Defying Gravity

Violet had accepted the consequences as soon as she made the decision. She’d thought of Lyra in that moment, knowing her choice would likely cost her everything, and accepting it was what had to be done—for the good of everyone and everything she loved.

Her eyes had found Jack on the other side of the room. He had been watching her with interest—could he tell what she was going to do, somehow? She’d told herself she didn't care. It was a kind of balance, wasn't it? He'd destroyed the wards with his dragon bond. She would fix it with a venin's connection.

Somehow her mother must have guessed, because Lilith turned, and the look she wore was the worst Violet had ever seen; even worse than when Brennan walked out of the woods to meet her. She had moved like she was going to stop her daughter, somehow, but before she could Violet reached.

Tairn had roared in horror, wrenching away from their connection. She fully expected him and Andarna both to turn on her, but there was still enough connection between them now for her to feel his disappointment, and his exhaustion.

It had gotten…fuzzy after that. The fire in her veins that had been sparking hotter and wilder since the wards came down was suddenly overtaken by wave after wave of power from the earth, and her vision had whited out. When the wards came back up, it had quieted like the tide going out. The promise of a riptide was still there, a feeling like her feet were about to get torn out from under her if she wasn't careful, but there had been a moment of calm.

Violet remembered laughter ringing through the chamber: hysterical, broken laughter. Jack Barlowe's laughter had burned in her ears as he watched her try to cut away the connection to the source now that the wardstone was active.

"What have you done?" her mother had asked, face blank with anger. Violet was used to that stony glare, instead of the raw emotion she’d seen just before she pulled. She could face that down.

"You're not the only one in this family that can do terrible things for the right reasons," Violet told her.

Her mother had grabbed her arm in a fury and dragged her upstairs almost before the battle was over. Jack's shout had echoed behind them, welcoming Violet to what he called his fucked-up family. She wondered what the other people in the chamber made of that, if Brennan or Dain or…

She didn't want to be part of that. She'd been willing to accept the consequences to her soul when she did it, but sitting locked in her childhood bedroom wasn't what she had pictured. Did her mother really think that would keep anyone else from finding out what she'd done? Or keep her from escaping, if she wanted to do that?

Now, Violet could hear her mother and Brennan arguing, trying to decide what to do about her. She sat on the bed and stewed until finally Xaden's shields dropped and she was able to hear him.

"Violence? Where are you?! I can tell something's wrong, Sgaeyl won't tell me what—"

For a minute she wondered if she could lie. It was that or tell him she'd become the thing he'd sacrificed everything to defeat, and didn't she deserve to lie to him, just a little? As a treat?

"Not right now, Xaden. I'm—I'm safe. I'm upstairs with my mom, I think she's going to keep me here for now."

"Are you hurt?"

"Not exactly."

"Right before the wards went up, the venin sage I was fighting looked me in the eyes and said they'd won," he told her, and Violet could feel fear in him through the bond. "I almost thought they'd killed you."

"They didn't have to."

"But then you got the wards—"

She cut him off. "Xaden. I drew from the earth. That's how I imbued the wardstone."

He went silent.

"Xaden, I'm still me," Violet offered when he'd been quiet for several minutes. There was still no response. In fact, it was eerily quiet in her head, aside from the constant dark pull of the earth, the draw like a whole new kind of gravity. Besides that, though, she felt the same. If anything, she thought she felt better than she ought to, after everything the day had offered.

She was still waiting for Xaden to respond to her when her bedroom door opened.

"Mom. Brennan," Violet acknowledged them. "Have you decided what you're going to do with me yet?" They both looked like shit. Violet figured she probably did too.

"Mom said she can get me all the notes from the work Nolon did trying to heal Barlowe. We'll figure out how to fix this, Vi." He handed her a glass of lightly tinted water. "I'm not going to trick you, but please? It'll make it easier for me to work."

She drank it because she didn't know what else to do. Run? Argue?

Her mother and Brennan both talked about it like it was something that had happened to her, not something she'd done. Not a choice she'd deliberately made.

"It was the only way to get the wards up," Violet said again, not sure if she was talking to them, or to herself, or to someone who wasn't there. "I accept the consequences."

"And what consequences are you expecting, exactly?" Lilith's back was straight, her anger masked. "Are you waiting for me to run you through myself? No, Violet, if Melgren's bastard got the full extent of Basgiath's resources whether he wanted them or not, then so will you."

Melgren's bastard? Violet realized she must have been referring to Jack Barlowe, so it wasn't too much of a surprise when he was dragged in later that day and put in the room with her.

