Chapter Text
Everything was wrong. She was alive.
Consciousness returned to Violet in painful increments.
First came the light, burning orange behind her closed eyelids. Then came the sensory hell—the unfamiliar texture of a mattress that didn't sag like her one at Basgiath, and sheets that smelled faintly of pine instead of lye. Every single joint in her body throbbed with an unforgiving ache, a brutal reminder of the limits she’d pushed past.
“Vi?”
Stella’s voice fractured the silence. The audible relief in it cut through the fog clouding her mind. “You’re… you’re awake.”
Violet blinked her eyes open, her vision swimming before settling on a ceiling of dark, exposed beams. The room was massive—far too still and airy to be a ward in the Healer’s Quadrant or a dormitory in the riders citadel. Her gaze drifted sideways, seeking a landmark, and stopped on a heavy wooden bookshelf.
Her heart stuttered.
Lined up along the top shelf were dozens of small, intricately detailed wooden carvings. A miniature dragon. A tiny, perfect jasmine flower. They were unmistakable. They were clearly Liam’s handiwork.
Liam.
No. Please, gods, no.
She forced her stiff neck to turn, locking eyes with Stella. The sight of her sister solidified the truth, shattering any lingering hope that it had all been a particularly cruel fever dream. She looked like she was a dead woman walking, her vibrant features drawn and shadowed, as if a piece of her soul had been torn away.
The dam broke, and the memories rushed in, suffocating her.
Venin were real. Wyvern were real. The entire foundation of her life, her mother's principles, the scribes' histories—all of it was a lie. And the man who held her in the dark, the man whose fingers had brushed the hair from her face and promised her a future... was gone.
Liam was gone. And he wasn’t coming back.
The truth settled into her chest like a block of granite, squeezing the air from her lungs. Her lips parted, but no sound came out. The ghost of his touch still felt warm on her skin, making reality freezing by comparison.
Liam. Was. Dead.
“Can I check your side?” Stella asked quietly, the mattress dipping slightly as she sat near her hip.
She nodded numbly and forced her aching arms upward, reaching down with leaden fingers to help pull back the heavy blankets.
Drawing back the covers, Stella carefully untied the silk robe covering the short nightdress someone had changed her into. With slow, deliberate movements, she lifted the hem above her hip. Violet braced herself, looking down and preparing for the worst—expecting the horrific, black tendrils that had corrupted her veins towards the end of the battle.
There was nothing. Just a thin, neat silver line an inch above her hipbone.
A sharp rush of air gushed from Stella’s lungs. “Miraculous.”
“What’s miraculous?” Violet croaked, her gaze fixed on the brand-new scar.
“Water.” Stella’s hands shook with either exhaustion or relief—she didn't have the energy to care which—as she poured a glass from the ceramic pitcher on the bedside table. “Slow sips. I’ve tried to keep you hydrated as best I could, but...”
Her voice trailed off into the heavy silence of the room as Violet forced her stiff muscles to cooperate, pushing herself up into a sitting position. She claimed the glass from Stella's trembling fingers and drank the entire thing down, the cool liquid soothing the raw burn in her throat.
“Thanks,” Violet whispered, handing the empty glass back.
The small physical task was over, leaving them alone with the suffocating weight of everything they hadn't said.
“I’m fine, Stella,” Violet said, the words tasting like ash as she tried to keep the bitterness from her voice. It bled through anyway.
She had been so ready to meet Malek. Ready to cross the veil and finally be reunited with her father, with Liam... and with Brennan. The thought of them waiting for her on the other side had been a strange comfort in the dark. To be pulled back into the broken world felt like a fucked up joke that she’d grown tired of long ago.
Stella laughed, but there was no humour in the sound.
It sounded like something breaking.
“No,” she whispered, watching her with hollow eyes. “No, you’re not.”
The metallic tang of blood filled Violet’s mouth as she bit down on the inside of her bottom lip, looking anywhere but directly at her.
“I thought I was going to lose you, too,” Stella confessed after a moment, the words tearing from her throat in a strangled whisper.
“You aren’t going to lose me.”
