Onyx Storm (The Empyrean Book 3)

In a culture that worships the goddess of war exclusively, blood is the preferred sacrifice and cowardice is the ultimate sin.

—Unnbriel: Isle of Dunne by Second Lieutenant Asher Daxton

It takes ten days to put plans in motion and get everything together, and the time wears on me like the steady drip of water in the interrogation chamber, grating on my very last nerve. I sit through every class as instructed and practice wielding until my arms drop from exhaustion, but I can’t quit watching Xaden’s eyes in case their flecks change back to gold whenever I see him during Signet Sparring.

They never do.

By the time most of us have gathered on the flight field in the foggy predawn hours of the first Saturday of March, my anxiety to get moving feels like insects under my skin. I hate that we’ve lied to Halden that this is only the Unnbriel trip, but there’s a growing part of me that just doesn’t care.

He’s a fucking liability.

After a surprisingly easy discussion with Cat, our squad has grown to include Trager and Maren—partially because of Trager’s healing training, but more so we can split if we need to. Given the look on Mira’s face as those in our squad approach the lines of waiting gryphons and dragons, she’s not too pleased about the development. Guess I forgot to mention that part in my missive.

“Where have you been?” I ask, breaking away from the group in hopes of getting any form of privacy. They quickly disappear into the thick fog.

“On leave,” she answers. “While you’ve been back here making plans to disobey direct orders from the Senarium, which of course is your prerogative as mission commander.” She glances at the oversize pack currently murdering my spine, then the one sitting at her feet. “The missives were clever. Subtle, even. The packs? Not so much.”

“The fact that you were on leave was all Panchek would tell me when I asked how to get a letter to you. You disappeared.” My eyes narrow and I exhale a puff of steam into the freezing air. “And we can’t help the size of our packs when we have to carry—”

“Are you worried about not getting enough supplies in Deverelli?” Halden asks from behind me.

Mira quirks an eyebrow upward, managing to say I told you so without moving her mouth.

“More worried you’re going to fuck something up again,” Xaden remarks, and I pivot to see him walking toward us with Garrick out of the mist.

Halden’s spine stiffens. “You don’t get to talk to me like that, Riorson.”

“Oh, good. I was wondering when you two would start arguing.” Mira folds her arms in front of her chest.

“Or you’ll what? Get yourself banned from another isle? Sit off the coast on Tecarus’s ship? You’re already dead weight, Your Highness. Are you really going to be a detriment, too?” Xaden stops at my side but keeps his hands to himself, just like he’s done since he returned. “Everyone here?”

“Dain is on his way.”

“I’m not going to apologize for conducting Navarrian business while in Deverelli—” Halden starts.

“How about apologizing for keeping mission-essential information from those of us responsible for the fucking mission?” Xaden counters, stepping into Halden’s space, shadows swelling around his feet. “If it wasn’t for us, you’d be dead.”

Shit.

I glance over at Garrick, who looks back at me like I’m the one supposed to do something.

“Let him kill the prince,” Andarna suggests, and I hear her halter jingle about twenty feet behind me. “He does not represent us well.”

“He will not be a problem,” Tairn assures us.

If only I felt half as certain.

“Well, we’re off to a great start,” Drake notes, sauntering by on his way to the line of gryphons, where the other fliers wait in the heavy fog. I can barely see their shapes from here.

“Get out of my face,” Halden orders.

“Must kill you that you can’t make me.” A corner of Xaden’s mouth rises. “Why don’t you scurry into your little basket?”

“Fuck off.” Halden’s cheeks redden, but he retreats a single step.

“I honestly don’t care if you kill him,” I say to Xaden down the bond, “but you will. Wasn’t that your line when I nearly took off Cat’s head in Aretia?”

“He’s going to get you killed,” Xaden retorts. “This isn’t going to work.”

“I’m not dying on Halden’s account.”

Ridoc walks out of the fog from my left, takes one look at Halden and Xaden, and makes a beeline for my side. “Kind of feels like Threshing, doesn’t it? Exciting. Terrifying. We know we have to go, but there’s every chance we’re about to have our asses handed to us.”