"Why is he here?" she asked Brennan as he tied Jack down to her old bed.

"So I can practice on someone that's not you."

"Why are you still here?" Jack asked it like he wanted to spit in her face. "Do you really think they can cure you? Once you've realized how close it is, you keep thinking about it. It's not something that can be cured. I'm not something that needs to be fixed."

He did spit, then. Not in her face, but to the side with a harsh cough. Jack's eyelids lowered, and she almost didn't hear him continue. "I don't think you need to be fixed, either."

Violet almost asked him what he meant, but she thought it safer to shift the subject. "No wonder you weren't fully cured, then." Dosed with serum and without a dragon, tied down while Brennan scanned his system, Jack seemed a lot less of a threat with every minute that passed. "You just keep taking it, don't you? The power?"

"Exactly. It's still there. Nolon and Varrish couldn't stop me from wanting it and neither can you." He said this last to Brennan, who frowned but ignored him and pulled his hands back.

Brennan stepped away from the bed and drew Violet away with him. "How is your connection to Tairn, Vi? Has he—"

"He hasn't broken the bond," she told him. "Why?" The word came out automatically before her thoughts caught up. She expected him to be relieved, and maybe he was, but after a moment he sagged under the weight of a history she'd never really asked him about.

"What makes you different?" Brennan whispered, looking at her and then at the floor. His fist shook and she wanted to ask if he was thinking of Naolin, but she didn't know how. Then he shook his head to clear it. "I—I need a minute, Vi. I'll be back later."

Jack yelled insults for a little while after Brennan left, but eventually he quieted. His breathing stayed labored, and Violet looked up from the book she was reading when he started wheezing.

"You're dying, aren't you?" Violet asked, standing slowly.

"For the moment," Jack laughed a little. "It's slower, but I'm still a rider without a dragon, now."

"Do you…you had to know that would happen when you killed Baide, didn't you?" Her feet seemed to move of their own volition, drawn toward the source of the answer to her question. She was no less horrified now that he was facing the consequences of the action, but she still wondered what he'd been thinking, how he could have done that to his own bonded dragon.

"If you hadn't intervened, it wouldn't have mattered. If I was able to draw from the earth, I'd be fine." Violet realized she'd come close enough to see his face and the red rings around his eyes. "Your mother's the one killing me, technically. Slow torture. But you know all about Navarrian torture, I suppose."

He grinned slowly, wide and humorless. Violet felt herself go cold at the comparison.

She needed another topic, and fast. "What's the real reason you didn't let me fall when those Infantry guys attacked me? Don't tell me you changed your mind because you're following orders. I don't think you're the type."

Jack shrugged against his restraints. "I don't give a fuck about orders, but I'm curious what the big deal is about you. Sure, you're a bitch. I can sort of respect that, when you don't have a fucking knife at my balls. But power and respect just fucking stick to you, and you don't even know what to do with them. The teachers at Basgiath, the military leadership, your boyfriend, the folks I answer to…hell, even your legendary fucking dragon, every one of them pissing themselves to get their hands on all twelve pounds of you."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Nah, pretty sure I'm right. I've held cats that weigh more than you do." He snickered and Violet felt a pang in her chest. It sounded so much like something Xaden might have said when they were first flirting—fighting—whatever they had been doing.

She reached out to Xaden again in her thoughts, but got no response.

"I meant about respect. It's not people respecting me to be talked about like I'm a weapon instead of a person."

Jack scoffed. "What side doesn't treat all of us like weapons?" That's what Basgiath trains us to be.

That was true, but Violet scrambled to untie her thoughts. "Xaden doesn't—"

"Xaden isn't here, princess." Jack cut her off, the words as ugly as he could make them.

Hope flared alongside the anger in Violet's chest. "Yet. Xaden isn't here yet. He got me away from Varrish, we'll figure this out, too." She had to believe that was true, that Xaden would forgive her, that this was fixable. What else did she have?

The conviction she'd had that it was worth the sacrifice was a lot harder to maintain when she'd lived through it and now she was locked in a room with Jack Barlowe.

"Are you sure he's coming? Maybe he's just now figured out that you're just as flawed as the rest of us." That sounded like it wanted to be an insult but wasn't quite. There was that strangely soft tone in Jack's voice again.

"Jack—" she started, still not sure what she was asking.

"Maybe he's going to let them torture you in the name of healing so he doesn't have to decide how he feels about what you did."