Violet rubbed her eyes to the point of genuine pain, ruthlessly forcing the tears back. Keeping her eyelids locked shut, she reached deep down into the centre of her mind, seeking the familiar, rumbling presence of her dragon.
“Tairn?” He was the only one who had actually apologised for the mountain of lies. ”Where are we?”
“Somewhere safe, Silver One,” he said in a gentler voice than he’d ever used.
“Don’t panic. Everything is fine,” Stella said quickly, rushing to fill the silence. Her hands twitched at her sides, her posture stiff with an almost manic energy Violet had never seen in her before. “The mender told me he isn’t entirely sure what lasting effects the venin poison might have. It’s... it's a toxin he’s never encountered before—”
She threw up a hand to cut her off, her gaze sweeping the unfamiliar room.
Panic finally overrode the ache in her joints.
She scrambled backwards, throwing her legs over the edge of the mattress. Her knees nearly buckled under her weight, but she yanked her robe tightly around her nightdress, stumbling blindly towards the massive windows lining the far wall of the bedchamber.
The glass was cool against her palms as she stared out over a sprawling mountain fortress, clinging stubbornly to the sheer rock face. Far below, a valley stretched out, rimmed by a line of charred trees. It looked as though the earth itself had been scorched down to the bare stone, a permanent scar… that looked terrifyingly like what she’d seen in Resson right after Soleil was killed.
But nestled right in the centre of that devastation was a quiet, bustling town.
A town that looked like it was actively clawing itself out of its own grave.
“Vi?” Stella asked hesitantly as she appeared at her side.
Violet’s eyes widened, her chest heaving as her gaze swept over the streets below. Every single structure boasted an identical, vibrant green roof. But the breath froze in her throat as her attention locked onto a massive stone building near the square that didn’t belong to a mountain backwater. The Temple of Amari.
It looked exactly like the illustrations of the temple that had once stood in... Aretia.
But that was impossible. Aretia had been burned six years earlier.
She looked back at the ring of scorched trees, the pieces of the puzzle violently slamming into place.
“Where the fuck are we?” Violet asked, her voice devoid of the warmth she usually reserved for Stella. She didn't look at her. She couldn't. “And don’t you dare lie to me. Not again.”
“You already know,” Stella said so calmly that it infuriated her.
“This looks like Aretia.” Violet gestured sharply towards the glass, her hand trembling against the cool pane. “There’s only one temple with those particular columns. I’ve seen the historical drawings.”
“Indeed.”
“Aretia was burned to the ground,” she pushed, her chest heaving. “I’ve seen those drawings, too—the ones the scribes brought back for the public notices. My mother told me she saw the embers with her own eyes. So where are we?” Her voice rose, fracturing under the strain.
Stella looked down at her boots, unable to face the window or the fury in Violet's gaze. “Aretia.”
Violet glared at her profile. “Rebuilt? Or never burned?”
The silence stretched between them for longer than was comfortable. She knew her well enough to recognise the hesitation; she was either trying to construct a flawless lie, or calculating exactly how much truth she could afford to surrender.
Violet stared at her, eyes full of the kind of accusation that cut deeper than any blade.
The silence became a tangible thing.
The only break was the distant, muffled murmur of voices drifting from the hallway outside, a reminder of a world that hadn't stopped turning even though hers had shattered into a million pieces.
“Did my mother destroy you entirely? Is there anything left of you?” she demanded, searching her face. “Anything that isn’t hers?”
Stella looked at her like she was weighing a choice in her heart, each side heavy and impossible. For one terrifying heartbeat, she looked unmoored, as though she genuinely didn’t know what to say to make the conversation any easier for herself.
She was a pathological liar. A woman who didn’t believe she had to justify herself for anything. Who believed it was weak to be anecdotal. Who wholeheartedly believed it was a mark of wisdom to conceal the past, even if there was nothing to conceal.
A woman's power is found in the half-light. In the half-seen movements of her hand and the unguessed-at expression of her face.
That was what she’d told her once, long ago. She had insisted that it was the absence of facts that truly frightened people; it was the deliberate gap she opened, into which others poured their deepest fears, fantasies, and desperate desires. And she took a twisted kind of pleasure in holding that power over everyone around her.