“I did not enjoy flying straight through to Athebyne,” Halden announces into the fog. “We’ll only fly halfway today—”

Fog swirls with the beat of another pair of wings, and the ground shudders as a dragon lands to the left, just behind Ridoc.

Halden gawks and stumbles backward.

The fog obscures all but the outline of claws until the dragon lowers his blue snout to ground level and chuffs a deep breath in Halden’s direction.

What the fuck is Molvic…

My stomach lurches.

“I told you the firstborn would not be an issue,” Tairn reminds me.

“Molvic?” Ridoc leans forward slightly, like there’s any mistaking the scar that runs across the Blue Clubtail’s snout.

“No!” I roll my shoulders, drop my pack, and run past Xaden and Halden, straight into the fog. “Don’t do this!” I make it less than thirty feet before I find him walking toward us at Dain’s side.

“I’m not going to sit aside and watch while Halden gets you all killed,” Aaric says, tugging the strap of his rucksack to tighten it. For Dunne’s sake, he doesn’t even have a battle-ready flight jacket.

“This isn’t what you want,” I remind him. “Don’t let your brother’s actions force your hand”—I swing a pointing finger at Dain—“and don’t you let him do it!”

Dain puts both hands up, palms outward at his chest. “How in all that’s holy am I to blame for this?”

I fumble for an answer. “He’s a first-year and you’re the wingleader!”

Dain rubs the bridge of his nose and pushes his fingers outward, over the heavy, dark circles under his eyes. “Vi, I think he outranks me in this department.”

“You sure you want to do this?” Xaden asks, so close I can suddenly feel the warmth of him at my back.

“Want? No.” Aaric shakes his head. “But I need to. And as much as I don’t mind Halden making your life fucking miserable, I do mind him condemning the Continent to death by dark wielder because he can’t take a deep breath and count to three when he gets mad.”

“Sounds great to me.” Xaden’s hand brushes the small of my back. “You good with this?” He glances my way.

I study the set of Aaric’s chin and the determination in his green eyes, then nod in defeat. “We’re all allowed to make our own choices, and if this is yours, I’ll support it.”

Aaric nods, and Xaden and I fall into step with him and Dain, heading for our dragons…and Halden.

“Looks like you won’t be needing that basket after all,” Xaden says as we make it back to where Mira waits with Ridoc, Garrick, and Halden. “We found ourselves another prince.”

Halden’s jaw hits the ground as his widened gaze locks on his little brother.

“Don’t look so surprised,” Aaric says in greeting.

“Don’t look…” Halden shakes his head slowly. “You’ve let us run all over this kingdom searching brothels and gaming houses for you, and all the while, you’ve been here?”

“The fact that you went searching your favorite haunts for me is just the start of where you went wrong,” Aaric replies.

“You’re a rider?” Halden shouts.

“As the dragon would imply.” Ridoc points to Molvic.

“He could have let you think he was dead,” Mira mutters.

“He’s going to be when our father hears—” Halden starts.

“Fuck off and tell him.” Aaric shrugs. “Or don’t. I really don’t care. I crossed the parapet because I was sick of sitting by knowing you and Dad weren’t going to do shit about the dark wielders, and I’m not going to sit by now and watch you run our only hope into the ground. I’ll be going as the royal representative.”

Halden stiffens. “Absolutely not, Cam.”

“He goes by Aaric, and he absolutely will,” I counter, earning myself a menacing glare from my ex that doesn’t even faze me. “You’re banned from Deverelli and have the temper of a two-year-old on a good day, Halden. Aaric is a rider. He’ll keep up with us in the air and on the ground, and having been in his squad for the last eight months, I can promise you that he knows how to keep his shit together when things go badly.”

Halden’s glare shifts to Aaric. “It was you who breached the royal vault.”

“Yes.” Aaric nods.

“Father blamed me.” Halden takes a step forward, and a tiny twinge of guilt nips the back of my neck, since our past is most likely the reason he took the heat. “Did you stay in Basgiath? Or fly with the rebels?”

“You already know the answer,” Aaric replies.