Violet considered gagging him, but before she could his breathing devolved into wheezing breaths again. Eventually he fell asleep. Violet laid awake on the makeshift cot they'd set up for her while Jack had her bed. She knew she should sleep, but the silence from Xaden and her spiraling thoughts about Jack kept her awake.

Maybe he deserved to die, but that didn't mean she wanted to watch him die in front of her. To listen to him die the same way Liam had. She remembered when he’d had her on the mat in the sparring gym and forced energy into her until it nearly killed her. She could give him a merciful, quick death.

Fuck, maybe she could heal him. Not real healing, not make him a good little soldier or whatever the fuck he would be if he'd never pulled from the earth, but she could stop his suffering.

Violet remembered when her signet was brand new, when she'd thought it meant violence was the only thing she had to offer. It was what she'd offered Jack in that moment, what he'd drawn out of her.

Now she saw a chance to do the opposite. She'd envied Brennan's signet so many times, the way it could heal when hers seemed to only be destructive. She was no siphon, but could she feed Jack her power? Keep him from dying? Truly even the score with him for saving her life?

The next time Brennan handed her a glass of serum to drink, she waited until he was busy pouring it down Jack's throat before disappearing into her washroom and dumping her own down the sink. She ran clear water into the cup and was taking a swallow as she left the bathroom.

Brennan looked up at her and she shrugged. "It tastes disgusting, Bren, I'm trying to get the flavor out of my mouth."

"Do you want me to start putting it in something else? I figured after…"

Violet shuddered as the memory of lavender lemonade filled her mouth. "I'm fine. I don't need you to lie to me. I just don't want it in my mouth all day."

Today Jack barely looked conscious as she watched Brennan tend to him and Violet couldn't keep her curiosity buried. "Why not just kill him, if you're going to keep doing that? Why draw it out?"

Brennan made a face. "Mom's orders. I hate this, Vi."

"Just get it over with," she said, refusing to break eye contact with him. Eventually it was Brennan who looked away, busying himself with finding the right places to set his hands so Marbh's power could flow through him and into her, letting him see what had changed and undo it.

The thought made her seethe.

It wasn't that she wanted to be venin, she told herself, but the idea that he could erase her choices and take her back to a time when she'd been better at listening to her mother, at respecting her brother instead of seeing his cowardice…

Violet startled at her own thoughts. Was this her? Was this bitterness what it meant to lose your soul?

She looked over at Jack as she felt herself drawing in as much of Brennan's energy as he'd give her. What makes me think I'm better than him? she asked herself. He was more willing to kill than me, but when it came down to it, I did the unforgivable too.

Jack looked marginally less dead when Brennan left, but he still had his chin pressed against his chest, his whole body seeming to sag into the mattress.

Violet reached a finger under his chin and tilted his head up so that when his glacial blue eyes opened, he was looking directly into her face.

"Good morning," she said, ignoring the actual time of day. "Tell me something before I lose my nerve, Jack. I know you can't draw under the serum, but can you absorb?"

"Wha—" Confusion blinked into defiant anger on his face before settling into a smug grin. "What's got you curious? You got something in mind, princess?"

She put her hand on his chest, mirroring the position Brennan had taken while mending him. It didn't feel right, though. She pushed up his tunic, thinking she needed to touch bare skin.

"Ooh, getting handsy? You could untie me."

"No."

Jack made a face, narrowing his eyes but not quite losing his baiting tone. "That's fine, Caroline liked to tie me up."

"Was she worried you'd drain her?"

"Are we flirting or not? Because you used to be better at it."

"Used to be—" Violet sputtered. "What, did you think I was flirting when I put my dagger against your balls?"

"Maybe." His eyes darted to the side and his shoulders hunched in a little, as if he was trying to hide from his own words.

Violet studied his torso, refusing to look at his face any longer. The defined abs he'd had were gone, wrecked by the slow process of being drained of life by his own body. His chest looked nearly sunken, his ribs still outlined after Brennan had worked on him. There were dozens of scars that hadn't been there in the Healers' Quadrant after he'd sparred with her, and she realized they must be scars she’d given him—scars left after they pulled him out from under the mountain she'd buried him under.

There were tattoos too, some of them inked across the scars as if to disguise them. A serpent curled up his left pectoral, slithering up toward his collarbone, disappearing under the scrunched-up shirt. Another seemed to poke out of his shirt sleeve, red and black but mostly covered. The remains of Baide's relic twisted from his hip and spread across the left side of his stomach.

