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Sloane knew Dain Aetos would have her ass for this, but she'd promised Aaric, and a Mairi kept their promises.
"You certainly wouldn't mind it," Thoirt supplied helpfully.
Sloane groaned as she dismounted, infuriatingly aware of Dain—at some point this year, she'd stupidly started to think of him as Dain, and not just Aetos—dismounting from Cath behind her. "Shut up."
She hurried towards Violet, where she knelt on the ground next to Brennan Sorrengail—not Aisereigh, like she'd initially learned when the majority of the quadrant left Basgiath last year.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" Xaden called.
"Following her ass," Dain replied, and Sloane ignored the irritation in his voice; her promise to Aaric was more important than whatever Dain thought.
It wasn't, a small voice whispered inside her head, you care far too much about what he thinks of you.
Sloane almost wished it was Thoirt, so she could at least tell her to shut up again; it was much more difficult to tell one's subconscious to shut up.
"She's under my command, and Cath alerted me the second they crossed the wards against orders," Dain continued.
Yeah, he was definitely pissed.
Sloane ignored him and continued towards Violet, fishing out the tube Aaric had handed her from the inner pocket of her flight jacket. "Aaric told me you'd need this—"
The words died in her throat as she saw Mira Sorrengail bleeding out from a jagged gash in her throat, her limp head resting in Violet's lap.
Fuck.
"Please," Violet begged, tears pooling in her eyes.
Sloane could count on one hand the interactions she'd had with Mira, but the desperation in Violet's gaze, in her voice, made her pause. Was Violet really asking her to…?
"Mira? Oh shit," Dain said, dropping to his knees next to Violet.
"Please," Violet begged her again. "Brennan needs more power, and we're going to lose her."
Something sank inside Sloane. She hated her signet, even with Thoirt's constant reassurance that siphoning was good and didn't just suck the life from other people's undeserving parents, no matter how much of a bitch they were.
But she didn't know how to fix this, or where to even begin.
"I don't know how," she admitted. "When your m—" Sloane didn't want to think about Lilith Sorrengail, or how her power had felt as she'd siphoned her life force into the wardstone at Basgiath. "Transferring is different than imbuing. I don't know much, but I do know that."
She didn't bother to add that she'd learned that particular lesson against her will on Solstice.
Dain met her eyes then, and Sloane couldn't look away if she wanted to. She didn't even hear what Bodhi said behind her, she only heard Dain's voice, strong and steady, as he said, "Try."
He pulled his sleeve up, exposing the gray handprint that Barlowe guy had left on him last Solstice. "It's dangerous to use your own power if you haven't trained, so take mine," Dain continued. "I'm the only one here who doesn't have to wield today. Just try."
How did he know more about her signet than she did? And why did it make a small kernel of warmth bloom inside her? It was one thing to find him attractive—that was simply stating an objective fact—but another to feel like he might care about her.
Sloane knelt next to him, keeping her eyes on that ominous handprint. Would siphoning from him feel like being drained? Was she really no better than the venin she'd been terrified of since she was a child?
She had so many questions, and no answers.
"One hand on my wrist," Dain said gently.
But touching his wrist would mean touching that gray handprint, siphoning from him through the exact spot he'd almost been drained from. "I don't want to do that. Become that."
She didn't want to drain Dain, and she didn't want to take so much power that she killed him. Sloane didn't think she could do it, and Mira Sorrengail would die because of it.
"You won't," Dain said firmly. "You can hate me later, but trust me now or she dies."
The thought of someone's sibling dying, of someone suffering from the same pain of losing their sibling that was all too familiar to Sloane propelled her hand forward, and she wrapped her fingers around his wrist, covering the handprint with her own.
Even touching him like this, she could feel just how extensive his well of power was, how deep it truly went. It was… exhilarating.
And terrifying.
She swallowed. "Someone like you shouldn't have this much power." Especially not someone with a self-contained mind signet.
Dain's eyes shone with something that looked like understanding. "It's a good thing for Mira that I do." He glanced at Brennan. "Put your other hand anywhere his skin his exposed."