Halden turns as red as Sliseag. “Go back to the quadrant. I’ll be the only royal—”

“Good luck getting a gryphon to carry your basket again,” Aaric says, then walks toward Molvic without another word.

“Well, as awkward as this has been…” Ridoc lifts his brows.

“I’m sure you know your way off the flight field,” Xaden says to Halden, but the prince’s gaze is locked on the claws of the blue dragon.

“Violet.” Halden lowers his voice and slowly looks my way. The plea in his eyes hits me straight in the chest.

“I won’t let anything happen to him,” I promise.

Halden nods once. “I’ll hold you to it.” He looks at each of us in turn, and the promise morphs into a threat. “All of you.”

• • •

We spend a day at Athebyne and another at Cordyn, resting the gryphons between legs of the journey. They’re far less winded without the baskets to carry, but without magic to bolster their strength, we need to take two days to rest in Deverelli before continuing onward.

That second day convinces Mira of what she’d already guessed on our first trip: some runes work off the Continent. Now to narrow down which ones and figure out why. We’re each supplied with a handful of multicolored quartz disks to test. I’m grateful not to be sunburned—though I can’t tell if it’s the amethyst disk or the same rune on one of the daggers Xaden gave me last year—but annoyed to all shit that runes are the only thing Mira is willing to talk to me about.

The southwestern Deverelli coastline falls away in the early hours of the eighth day of the trip, and the color shifts from aqua to midnight blue as we head over the open sea.

And that’s all I see on the horizon—water.

If it weren’t for ships beneath us making their own journeys, I’d be more than a little apprehensive about flying into nothingness.

“Save your nerves for when we reach Unnbriel in nine hours,” Tairn tells me. “And save yours for when the winds shift,” he instructs Andarna, who’s clipped in below.

Gods, I hope the maps my father included are accurate. Dragons aren’t exactly boats. They can’t just float if they get tired, and nine hours from now will put our total flight time at twelve.

Gryphons aren’t fond of anything over eight.

The air current shifts sometime around noon, giving us a tailwind as the clouds clear, and Andarna relishes in her freedom unclipped from Tairn, off to his side. Her wingbeats are strong, but the difference in her left wing is far more visible without magic for strength. Each beat strains the tendons to gain full extension, and it isn’t long before she’s dipping slightly.

Worry wraps her prickly fingers around my throat when Andarna pitches in a gust, but I keep my mouth shut as she climbs back into formation.

“Do not lose altitude,” Tairn warns her. “There is no telling what weaponry arms the merchant vessels beneath us.”

“Do you ever tire of your own voice?” she questions, soaring a little closer to Sgaeyl.

“Never,” he assures her.

With nothing to do for the next eight hours but hold on, I listen as Tairn recites the lore of his breed from the first of his line up to Thareux, the first black dragon to ever successfully bond, back during the Great War, then stops.

Apparently the story is no longer worth telling once humans are involved.

The sun has slid into the angles of afternoon by the time Tairn catches sight of land.

“Thirty minutes!” he announces to Andarna and me, then lets loose a roar that vibrates my teeth to alert the others.

I pivot in the saddle to check our formation. Everyone is where they should be, with the exception of Kiralair, who is drifting back from her guarded position in the center, toward Aotrom’s snout. “Just in time, too. Kiralair is fading.”

“Had to bring the gryphons,” Tairn mutters as I turn forward again and the hilly coastline comes into view.

The sea transitions from dark blue to white-capped teal crashing on cream-colored beaches along what appears to be a port city a few miles in front of us.

“That must be Soneram.” We’ve definitely found the isle of Dunne. I can make out the tiered walls of defenses—including cross-bolts—from here, and they haven’t changed much from what my father detailed in his drawings. “Let’s avoid being skewered, shall we?” I ask Tairn.

Tairn huffs and surges ahead of the others, then banks right and leads our formation along the northeastern shoreline, giving the port city a wide berth.

I block the afternoon sun with a hand on my forehead and scan the coast, noting the end of the city walls. “There’s another town in two or three miles, then nothing for at least forty.”

As long as they haven’t expanded in the thirty-plus years since my father wrote his book.

We pass the town and its substantial fortifications, and after we travel another ten minutes without sight of habitation, Tairn turns inland, breaking formation and flying ahead of the others.

