"This course of action is unwise," Tairn grumbles for probably the dozenth time as wind-whipped snow batters my winter leathers and ice grows on every scale and spike I can see along his back.
"An hour a day," is my only answer, though I do stifle a yawn behind the fuzzy yet iced fur lining that fits over my mouth and nose. After the crushing realization in Battle Brief that the venin were likely headed for Aretia, because they somehow know our wards are faulty, Ridoc and I wanted nothing more than to trudge up to our rooms and fall face first into our beds.
Colonel Aetos had different plans. Our punishment for who knows what came in the form of micro tasks that any first year cadet would excel at, and only when I claimed wielding practice with Tairn did I get a reprieve. As I was bundling up for the flight field, Ridoc was headed toward the sparring gym carrying a stack of fresh towels taller than Sawyer. He wore a half asleep glazed look in his eyes that had him uncharacteristically stumbling over his feet.
"You should be resting."
"I agree." Which I do, but there's no getting around Aetos and his minions. If they're ordered to keep me from doing what I want, namely Xaden though right now it's taking a long and heavy nap, there won't be any avoiding them. I've made too many enemies around Basgiath.
The chill of the higher altitude bites through my leathers making me look forward to wielding rather than dreading it, but I know I won't make the full hour. Not with how loose everything in my body feels as I rise on wobbly legs from my saddle and navigate to the already sloped shoulder and arm of my dragon, bowed lower than usual today.
Despite it all I flounder and my left knee does that twingy wobble that I've recognized for years as one of the only warnings I get before it goes out completely. Frost covers the scales of his claw as he uses it to brace against my back, but I don't hear another complaint from him. Maybe miracles do exist but they're just used up on little things like that instead of venin cures and full nights of blissful sleep spooned by Xaden.
With frozen fingers I fumble into my pack, grab the conduit, then toss the bag into a pile of snow near Tairn's forepaw so I can find it once it gets buried. Moving to my usual spot, the only difference in the terrain being the fluffy powder that scatters from my dragging footsteps, I glance at the semicircle of large boulders Tairn set up for me. Each is set equidistant from one another in a half ring just over fifty feet away. They all bear a cap of snow, though it isn't hard to see the char marks and scarred streaks in the typically pink-hued granite from all the times I've properly aimed my strikes.
Today will be no different. Time to knock off those snowcaps. Using my right hand to pull off the glove from my left, I loop the strap over my wrist and shiver as the frigid metal touches my skin. My movements are slow, and I feel sluggish but determined. Palming the conduit I close my eyes and ground both of my feet onto the marble floor of my Archives. The rush of warmth as I crack open the door to Tairn's power is an immediate relief to my core, though my joints aren't too happy with the swing in temperature. While cold makes them seize and ache, heat makes them loose and, well, ache. The combination of both is probably a bad thing, but I'm getting used to it with day after day spent up here.
Heaving a sigh, I open my eyes and sight the first boulder on the left. Focusing, I raise my right hand and let the power snap through me from the tingling relic at my back to the heating fingertips touching the alloy strips of the conduit. As I direct the bolt from the unseen clouds above, the silver streak of blue power slams into the ground just to the left of my target. It scatters small stones and turns the pristine white of the powder to a dusty grey brown as I hit deep enough to shatter the piled up material beneath.
"Damnit," I curse, muffled behind the fur masked hood protecting my head and face from the elements.
I reach again, and not only does the cap of white atop the boulder explode, so does a few inches of rock at the top right side. My right arm seizes a bit, the muscle tensing in a knot just above and behind my bent elbow, and I spend a moment after my successful strike to flex and shake it loose.
"There. You've wielded. Let us return to Basgiath. I will fly the long way if you wish to rest in the saddle."
I scoff and lift my hand at the second boulder in the half circle. "I'm not nearly desperate enough to sleep in that saddle for one minute longer than I have to when not traveling. Even with the adjustments."
"When your elbow explodes, how shall we explain the injury when you refuse to be healed by Basgiath's mender?"