She reached out and ran her fingers along the faded relic, pulling back when Jack hissed at her.

"Sensitive?" She looked up at his face, surprised. It was so faded that she hadn't expected it to be.

"It hurts, since I killed her," he admitted, not meeting her eyes. "Mostly just a little tight and sore, but when you touch it…"

"I'm sorry." Violet's apology was automatic.

"Are you really?" He looked like he was trying to raise an eyebrow but was too tired to get it there.

She sat up straighter. "I didn't mean to hurt you. This time."

"Oh well, that's important. I want to know you mean it if you're hurting me." Jack's features were tight. He huffed out a breath, almost a laugh. Maybe it was meant to be a laugh.

Violet put her hands back on his chest, and this time she could make out the feeling of the energy inside of him, what little he had left.

She hesitated over what energy to give him. Tairn's was distant, and suspecting what she did about Naolin, it felt like a betrayal to give his energy to another venin. Andarna's power was closer, but letting her energy and Jack's touch felt wrong somehow. He'd tried to kill her, a year and a lifetime ago.

What difference did it make, Violet wondered.

As she considered it, her mind wandered to the crack in the floor of her mental Archives, the place where the source had broken through and refused to be pushed away even as Brennan tried to heal it.

Did it really matter all that much, if she did it once or if she did it twice?

The energy from the source flowed across the marble floor and pooled around her feet before surging up to surround her.

Nearly overwhelmed, she instinctively pushed the energy out the same way she had to imbue the wardstone.

Jack's muscles locked and his body spasmed under her hands. She lost her connection and he dropped away.

"Fuck, that hurts." He gasped the words out. "Why are you—Why do you even care?"

"I don't want to sit here and watch you get tortured, Jack. Especially not on my behalf."

The smile he gave her looked almost genuine. "You want to torture me yourself. I can respect that."

By the time Violet judged she had given him enough, she could feel the sweat running down the skin under her shirt and she was breathing as heavily as she had the first time Carr had tried to wear her out. When she let go of the power she'd been pulling, she sagged forward until she was almost laying across Jack's bare stomach.

His skin glistened with sweat too and she found herself distracted by the desire to lick him, to see if he still tasted like a person or if drawing from the source was enough to change everything about someone.

"Go ahead," Jack told her, some of the swagger back in his voice.

That tiny amount of permission was enough to break her resolve. Violet's tongue darted out, tracing a line of skin until she reached the edge of his relic. Besides the sweat and the slightly medicinal taste left over from whatever tincture Brennan had been using, there was also a metallic tang that made Violet think of blood. Jack shuddered beneath her, startling her so she pulled back.

"Something wrong?" she asked him.

"No," he spat, trying to pull away and failing. He flopped back against the bed. "Caroline hasn't talked to me in weeks, and your brother isn't exactly gentle. It's been a while since someone touched me like they wanted to do it."

The thought brought Violet up short. Even when she'd been struggling at the beginning of the year, pushing her friends away and frustrated at being kept from Xaden, she'd had physical contact. She had hugs from Rhiannon and Ridoc's arm around her and Sawyer's broad back when she needed someone to lean on. What Jack described reminded her more than anything of her mother's distant silence after her father died.

Rather than going back to her makeshift cot, Violet laid down next to Jack on the bed, folding herself into the narrow space beside him. She pressed up against him, imagining she could feel the scars she'd given him through her thin shirt.

What was she doing? Xaden would lose his mind with jealousy if he knew.

But Xaden wasn't listening. Xaden wasn't here.

Jack was here, and he needed her. Violet stared at the ceiling, and for the first time since her mother dragged her up here, she truly felt like maybe she had become a different person.

"Kinda domestic like this, don't you think?" Jack asked her.

"You're tied up."

"Some people are into that." She felt him shake with silent laughter. "You sure you're not? You spent so much time threatening my balls I wondered if that was how you flirt."

That was how she'd flirted with Xaden too, wasn't it? With knives. With threats.

"Caro always complained that I paid too much attention to you, but what did she expect? Any time you were in the room, I had to wonder if you were going to castrate me!"

"I—I didn't think about your balls that much," Violet grumbled, but there wasn't much heat in it. In fact, the heat was in her face—she felt herself blushing.

Before she could respond, she heard a noise in the hallway. Familiar, angry footsteps, and that prickling on the back of her neck—Xaden. She wondered briefly if that feeling meant he was reading her. He'd promised not to, but…that had been before. Maybe he just wanted to make sure she was here.