“Burned,” Stella conceded finally, though the word sounded torn from her throat. Like a forced confession. Like a calculated half-truth that served an agenda only she understood. “And in the process of being rebuilt.”
She tried her best to remain civil. Her best wasn’t very good. “Why the fuck haven’t I read about this?”
It was a stupid question. She realised it the second the words left her mouth. The scribes controlled the history.
Stella opened her mouth to explain, but Violet held up a hand. The gesture was absolute, and Stella went quiet.
Violet turned fully, pointing a trembling finger towards the rebellion relics climbing Stella's arms. “Melgren’s signet. He can’t see the outcome of a battle when more than three of you are together. That’s why you’re not allowed to assemble in groups back at Basgiath.”
“That, and we are currently beneath leadership's notice,” Stella explained, her voice entirely devoid of sentiment. “We aren’t invisible, Violet. We’re simply irrelevant. It’s the reason this scorched patch of earth remains technically in Xaden’s possession. The nobility possess no desire to squander their gold on a ruin, nor do they wish to be taxed on land that yields nothing in return. Eventually, they will look this way. Eventually, we will become a threat they can no longer ignore.”
She paused, her gaze pinning Violet to the spot. “But until that day arrives, let us not waste what little time we have. Ask your questions. I’ll answer within reason.”
Within reason.
She gave a short, dry laugh that caught in her throat. “Your idea of what is reasonable, Stella, has never yet matched the world’s.”
“Because the world mistakes its sentiment for reason,” Stella countered, a ghost of a mocking smile touching her lips. “I simply choose not to let my heart dictate my people’s survival.”
She sounded like a politician. She sounded so entirely detached from her own humanity that she couldn’t even hear how fucking insane she sounded.
Violet grit her teeth, her fingernails digging deep into her palms until the skin threatened to split.
“Is all this original?” she asked, her gaze sweeping over the bedroom like looking at it again would make it make sense. In the flickering mage lights, their shadows looked like monsters on the walls.
“The majority of Riorson House is stone.” Stella spoke as she casually checked a silver pocket watch, the movement fluid and detached, as if she had somewhere infinitely more important to be. “Stone doesn’t burn.”
“Right.”
Violet shifted her weight, her joints protestingly stiff. She didn’t know why, but the cold masonry reminded her of a lesson her father had taught her once, a lifetime ago. People destroy. It was the cruel, unchanging constant of humanity. She had witnessed that truth firsthand—in the violence of the Quadrant, in the ashes of Resson, and in every bloody battlefield report she had ever cataloged.
But the boundaries of her world were shifting.
Humanity destroyed, yes. But they also rebuilt.
In spite of the lies, the loss, and the brewing hostility between them, Stella was still strong enough to lock eyes with her. For a fleeting heartbeat, Violet would have sworn she saw a flicker of recognition in those amethyst depths—a quiet acknowledgment of the shared childhood they had left behind in Morraine.
“I think after everything you’ve witnessed, the question I have to ask before anyone can clarify anything else is simple,” Stella mused, her voice losing its music, coming low from her throat. “Will you stand with us for something bigger than yourself? Or will you repeat the mistakes the Sorrengails have been making for centuries?”
She knew the weight of the axe that hung on her answer. If they let her fly out of Aretia alive, she held enough truth to see them all shorter by a head. Before the games, she had only whispers; now she had everything. Yet she knew she wouldn’t speak them. She couldn’t go back to Navarre’s ledger of lies and pretend any of it was okay. She would not be her mother’s daughter. Not in this.
She couldn't even be like her father. Not anymore.
“I’m in,” she whispered, not meeting her eyes.
Stella said nothing, but she stayed right there, her last bit of warmth in a world turning to dust.
Violet’s entire body stiffened. “Tell me one thing. Right now.”
“If it serves a purpose,” Stella replied, her tone perfectly even.
She glared daggers at her. A dark, twisted impulse flared deep in her chest—she wanted to hurt her. She wanted to fracture Stella's effortless composure so she wouldn’t be the only person in this room on the verge of losing her shit.
As if she’d read her mind, Stella crossed her arms over her chest and arched a single, elegant eyebrow. “Before you try to hurt my feelings, take into consideration that I don’t have any. And you clearly do.”