"Elbows don't explode." I ignore the sharp phantom sting in my left forearm at the memory of the last time Nolon worked on me, and I'll never unsee the sorrowful determination in his once friendly eyes as I begged him through bloodied lips to help me in that fucking cell. He'd shown me his back rather than acting, and I'll never give him mine again. I'd rather heal the old fashioned way until I can get to Brennan in Aretia or my limb falls off, whichever comes first.
"Smart decision. You know, I can feel it slip each time you-"
FLASH. CRACK. BOOM.
The second boulder is cleared and charred, and I wait only a few moments to take a breath before striking again to hit the third. My elbow does indeed feel like it's going to explode, my arm definitely not raised as high as when I'm wielding at full strength. Whenever that is, of course.
Two more bolts and my body is telling me I'm slightly past done, but I push out a third and then a weak fourth, both missing my targets as my knees give out and the blessed chill of snow and ice melt away beneath my heated palms as they hit the ground. Darkness edges at the sides of my vision and my mouth waters, and I manage to unsnap the cover over my face as a dry heave brings nothing up, but does stress and nearly subluxate one of my ribs.
I'm cooking in my leathers yet I don't want to unbutton anything else knowing how hard it will be to get it done back up to just fly out, my joints barely holding it together now let alone when needing to do fine dexterous motions like buttons, snaps, and zippers.
"You. Are. Done, Silver One!" It's rare I hear the harsh parental tone directed at me and not at Andarna these days, though I definitely deserve this one.
Leaning back on my heels, I drag deep lungs full of cold, crisp air as the snowflakes that land on my hands sizzle and turn instantly into drops before condensating back into the wind swirling around us. The falling snow has lessened, and through the veils of white I can see the familiar jagged peaks around us leading to the valleys below. Minutes fly by as my body aches on the mountainside, and I realize that I've stopped.
Stopped pushing to learn the next fact.
Stopped pushing to find the next clue leading toward the next mystery.
Stopped pushing myself.
At the moment? I'm far too exhausted to try and backfill the lack of distraction, and as if they've been waiting for years rather than weeks, in creep the thoughts that haunt my every quiet moment.
Xaden should have been back by now. Unless he can't come back. A flood of uncertainty washes over me in a painful clench of every muscle I have.
Was our time in Deverelli truly the last we'd ever spend together?
Had I been foolishly holding onto hope that I'd find a cure on the first isle nation we tried? Am I still devastated that we didn't?
Is it still foolish to hold onto that hope now that I've seen how easily he channels from the source without thought?
Being with me didn't seem to help - it was the opposite. It made everything worse.
I. I made everything worse.
"Be honest with me," I start, the ground shuddering beneath my shaking body as my dragon steps forward, probably to catch me if I tumble off the side of the mountain.
"The Dark One makes his own choices. It has nothing to do with your hope."
"Stop calling him that," I growl aloud, the breath of steam getting blown back into my own face momentarily blinding my goggles. I turn to look up at him as he curls his neck down so I can see his scaled snout, brow, and piercing golden eyes from beneath the foggy layer above.
A brush of warm steam hits me and re-fogs the goggles, and I both hear and feel the deep, comforting rumble that comes from his chest. "Ask your question."
"Never mind. I don't want to." It's as honest as I can be at the moment, and even saying that part out loud has my stomach seizing once more in an attempt to expel the tiny amount of food I forced into myself before Battle Brief today.
"I will be honest."
As if that's ever an issue with Tairn. Wobbling to my feet, I turn fully away from him to look in the opposite direction down the rugged slope to the tops of the trees that grow a hundred feet below us where the tree line begins. The evergreen branches of the lodgepole pines bear drifts of snow but still sway in the wind as if led by an orchestral conductor. The sight should strike me as beautiful, but I let my eyes glaze past.
"I…think I just need you to listen. Or…maybe I just need to talk."
He says nothing, but the rumble is still present as some sort of dragon purr, and I know he already knows what I'm going to say. It's not like the thoughts haven't been swirling around in my head for days - weeks - months. He's never been one to coddle me, but my fierce independence is at war with the woman who just wants to get a hug and be told that everything is going to be okay.