“I'm here, Xaden!” she thought at him through the bond, as loud as she could, but there was no answer.

The first voice she heard was Brennan's, so close he had to be right outside her door. "Fuck, Riorson, don't scare me like that."

"She's here, isn't she?" Xaden asked, an angry edge in his voice. Jack looked toward the door as well, probably curious how this would play out. Suddenly aware of how close she was to him, Violet scooted over to the edge of her bed.

"Yes, she's here," Brennan said, and he didn't sound like he was being threatened. Well, that was good; she didn't want Xaden to hurt her brother, rescuing her.

"How is she—have you…?" he didn't finish the question, but there was a break in his voice.

"I'm still working through Nolon's research, working on Barlowe. I don't want to hurt Violet any more than necessary," Brennan said, and Jack laughed.

"You—you have to save her." The anguish was so thick in Xaden's voice. She wanted to comfort him. She wished he'd answer her through the bond, if he could. "She did this to save me, to save all of us, Aisereigh."

"Aisereigh?" Her mother's voice echoed down the hallway. "How dare—I don't want to hear that man's name in my home again!" Lilith was coming closer, yelling, and then Brennan was yelling back. About names. About Naolin's name.

"What should he have done? Let me die?" Brennan's voice dropped from a shout until it was so quiet Violet could barely hear it. "I never got the chance to save him. Tairn didn't give him a chance."

"If it wasn't for him, you wouldn't have been targeted as a sympathizer anyway!" Lilith snapped, and everyone went silent. Even Jack had stopped muttering, and Violet couldn't shake the feeling she was eavesdropping on something private, even if it had started out being about her.

Arguments exploded from all three of them and then something slammed into the door so hard Violet thought it might give way.

Xaden’s voice snapped, "I don't care about your family drama. Right now I don't even care about my father's death. Violet made a mistake and we need to undo it. You have to fix her."

Violet's heart cracked, and then shattered like she'd taken an arrow to the chest.

Was that why he wouldn't answer? Because he was afraid of her mistake? He wasn't going to rescue her…because he didn't think she deserved to be rescued this time. He wanted to fix her, just like her mother and her brother and everyone else—

She remembered Jack's voice, surprisingly soft. "I don't think you need to be fixed, either," he'd said.

"He's just trying to help," Andarna's voice joined her thoughts. The connection to her dragons felt brittle, like it was all jagged edges even when Andarna was trying to send love to her through their bond. Of course, she hadn't taken the serum draught, so now her connection to her dragons was back too.

Previously when Andarna or Tairn had sent feelings through the bond, they'd always felt present, warm, genuine. Like her memories of her father reading to her, like sitting in Brennan's lap when she was small. Now it felt different…Andarna's love felt more like the complicated relationship she had with Brennan since discovering he was alive. Tairn radiated disapproval in a way that she could only compare to her mother.

She realized she hadn't heard her mother for a few minutes now; she must have left. Xaden and Brennan's conversation continued but Violet was hardly listening to it now. She reached out to Tairn, but the wall between them remained.

"Give him time," Andarna said when he didn't respond. "He's struggling."

"Everyone's shutting me out," Violet thought back at her.

Outside the door, Xaden's voice was clearer. She thought he must be right outside her door. "I'm going to Aretia, to scour the library and see if there's anything that might help."

"Do you want to…you should talk to her before you go," Brennan told him. Hope flared again, a tiny, delicate thing in Violet's treacherous heart.

"I can't." She could hear Xaden’s voice break, like he was in so much pain, and he continued, "I'll go to Tecarus if I can't find anything. Write if you need anything, I'll tell the rest of the Assembly to get you anything you ask for."

There's a short pause and she could almost hear him cracking. "I'll do anything to fix her."

"See? He wants to help," Andarna said again.

"His devotion is touching," Jack said, his voice absolutely flat. No judgement, no sincerity, no sarcasm. "He'll do anything."

"Anything," Violet repeated, her voice just as empty. Jack stayed quiet, letting the moment swell up between them until the room felt overcrowded with her silence.

"Anything but have a conversation with me!" The words boiled out of her, angry and dagger-sharp. "Anything but look me in the eye!"

There's a strangled noise on the other side of the door. "Violence—"

"Don't you dare!" She was on her feet now, pressing against the door.