She grit her teeth so hard her jaw ached. Gods-damned right she wanted to strike a nerve. Fighting with Stella felt so fucking different than fighting with Mira; with Mira, it was a clash of wills and raised voices, but with Stella, it felt like pulling a thread that might unravel them both.
And the truth was, she couldn’t stomach it.
Violet rolled her shoulders and neck, a sickening sequence of pops echoing in the quiet space between them. She forcefully snapped her gaze away, staring at the floorboards before she could spit out a phrase she could never take back.
“Is…” Her shoulders stuttered as she took a sharp, shallow breath. It was another stupid question. She was clearly standing in Liam's bedroom, surrounded by his things, and he was nowhere to be found. She knew the answer. She remembered him fading in her arms as she tried and failed to drag him to Deigh.
But her heart desperately needed to hear it.
“Is Liam really dead?”
A fresh stab of grief pierced her ribs.
Heartbeats passed in suffocating silence. Stella opened her mouth to speak, but the words simply weren't left in the world anymore. Fresh tears welling in her violet eyes finally spilled over, and she aggressively wiped them away with the back of her hand. The vibrant hues of her hair looked dull in the shadow of the room, eclipsed by the horrific, grey handprint blooming across her neck like a brand. It felt unnatural—the reality that she and Liam had been born together, only for her to outlive him.
Instead of speaking, Stella reached into the deep pocket of her flight jacket. Her fingers trembled as she pulled out a palm-sized object and held it out.
It was a freshly finished, intricate wooden carving of Tairn.
“Yes,” she forced out, her voice wavering for the first time. “Liam is dead.”
Violet’s eyes flooded, blinding her as her fingers closed tightly around the small wooden dragon, the carved scales biting into her palm.
“It’s my fault. I asked him… I asked him where Bodhi and Garrick were the night I was attacked. He said Athebyne because I asked him… and then I…”
Her soul fractured all over again, and no matter how violently she swiped at her cheeks, the tears wouldn't stop. “The last thing we did… we argued. The funeral? Is there a—"
“We lit the pyres for him and Soleil yesterday,” Stella whispered apologetically.
Yesterday?
Yesterday.
Liam wasn’t just dead—he was gone.
There was no body to see. No grave to visit. No final chance to say goodbye.
There was absolutely nothing left of him but ash.
“Why didn’t you wait?” she yelled, the words tearing in her throat. “I would’ve—why the fuck didn’t you wait for me to wake up?”
Stella hugged herself instead of answering, wrapping her arms tightly around her chest. It was only then that Violet noticed the flight jacket she was wearing wasn’t hers at all. It was far too big, the leather swallowing her frame. It was Liam’s.
She clearly had no intention of appeasing Malek; she was refusing to let go of her twin, and this bedroom and that oversized jacket were living proof of it.
Despite all of her faults, she couldn’t blame her for that.
Violet swallowed the lump in her throat, trying to find her footing. “Give me a second to get dressed, and then we’ll talk properly—"
A frantic knock at the door behind them cut her off.
“Stella!” Bodhi yelled from the corridor, his voice muffled by the thick timber. “Uh, I think Iz is reaching the limit on how long she’s willing to be separated from you. Mainly because Garrick is currently groaning on the floor… and by the looks of it, he may never have children.”
“You can’t just tell her like that!” Imogen’s voice barked, followed instantly by a sharp yelp of pain from Bodhi. “Stella, she’s busting balls out here.”
“How the fuck was that better?” Bodhi huffed.
Despite the crushing weight in her chest, Violet laughed, but the humour died when she looked back at Stella, who didn’t so much as crack a smile.
Instead, she looked like she was barely holding her own skin together, being pulled in a dozen different directions at once. Or maybe, Violet realised with a sickening lurch of her stomach, she just couldn’t bear to be in the same room as the woman whose reckless curiosity and blind trust of a memory reader had killed her twin brother.
Yes, Stella had lied to her. But what Violet had done by asking questions and then blindly trusting Dain was infinitely worse.
For a long moment, they stood there in the silence, staring at each other.
Despite all the differences between them, they had something in common. They used their pain to destroy.