"Deverelli was a disaster, but at least they knew of dragons. However, they're the closest isle kingdom to the continent and the one that had contact with both Poromiel and apparently the royals of Navarre in the last 100 years, so their knowledge of dragons doesn't automatically make their source the irids. There's just as much of a chance that I'm looking in the wrong place as there was when Grady was looking north, and I know that, but…if I know that, why can't I stop hoping I'm right?"
Emotion I've been tamping down bubbles up into my throat, and a firm knot wedges itself at the roof of my mouth. The sight of the forest below blurs behind the glass of my goggles and my control slips.
"Why did he do it, Tairn?" The shuddering breathy sob escapes, tears splash down my cheeks, and the cold mountain wind nips at the trails left behind. My fingers are still warm from wielding, though I can feel the cold leaking into the joints and know that I'll be just as miserable on the flight back as I was on the way here if I don't leave while my body is still flooded with the after effects of Tairn's power.
Yet, I can't move. Despite forcing myself constantly and pushing myself to near burnout here amongst the rocks, near exhaustion so I can fall into a dreamless sleep, and near cross-eyed blindness with every page I scour, I've stopped. And now, I can't restart.
"That's…not the question you've been hiding from."
It's not. I honestly hadn't planned on asking it, and no question is more useless than that one. Xaden pulled from the source. Xaden turned venin. And for the last couple of months, I've been treating it as if he simply had another secret and moved on with how to protect him from others finding out.
"If the bond between Sgaeyl and Xaden is broken," I heave a shuddering breath despite the fact that I'm not speaking aloud. "What happens to us?"
"You don't need to worry about that."
Fine. I guess I'm not the only one who doesn't want real answers. "If Xaden is too far gone and can't come back, how can I still push for a cure?"
He growls, "if one doesn't exist?"
"Is Sgaeyl going to break her bond with Xaden?"
The rumble stops and in a move that I've never seen, my Black morningstartail shifts his weight back and forth. My question has him on edge, but I'm not sure which edge.
"You promised you'd be honest."
"It is not that easy, Silver One. That is not something I can answer, only my mate can."
"She's angry. Xaden says she doesn't speak to him."
"She is well within her right to be angry at the Dark One." I hear a snarl in both my mind and one that rattles the loose stones around my boots.
"Stop. Calling him that."
"You are also within your right to be angry."
Heat begins to rise within me once more, my power swelling with my emotions. I turn my sorrow fury on my dragon. "What good would that do? There's no point in being angry, no cure can come of it, and I know better than to let anger fuel my research. Anger makes me miss things - details - clues that no one else might see. Anger is a detriment."
Everything in my body is shaking and my balled hands are fists at my sides. The rush of power makes me lightheaded and grounded at the same time.
Tairn snarls, his lip curling as he lowers his head to my level. "You are allowed to feel however you should!"
My chin trembles and more tears run to the edge of my chin as I furiously shake my head. I hear my father in my mind.
Anger is the bane of the scribe. Don't fight the problem, Violet, think it into submission. Anger misses details that someone as brilliant as you cannot afford to miss.
Another burst of steam hits my face, this one laced with sulphur. "You have a right, just as I do, to be angry."
I growl right back, "The situation is hard enough without me being needlessly angry over things I can't change!"
The massive head tilts up and away, roaring a blast of fire at the ring of boulders, then in a quick serpentine motion snaps back to face me in challenge.
"At him, Silver One! You. Are Allowed. To be angry, at him!"
The dam breaks and I scream in Tairn's face, "I AM!"
Everything around me in the world goes both impossibly dark and bright at the same time and the shrieking sob that wrenches from my throat hurts in more ways than physical. Gasping between sobs, I rant.
"I'm so…fucking…angry," gasp. "At him and for him," I heave in a shuddering, sobbing inhale. "And…when I'm not angry, I'm scared. I don't know what to do, Tairn. Tell me what to do! Tell me! What do I do, Tairn?"