Sloane had to unwrap her fingers from the package she'd been gripping tightly, and her fingers ached once they were free to move. The closest and most obvious spot was the back of Brennan's neck, so she settled her hand there, a link between Dain and the mender.
"Eyes here," Dain ordered.
Despite the circumstances, Sloane still felt her cheeks heat at the command. Gods, how embarrassing that her wingleader ordering her around was what got her going, even in the middle of a battlefield.
"Pull from the excess you feel in me," he continued, his brown eyes never straying once from hers, "and push to the deficit in him. You're not a weapon of destruction. You're not venin. You're the artery power chooses to flow through. You're life."
It was as if he knew exactly what to say to soothe her fears, to address the thoughts that kept her awake at night.
She was life.
But Sloane didn't feel much like life when Dain flinched as she began to pull from his power. "I'm going to hurt you."
"Gods, don't I know it," Dain said softly. It felt like a confession, something only for the two of them. He didn't sound mad. And his face was earnest, like he was alright with this, with the pain she was going to cause him. "But you're not going to kill me, no matter how badly you want to. Now do it."
That was the funniest part, because killing Dain was the last thing she wanted to do. Somewhere in the last year, he'd gone from someone she hated vehemently to… whatever she felt now.
And no matter how much she brushed them off, she always wound up following his orders.
So she pulled, just as he told her to.
"That's it, Sloane," Dain murmured. His brown eyes held hers, and she had to close her eyes to get away from what she saw in them, from the heat they stoked to life inside her.
Sloane focused intently on that excess of power inside Dain, on pushing it towards the deficit in Brennan, and tried to avoid letting her mind wander, where it would inevitably think about how much she liked his orders and both obeying and disobeying them.
"Focus, young one," Thoirt chided gently, and Sloane listened without complaint for once.
Her fingers tightened around Dain's wrist, and his jaw clenched as she kept pulling. She wanted to stop siphoning—stop hurting him—but he had accepted the pain… he'd told her as much.
Violet murmured something behind her, and Brennan replied, "It's messy, but she's alive. Thank you, Mairi."
Sloane dropped her hands then, even as one ached to stay wrapped around Dain's wrist and prolong the connection between them. "She'll be alright?"
"Thanks to you," Violet said.
Sloane sighed with relief. It was strange, but it felt like the arbitrary scale in her soul was balanced now: one Sorrengail life taken, and another saved.
Dain gripped his wrist, rubbing at the gray skin, and she wanted so badly to touch him again, to feel his warm skin underneath hers. All she had to do was reach for him again and—
"You alright, Aetos?" Brennan called, and it snapped Sloane out of her reverie.
Fuck. She shouldn't be having thoughts like these, not when Dain was still the monster who had played a role in Liam's death, even if he'd proven to be more man than monster over the past year.
"I'm good," Dain replied, his voice tense.
"You both have to go," Violet said, though she spoke to Xaden and Dain, not Sloane. "They'll be out of cross-bolts soon."
Dain nodded and stood, and held out his hand to Sloane.
She eyed it, and realized she couldn't let herself take his hand, because she'd want to keep taking it if she did, and she couldn't do that. She couldn't weaken herself like that.
"Fuck off, Aetos," she huffed instead as she rose to her feet, and shoved away whatever delusional feelings she carried for him against her better judgment.
Dain looked at her, and his expression was unreadable. "Get back across the wards, Mairi, and stay there."
Now, this she could work with.
She turned, striding back to Thoirt, and raised her middle finger to him, falling back into the antagonistic first-year role she'd been playing for him all year.
"You did well," Thoirt said as Sloane mounted her.
Sloane rolled her eyes, but still said a quiet, "Thanks," as Thoirt began to beat her wings, flying back to their posting behind the wards.
She didn't look behind her as Cath, and her rider, flew in the opposite direction.
And she didn't acknowledge the fear taking root inside her as she raced away from Dain and towards whatever horrors lay ahead of her.