"Violet!" Andarna shouted. The magic from the source bubbled up in her mental Archives and through her body, and distantly Violet could feel Tairn howling. She willed her shields up and the energy that answered was the source, flowing up the walls of her mind and pounding on the connections there. The energy in her hands gnawed at her mother's wards on the door, slowly eating away at them like rust on iron chains. "You said I had all of you, Xaden—the good, the bad and the unforgivable! Am I not worth the same?"

"Violet, this isn't you—" Xaden tried to avoid the question, but Violet wouldn't let him, not this time.

"Look at me," she dared him, not caring who was listening in that moment, what conclusions they might draw. "Look at me and you'll know I did exactly what I intended to do."

The energy in her veins flared and the wards on the door snapped. The wood splintered under the force of Violet's anger. She would make him look at her.

Xaden's shadows had flared up to protect him from the splintered remains of the door, but they retreated. Now he and Brennan were both staring at her, their eyes blown wide with something she almost didn't recognize.

That was fear dancing between the flecks of gold in Xaden's eyes.

Huh.

The thought sent a thrill of warmth up her spine, the same way her desire used to. She imagined how she must look to him, her eyes red-rimmed, the hazel picking up the red tones the same way it usually picked up greys or blues around her. Lightning danced along her limbs, and she didn't know when her braid had come loose but she could feel her hair behind her, as undone as she felt.

Gods, it felt good to see the understanding dawn on their faces. On Xaden's face, specifically. This was infinity. Inside her mental Archives, she felt something breaking open and the power just flowed into her, rising from the earth and reaching from the sky.

Behind her she could hear Jack whooping and cheering for her. He was the one who'd believed in her. It took almost no effort for a trickle of lesser magic to loosen the straps holding his limbs down.

Brennan reached for her and she realized she could feel his power stretching forward her like vines seeking the sun. She could grab them. She could pull.

But she didn't—she didn't want to hurt her brother, did she? Not really, not permanently. She just wanted him to see that she was more than his little sister who needed to be protected from her mistakes. Before she could change her mind, she broke the connection between them, shoving Brennan toward Xaden so that her—her what? No, Xaden wasn't her anything anymore.

Plain, un-adjective Xaden could catch Brennan. Describing him, describing their relationship? No longer her problem. There was no relationship to describe.

Why would she worry about someone who hadn't believed in her, hadn't trusted her? There was one person here who'd always been honest with her, and it was Jack. Fucking. Barlowe.

He'd come up behind her while she was busy, his hand finding hers as she turned away from Xaden and Brennan. Violet pulled Jack along behind her and they ran. The energy in Violet's bones sang that it could make her faster, it could keep her safe, she just needed to take a little more and a little more.

Jack was running for the stairs down to the river, but Violet caught his wrist. She pulled hard, maybe harder than she meant to, because he swung around and against her, pressing her up against the stone wall of the passageway.

"Thinking about changing your mind?" he asked, and his breath was warm when she looked up to meet his eyes. There was bite in the words—but maybe not as much as she would have expected.

"No, but I'm thinking we need shoes. Maybe cloaks."

Jack looked down at his bare feet, his stained leathers and the shirt Brennan had put on him. "We can't go up to our rooms. We might just have to run for it."

Violet shook her head. "I've got it. Follow me."

She led him over the low bridge, the one she used to cross with Liam and the library cart, and her heart stuttered. Looking up at Jack in the low light…well, he wasn't as tall as Liam, and currently he was skinnier, but it was enough to make Violet hesitate.

Jack nudged her shoulder. "Don't go freezing on me now, little hare. We're still out in the open."

"Right." Violet felt doubt creeping in now that the adrenaline was fading. What was she doing? Why was she doing it with the man who'd tried to kill Liam? What would Liam even think of her, if he was here?

She choked down the thought that he'd regret dying for her, if he could see what she'd do with that life. Violet shoved the thought away for later, when they weren't escaping. Stopping seemed impossible at this point, like a physics exam question where the math wouldn't work out. There were no good answers.

She led Jack down the passage from the public entrance to the Archives to the infantry quadrant. It wasn't far to the currently empty room where Infantry got their uniforms and kit. The magic required to open the keyed, un-warded lock hardly felt like anything to her. She threw a pair of socks at Jack and he caught them, pulling them on and then the boots she tossed behind them. She pulled on a pair of the infantry boots over her socked feet, glad to have something between them and the cold stone. The jackets she grabbed were too big for both of them, but they were woolen and the navy cloaks were lined against the winter cold.

"Fucking Infantry," Jack grumbled as he got the boots tied.

"Infantry's more likely to get ignored," she pointed out. "Where are we going?"

