fourth wing xadens pov

chapter 26

Chapter 26: Lightning

We’ve been in the air for hours, and I’m completely drained. Though my body still clings tightly to Sgaeyl’s pommel, twisting through spiralling dives that would unseat other riders, my shadows are frantically searching for updates on Violet and it’s growing increasingly hard to concentrate. A feeling of uneasiness prickles under my skin.

We hover in the air, Sgaeyl’s huge, beating wings forcing the treetops to bow backwards, keeping us suspended for one beat, two, three. And then the sky cracks apart.

A giant split of white bright light tears from the darkest point of the cloud storm, crackling veins of energy spilling out behind it and illuminating the shape of each cloud, each shadow. And like it’s been yanked from the depths of the sky, lightning shoots for the ground at an unnatural angle, snapping and pulling back on itself, fighting to strike true. It cracks into one of the practice towers, blowing up the bricks and cliff-face on impact, incinerating the trees lining it on every side.

The intensity of the strike leaves me breathless. This isn’t some first-year signet revealing itself; this is raw power unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It feels like the answer to a question I never dared to ask.

Violet. I need to get to Violet.

Sgaeyl is diving for the ground before I can say a word.

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There are too many voices for my shadows to pick out more than snippets, impossible to distinguish fact from fiction. Barlowe dead. Mairi dead. Sorrengail injured. There’s so much fucking noise I can’t sieve through it.

“Deigh says Liam’s okay, injured but okay,” Sgaeyl reports and relief washes through me. But I don’t answer, desperately trying to pick up on what’s going on in the field below me.

Just impossibly fast. Her signet backlashed. Lightning. Heard he pulled her off her dragon. They’re not going to make it.

Riders are running everywhere in the aftermath, captured flags waving like banners, dragons landing in all corners of the flight field. It’s chaos.

“Where the fuck are they?” I roar at Sgaeyl as we bank low over the field, circling and searching, my head scanning in every direction for Tairn’s wings and Andarna’s unmissable golden feathers.

“I… I don’t know.”

“Well, find him!” I shout.

“He’s not answering.”

My world falls out from under me. “Is she – ?”

“They’re alive, Xaden. I’m certain. He’s just… not answering.”

We bank back along the hillside, returning to loop back over the flight field. An entire strip of forest is covered in rubble, smoke still rising from scorched trees that didn’t succumb to the avalanche.

“There!” I shout, spotting a flash of gold wings rising from the melee of riders and dragons on the far corner of the field. Andarna.

Sgaeyl banks hard to make a sharp landing, roaring at a Green Clubtail who had the nerve to be where she suddenly needed to be. Her wings splay out wide to steady us, one taloned foot clawing along the grass to adjust the angle. Before she’s fully on the ground, I jump from her back and run towards Tairn, keeping my eyes locked on his leathery black wings as if would be possible to lose him in the crowd. I need to get to Violet.