What do you not want me to ask?"
Her smile is sad. "I've never kept secrets from you, Mira, I won't start now. If you want me to be honest, I will, but…it's only been a week. Some things might be hard for me to give if I haven't figured out the answer yet."
"Xaden Riorson can talk directly into your head, you knew about venin, you're back in Aretia, you joined a revolution - you've been keeping secrets."
She laughs and I join in, breaking a little bit of the tension. I'm stunned when I realize that there isn't anything I really need to know about those five days. My desperation was to lay eyes on her and remind myself that she's okay, just like Riorson had said she was - like my heart knew she was.
"Why didn't you tell me about that man? I mean…in the letters we sent back and forth, you never mentioned him once. Why? I could have tried to handle him. Mom could have tried."
She laughs and shakes her head. "When I got your first letter, it was redacted. Probably by Varrish and his lackeys. I knew I couldn't be honest with you in a letter, they were reading them. That's why when I saw you at Samara…"
"And I didn't believe you." Violet just shrugs in response, and I take a quiet moment to digest everything. "You have no idea how surprised I was when Riorson and Tavis deserted. I knew you had to be involved in something, but when I asked Teine…he told me to wait. He said that - truth takes time, and while he would explain, it wasn't yet the right time. My orders were to hunt them down - but he told me that disobeying my orders was for the good of everything we both believed in. So…we flew the opposite way and let Riorson and Tavis go."
Her smile is sad but there's resolve in her eyes. "That saved a lot of lives, not just mine. Every marked one owes you for that."
"They owe Teine. I was ready to put Xaden in a hole in the ground because I assumed he had betrayed you. In that moment, everything I'd ever thought about him came out and I knew I was right. Gods, I wanted to tell you that I told you so more than just about anything in the whole world."
The smile on her face is genuine, and we both marvel at the ridiculousness of the concept that Xaden Riorson would ever betray Violet Sorrengail, lapsing into a quiet but comfortable silence. She's looking unfocused at a stack of books while I study the lines of her face and the sweep of the braid hanging loose over her shoulder, the silver-colored ends that are just so…her.
"I - I would have broken. I'm - so proud of you." The tear rolls down my cheek, my emotions still too dangerously close to the surface no matter how far behind I thought I'd left them.
She scoffs, but her eyes water as she looks down, suddenly interested in the edge of her thumbnail. "You wouldn't have broken, Mira. You're the toughest person I know. Besides -" she heaves a sigh and looks into my soul with a hazel that sparkles so much like Dad's, all shifting colors that can't decide what to be any moment of any day. "I did break."
But Riorson had said…why would he lie? Does he not know?
"I didn't give - Varrish - any information, but I broke." Her chuckle is self-deprecating. "Day one. All it took was one session."
"Riorson said -"
"No one knows, Mira. I…haven't told anyone. My friend - my bodyguard," she gulps, her fingernail tracing the lines in the wood of the table, "the one I got killed at Resson - he started talking to me. Sitting beside me, walking the room around me. We had…whole conversations as if he was actually there. I mean, I recognized it for what it was, a hallucination from dehydration and pain - so much pain. Liam wasn't there, but my mind conjured him to both show me how crazy I was and how sane I could be at the same time."
For once, I feel like the little sister - small and frail sitting across from someone powerful as I know she's done with me so many times. "That's not breaking, Vi, that's compensating -"
"Tell her I love her and that I am proud of her." The thick emotion in my dragon's voice catches me off guard, and Violet's eyes look up as I cut off mid-sentence and flinch, glaring to the left at nothing.
"I'm having a moment with my sister! Do you mind?"
"Tell her."
"Teine -"
"My scales protect her, making her my sister too. You will tell her."
"Teine?" as if she also had a pathway into my mind, I nod.
"He says he loves you and is proud of you." This makes her laugh.
"Logical and mushy? He's been the literal shield of my heart for over a year now, so, tell him thank you again from me."
The wall of trees is back up and I roll my eyes.
"Okay. Fuck it. Subject change. What are you working on, my brilliant sister?"
I'll never call her my little sister again. She's a fucking giant.
She grumbles and waves off the books. "I have a better idea." Arching her neck she spies the clock and drops her legs from the chair with a wince, her left hand massaging her knee. "The tavern will be warm and has ale. I say we drink this one off."
"Violet Sorrengail, I don't even know who you are any more."
She shrugs as we walk from the library into the chilled air. "Yeah, well, neither do I. I'm sure I'll figure it out, but for right now, I'm just trying to go day to day."
She loops her arm with mine and sets her head against my shoulder like she's done a thousand times over the years. "Just…know that I'm here. You know, if you need help - figuring it all out. I know who you are. Always have."
"Same," Teine boasts.
My sigh is automatic.
…
A/N: I desperately wanted a "Violet tells Mira about the torture" part of Iron Flame. I wanted more sibling love, so that's what I did.