“Stay with Sgaeyl,” he orders Andarna.

Andarna huffs in annoyance.

“Stick to the plan,” I remind her.

“I loathe the plan,” she replies.

The beaches are rockier here, the narrow strip of sand strewn with boulders before it gives way to hills of thick vegetation that roll as far as I can see.

All of it is the same muted green as Deverelli.

“That one,” Tairn says, locating a suitably large clearing about halfway up a hillside a few miles inland from the coast, and after a perimeter sweep, we finally land in the dead center of the meadow.

Birds launch from the trees in a riot of color, quickly fleeing.

A low rumble resonates through Tairn, not quite powerful enough to be a growl but definitely loud enough to warn anything that might consider making us dinner as he slowly rotates, scanning the edges of the trees and sweeping his tail through the waist-high grass.

“This will do,” he says once he’s completed a turn.

Moments later, the rest appear overhead, Sgaeyl leading formation. Their wings cast shade over the clearing momentarily, flaring to slow their descent before they land around us.

The ground shudders as they make impact, Andarna to the right and Sgaeyl to our left. Teine, Aotrom, Cath, Chradh, and Molvic touch down behind us, and the gryphons fill in the spaces as we form a large circle.

Every set of teeth and talons faces the trees.

“Hear that?” Tairn lowers his head and stalks forward.

The jungle around us is unnaturally silent. “The animals here recognize you as predators, that’s for sure.”

“Good.” He dips his shoulder and I start the process of dismounting, leaving all but the essentials strapped behind the seat of my saddle.

Everyone strips down to our undershirts—or in my case, my armor—to accommodate the suffocating heat and humidity that rivals Deverelli, and then we make quick work of securing the site and locating a nearby stream for fresh water. Then Cat and Trager take off into the woods to hunt while half the riot launches to do the same.

“We’re alone for now, but we won’t be for long,” Mira says as Teine follows Tairn and Aotrom into the sky. “Someone will see them.”

“Good. Once Aaric meets with their queen, we can move on.” I skim my hand over the pale green meadow grass and pick up a sizable rock to line the firepit with. “Chances of an alliance here are slim. Given how painful it is for the riot to be separated from magic, I doubt Andarna’s kind settled here.”

“What if they learned to live without magic?” Mira asks, rotating a beaded bracelet of what looks like black tourmaline on her wrist and watching Ridoc and Garrick build a fire as Dain constructs a cooking spit with Maren and Aaric.

“I don’t know if they can,” I admit softly, my eye catching on the bracelet. Something about the knotwork holding the metallic beads tickles the back of my brain, and I swear I can smell parchment for the smallest of seconds before I look away. “Tairn isn’t exactly offering up details on how it affects their lifespan.”

“Are he and Sgaeyl having some kind of mate drama?” Mira picks up a rock of her own.

“Not that I know of. Why?” I ask, and we start back toward the center of the clearing.

“They haven’t hunted together the entire trip.” She tucks her stone under her arm and picks up another.

I glance across the field, where Xaden walks patrol with Drake near Sgaeyl and Andarna. “They think one of them should always be with the group.” It’s as close to the truth as I’m going to get with her.

She glances at me like she can see right through the half truth.

Cue change of subject.

“Where did you go on leave?” I ask her.

Her mouth purses, like she’s deciding. “I went to see Grandmother.”

“You flew to Deaconshire?” I mean, that’s a choice, I guess.

“You think I took personal leave to visit a burial ground?” She side-eyes me.

My eyebrows try their damnedest to reach my hairline. “You went to see Grandma Niara?” I end on a whisper.

Mira rolls her eyes. “You don’t have to whisper. Our parents can’t hear you.”

I’m tempted to check our surroundings just to be sure. “She stopped talking to Mom and Dad…” I shake my head. “It must have been before I was born because I don’t even remember her. Something to do with Dad marrying Mom, right?”

Mira shakes her head. “You were a toddler,” she says. “Right around the age where your hair was coming in thick enough to pull into a little ponytail.” She smiles at the memory, but it slips. “And it wasn’t Grandma Niara who ended communication. Turns out it was the other way around.”