The bond between us is crackling and powerful, and I feel all that is him against my Archive doors. He's been just as angry, and I'm only now noticing all of his rage - or perhaps he's only now showing me. Either way, my knees buckle and I'm back on the ground, the snow sharp against my cold skin, but I don't care as everything in me goes limp.
Rocking back to my heels as harsh cries tear from my throat, I beg. "Tell me what to do!"
"You already know what you will have to do." His anger is still there, but his voice is stern with a shaky edge to the timbre, as if he's struggling to hold the full force of his feelings back for the first time in his long, superior life.
High in the range above Basgiath, snow alighting on my tear-stained cheeks, I face the sky that is so often my refuge, and grieve.
I grieve for the control I fought so hard to regain only to lose completely.
I grieve for the love that should be mine that I now have to share with power.
I grieve for the choice that will one day land at my feet, and I grieve that I know exactly what choice I will make. That's what's pushing me to never stop. That's what's haunting me every step. That's the lie I tell myself every day.
That I think I don't know what choice I would make.
Tairn intercedes. "But you do, and you have known all along. End the charade."
If you asked Xaden what he would choose, if the options were kill me to save everything or let me live to destroy it all, he'd watch the world burn around us for one last chance to kiss me.
"I don't know what to do."
"You do."
"I don't."
"You. DO."
The slam of power in my mind is back and it makes me flinch. This is raw dominance that he's never deigned to use with me…on me. This isn't Tairn, my curmudgeon of a dragon forced to put up with the whims of a twenty-something year old rider and a nearly three-year-old irid that tests his patience at every turn. This is Tairneanach, son of Murtcuideam and Fiaclanfuil, descended from the cunning Dubhmadinn line - the second largest dragon on the continent, and he's hellbent on reminding me of those facts.
That he chose me is all that keeps fear from my heart as he chuffs another burst of sulphur-laden steam to fog my goggles before reeling back his anger from our bond allowing me to regain some semblance of control over my own emotions.
"Violet Sorrengail, I chose you because you did what was right on the Threshing field. You did what was right in Resson. You did what was right fighting to come back to Basgiath. You were willing to sacrifice yourself to the wardstone to ensure everything went right during that battle, and I trust that you will make the right decision when the question you cannot ask is laid at your feet."
Everything stills between us and I'm left feeling raw both emotionally and physically. I secure the door to my Archives and the power cuts off allowing in the frigid temps, and the shuddering breath I suck in hurts my lungs and throat.
A burst of protective energy wraps around me, and a sulphur-less bit of breath pushes at the loose strands of my hair where they dangle out of my hood. "Knowing what to do will not make it less hard. For that, I wish I could make the choice for you. He has asked it of you, not of me. However, you may ask it of me at any time and I will not question your decision."
Why did that make me feel better? For any rational person, hearing someone say, "hey, if you can't kill your lover, let me know and I'll do it for you," shouldn't be anywhere near a comfort, but…it is.
"Y-you promise? If I can't…you will?"
A massive clawed hand lands before me, the arm angled in a low ramp as he demands I mount so we can leave, but I don't move.
"Tairn."
"I promise, Silver One. If I can take that burden from both of you, I will." It's not hard to know who the other is, and it's a second small comfort to know that Sgaeyl isn't moments away from roasting Xaden alive any more than I am.
Mounting through the aches and fatigue, he flies gently back toward Basgiath while I box up my pain, thoughts, and insecurities so I can be the Violet Sorrengail that everyone, especially Xaden, needs me to be.
…
A/N: Yes, I'm fairly sure throughout the majority of Onyx Storm Violet is in hard denial mode. Xaden seems to arrive at the necessary conclusion long before her, but I feel that there's no way brilliant fucking woman Violet Sorrengail wouldn't have silently struggled with those fears and doubts somewhere in there. And there are enough little time skips and jumps that I said, screw it, I'm putting it right in here.
Hope everyone is alright after Onyx Storm finished with you! 3 Time to start another bout of Empyrean one shots!