"Get me outside and I know a place. It's where I used to meet up with my teacher."

"Fine." She tucked a few of the standard-issue infantry daggers against her thighs just to be careful, pulled the cloak on over her too-big jacket and started down another hall. "Come on, I used this shortcut when I dated an infantry guy."

"When did you have time to date a fucking infantry guy? First you had Aetos all over you, and then Mairi, and then Riorson."

"Before I crossed the parapet. And I never dated Dain or Liam. Are you going to be a jealous ass like Xaden about it?"

Jack paused and his eyes widened just a hint before he caught up with her. "Shit, you and Mairi weren't a thing?"

"No, he was just making sure nobody murdered me in the sparring gym," Violet said with venom.

"Guess I didn't need to be so jealous after all," Jack murmured, just loud enough for Violet to hear, as she opened the door to the grounds outside the Infantry dorms.

The wind was howling and she didn't have the energy to try to argue with Jack over the sound but his words circled around in her thoughts and settled like a dog gnawing on a bone. Jealous? Did that mean Jack had tried to kill Liam because he thought she and Liam were dating?

It was deeply uncomfortable to consider, but she didn't have much else to think about as they fled from Basgiath anyway.

She couldn't stop her thoughts from going back to Liam, wondering if she would feel differently if Liam was here. Maybe he would be angry, maybe he would be desperate like Xaden, but if anybody was going to trust her, would understand her, she thought it might have been Liam. He was the one who had trusted her, though she hadn't realized it until it was too late.

Maybe there was a way to make sense of it after all. A germ of a plan started to grow: if she went with Jack, found the venin who'd killed Liam, figured out what they were doing…could she kill other venin? She still wanted to. It wasn't like she'd lost her soul, not really. She wondered what that was even supposed to mean, losing her soul. Basgiath was supposed to take your soul. She had been wondering if it had succeeded, at the beginning of the year.

So did it really matter if she lost whatever a soul was supposed to be, whether it was to the quadrant or to the venin, to Malek or to the source? If taking from the source damaged your soul, what did that even say about dragons? Violet checked her shields, reinforcing them again, though she had no reason to think she needed to.

Jack had mentioned his teacher. Maybe she could learn as much as the venin had to offer, then bring them down from the inside. She'd save them all and wouldn't Xaden feel like a fucking fool then.

Despite the icy winds and the snowflakes landing on her face as she walked, Violet felt almost uncomfortably warm. Thinking about Xaden had been a mistake. The wind whispered his words to her, a reminder that she needed to be fixed. That she was a problem to be solved, not a person who'd made a choice.

It felt like an age before Jack led her up to what looked like a small farm building on the far side of Chantara. Dry snow gathered in drifts against the walls around it. She noticed she could feel the wards on the little building pulsing, fading as Jack pulled her through them, then humming back to life.

The building might have looked like a barn or a shed from the outside, but the interior was set up like a small cottage, Violet realized when they stepped inside. There was a table and chairs; a little stove with dry wood beside it and a kettle sitting on top; a bed; and a chest against the other wall. There was a row of pegs near the door where she hung up her cloak. Further down, baskets hung from the pegs, and below them was a small shelf with some books.

"Oh, books," Violet said, flicking a mage light into the air. Behind her she heard the shriek of iron hinges as Jack opened the stove and threw in a couple of the dry logs, then used magic to start the fire.

"Should I be worried about the light?" Violet asked him, her eyes darting to the shutters on the wall.

"It's warded so nothing gets through to the outside," Jack told her. "Don't worry, little hare, you're safe in your den now."

"Burrow," she said automatically.

"What?"

"Rabbits live in burrows, not dens."

Jack rolled his eyes, but there was no malice in it somehow. "Whatever. You're safe for now."

"Thank you," Violet said, and Jack flinched. "I mean it."

"You're the one who got me out of there," he said, poking one of the logs with an iron rod even though the fire was burning just fine.

"I'm pretty sure we got each other out of there." She knelt down to look at the bookshelf. "What are all of these? Have you read them?"

"Maybe."

Violet looked up. Jack's face looked red in the firelight. Maybe it was just his body trying to warm up after the cold and everything else he needed to recover from, or maybe it was something else. "You'll have to tell me which ones to read first later," she said, standing back up to poke around in the baskets. She found dried herbs in two of them, several different ones, and put aside a few ingredients to make tea.

"Can we get water in that kettle?"

Jack nodded, pointing to a little space in the far corner that she'd missed seeing in the dark: a sink with a tap, next to a little washroom.