“You know what happened, don’t you?” Envy stabs quick and deep. Mom and Dad almost never spoke of his family. Is that where the bracelet came from?

“You should go up to Luceras.” She looks at me with the oddest combination of worry and dread, her mouth tightening. “Talk to her yourself.”

“With all the leave I get before graduation?”

“Excellent point.” She scours the field for another rock.

Just not excellent enough for her to tell me. Fine. If the last year has taught me anything, it’s that we’re all entitled to our secrets. But it’s my family, too.

“I brought Dad’s books in case you want to read them.” I offer another subject change and start looking for firepit rocks again. The ground is firm below our feet, so at least we won’t be sleeping in mud.

Mira’s brow knits.

“They mostly cover customs,” I blurt. “But he devotes an entire chapter in every book to the unique flora and fauna of every isle. Very thorough.” My own forehead puckers. I’m babbling, but I can’t help trying to find something that bridges the space I can feel expanding between us. “Did Grandma Niara say how he found time to study things like the migratory patterns of terns and errisbirds? Or Fallorinia moths? He spends three pages talking about companion planting breeson root and kellenweed, then goes off about zakia berries and how if the birds migrate to Hedotis too late, they’re overripe and the flock drops dead, their little yellow beaks stained blue.”

“Thank you, but no. That sounds awful.” She stiffens and shifts so both rocks are in her arms.

I clutch my rock. “Did Grandma Niara know he studied the isles?”

Her lips part, but then she looks away. “She knew. And he left the books for you alone, remember? I certainly don’t need to know about bird migration or moths.”

“Mira—” Fuck.

She quickens her pace, leaving me behind, and I blow out a slow sigh.

“That was embarrassing to listen to. Could you make it any more awkward?” Andarna chides.

“Go hunt something.”

We set up camp with one eye on the forest at all times, cooking the rabbits Trager and Cat bring back, laying out bedrolls around the fire, and assigning watches before getting to sleep, encircled by two dragons and a matching number of gryphons at all times while the others accompany their riders and fliers on watch.

I take first with Maren and Drake, who I learn has a sarcastic sense of humor to rival Ridoc’s.

Xaden takes second with Mira and Garrick.

The stars shine bright when Xaden finally slides under the blankets, fully clothed all the way to his boots just like I am. He wraps his arm around my waist, then tugs my back against his chest. I smile, half asleep, then burrow closer. Wood crashes, and I blink my eyes open as Dain throws another piece of timber onto the dying blaze, stoking the fire.

“Anything?” I whisper.

“Not yet,” Xaden says against my ear, curling his body around mine, and any chill he’s picked up on patrol is quickly warmed away. “They have to go.”

I nod and fight the dread taking root in my stomach. Being bait settles like curdled milk.

He presses a kiss behind my ear, and his breathing evens out behind me.

“Wait for sunrise to disappear,” I tell Tairn, already sinking into sleep. “He needs as much rest as we can give him.” Unnbriel is all about trial by combat, and he’s the best among us.

Tairn grumbles his assent.

“Rise!” Tairn shouts what feels like an instant later, and my eyes spring open to see a line of pink and orange gracing the horizon.

I suck in a startled breath, and Xaden’s hand splays over my hip, holding me in place. Grass rustles rhythmically behind us, and my heart starts to pound. This would be a great time to access that bond we share. My right hand fists the blankets that cover us, and Xaden’s hand slips to my upper thigh sheath.

“It was a mistake to come,” a man says in the common language, his voice low as he leans over us. “Your magic won’t help you here, fire-bringer.”

I rip back the blankets and Xaden draws my dagger, bringing it to the edge of the man’s throat in a single smooth motion.

The soldier’s brown eyes widen as I palm my next dagger and glance over his leather armor, spotting the weak joints at his elbows and beneath his arms. It’s been dyed the same pale green as the leaves on the trees, and an emblem of two crossed swords over a horseshoe is stamped across his chest plate.

“That’s fine.” Xaden sits up slowly, keeping the dagger’s edge at the base of the soldier’s throat as he retreats. “We brought blades.”