Violet had done things—terrible, reckless things—and she knew down to her bones that she didn’t deserve forgiveness. Yet, looking into her eyes, she saw it anyway. Forgiveness. It was right there, offering a lifeline she had no right to claim.
But she felt absolutely nothing. The forgiveness washed over her like cold water on stone. She didn’t want it. She didn’t deserve it.
She was too hollow to hold it.
“Go,” she said tightly, unable to summon the strength to frown.
“I have an Assembly meeting, and Izzy is—"
Stella cut herself off, pivoting towards the door before Violet could demand to know what an Assembly meeting even meant. Her ignorance was becoming a theme, she realised, watching as she paused at the threshold, her hand on the iron latch.
“The bathing chamber is through that door,” Stella added, nodding towards a smaller archway in the stone. “Imogen will be waiting for you outside. We’ll talk once you’ve bathed and had something to eat. But I have work to do. It’s not the kind of thing I can skip.”
Without another word, Stella slipped out into the corridor. Before the door had even fully closed behind her, the sharp edge instantly evaporated from her voice, shifting seamlessly into a soft, comforting coo meant entirely for her daughter’s sake.
Gods, she lies so easily.
Left completely alone, Violet stood in the centre of Liam’s room like a statue. Her gaze drifted aimlessly across the grand landscape paintings lining the stone walls, but froze at the sight of a small sketch framed on the bedside table.
It was Liam and his family.
He was just a young boy in the drawing, sitting between his two sisters. Even then, Stella stuck out like a vibrant sore thumb with her two-toned hair and striking eyes. Sloane shared Liam's soft colouring and his gentle features. Standing proudly behind the three children were their parents: Lord Isaac Mairi and the infamous Colonel. Stella had clearly inherited that fierce, ginger hair directly from her mother.
Violet stared at the smiling faces. It was a beautiful memory, but it felt like a blow to the chest. Everything in the room was just another thing he had kept from her. Another lie by omission.
She hated herself for the surge of anger that flared up inside her. He had died saving her life. He had sacrificed everything for her, and she was still standing in his bedroom, furious at his ghost.
They were supposed to have time.
Liam had promised her. He had looked her in the eyes before the sky fell down on their heads and promised he would tell her everything once the battle was over. There had been such a sense of possibility when he said it.
Her mind drifted helplessly to the lakeside outside Athebyne. She remembered the ache of happiness that had bloomed in her chest when he had dropped to his knees, his rough hands gently massaging the stiffness from her legs. She remembered watching the sunlight catch the gold in his hair, thinking to herself: So this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts.
She had genuinely believed there would always be more.
It hadn't been the beginning of anything. It was happiness. It was the entire destination, right there in the grass by the water, and she had wasted it looking towards a future that would never exist.
She had missed it.
With trembling hands, she carefully set the carved dragon down on the desk. It rested on top of a heavy book about carving large wooden sculptures and pieces of furniture with mechanical tools.
The book had been left face down, the spine cracked open. Like he had just stepped away for a moment. Like she could expect him to walk back through that door with a cup of coffee in his hands, sit in his chair, and finish the chapter.
But he wasn't coming back.
And she’d never see him again.
Another insistent knock rattled the heavy wood of the door, shattering the silence.
A sudden, ugly surge of anger bubbled up inside her chest. She didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or hurl a bolt of lightning at the door. What if it’s going to be like this for the rest of my life? She wondered. Fight after fight, barely getting any peace or alone time to recover. What if I’m going to have to act like I’m stronger than I am forever?
“What?” Violet demanded, her voice cracking. “What do you want, Imogen?”
The heavy latch clicked, and the door swung inward on quiet hinges.
“It isn’t Imogen, Little Sister,” a voice murmured.
The words cut through the room like a physical blow. The cadence, the familiar, low warmth of the tone—it was a sound she had buried six years ago.
The air froze in Violet's lungs. The room tilted violently on its axis as her gaze locked onto the man standing in the threshold. Her mind violently rejected the image of his amber eyes, her brain short-circuiting as it tried to reconcile the death notice she had memorised with the flesh-and-blood reality in front of her.
“Brennan?”
He grinned, a familiar, easy tilt of his lips, and opened his arms wide.
“Welcome to the revolution, Violet.”