"You should lay down," she told him. "You're still recovering."

"Don't tell me what to—" he started, but Violet narrowed her eyes at him and he…stopped. Instead of arguing, he took the handful of steps back to the bed, then sat on the edge and dropped his cloak and wool coat onto the ground next to it. He sat there and shivered for a minute before pulling his cloak back over him as another layer of warmth. He wasn't lying down, hadn't actually followed the instruction, but it was a start.

She busied herself filling the kettle from the tap and putting it on the stove to boil. She poured the first hot water into a bowl she found near the sink and immediately put on a second. Looking through the cabinets, she also found towels, cups and a few other signs of civilization.

It shouldn't have surprised her, probably, but it did.

Violet soaked one of the towels in the hot water, wrung it out, and brought it over to Jack. "You're shivering."

"I'm fine," he tried to insist, but when she pressed the warm cloth to his forehead he stilled.

"Lay down," she told him again.

He mumbled something, and she had to lean in to hear him. "Boots. Don't wanna get mud on the bed."

Violet huffed a quiet laugh and pushed him down until his back was flat against the mattress. She put another warm cloth on his neck and collarbone, pushing some of her energy into him. She was able to be a little more gentle this time, now that she'd had a chance to think about what she was doing, and then knelt down beside the bed.

Jack couldn't seem to help smirking at her. "What are you doing?"

"You didn't want to lie down with your boots on." She pulled at the laces. Violet wasn't trying to be seductive, but she couldn't resist running her hand along Jack's calf as the boot slid off, or tracing his ankle bone with her fingers.

She shook her head, trying to push the thought away, but it bubbled right back up. Everything's already fucked up, why not make it worse? she wondered.

"Not a bad view," Jack hummed. He'd sat up again. When she looked up, his blue eyes were dark in the firelight. "Once I'm back to full strength, maybe I can get you on your knees for other reasons, little hare."

Violet rolled her eyes as she pulled his other boot off. "Every time you've challenged me, you've lost, Jack." She shifted her weight and stood up, stretching. The warmth in here was helping, but she was going to fucking feel all of this running around tomorrow.

With the fire in the stove merrily burning, the small space was quickly warming up and Jack stopped shivering in short order. He dropped the cloak back on the bed and pulled off his shirt, using the warm water in the bowl to scrub himself down. Satisfied he was recovering, Violet went back to the kettle.

"Fuck yes, it's good to wash," Jack said, and Violet couldn't tell if it was for her benefit or not. She didn't look, not yet sure if she wanted to encourage him, but she couldn't help thinking she should have grabbed more clothes before they left. He walked past her and opened another cabinet.

There wasn't a teapot, so she busied herself wrapping the herbs in the thinnest fabric and let that steep in the hot water for a few minutes before pouring tea for herself and Jack into two of the mugs she'd found.

It wasn't the best preparation she'd ever made, but it felt comfortable, almost domestic to bring it over to Jack. He'd pulled civilian clothes out of the cabinet; she spotted black canvas pants on the table, while he was wearing shorts and a short-sleeved brown shirt. She handed him the mug and sat on the edge of the bed, holding it between his hands and looking into it for what seemed like a long time.

"You have to drink it for it to help," she said finally, and that seemed to startle him out of his thoughts.

"Right." He brought it to his lips, at least. She couldn't tell if he actually took any of it in.

"The draught should be wearing off soon, and then you'll be able to recover more quickly."

Jack drew his feet up into the bed and Violet took the mug out of his hand. She set it next to hers on the table, noting that he'd swallowed at least some of it. Good. Once he'd slid under the covers, Violet picked up his cloak, draping it over the bed like another blanket.

She sat on the edge of the bed, trying to decide what to do now, if she thought further ahead than taking off her own shoes and getting some sleep. Violet's mental Archives were a mess when she stepped into them. The walls were cracked; the door where Tairn's power had been was now sealed shut, looking like molten slag. Andarna's window was broken. The place where the source had bubbled through was less a crack in the floor now and more a gaping hole. The energy was quieter, further down rather than licking at the edges.

"There's not much power to draw up here," Violet said out loud.

"Yeah, I've probably taken as much as I could without it looking obvious outside," Jack said. "Probably drain it in the morning; we won't need this place again. We're not going back to Basgiath."

"No, I suppose not." Violet's laugh felt like broken glass in her throat. "I have some to spare, do you need more?"

"Always," Jack answered, his hands reaching for her. He tugged her under the blankets with him and she felt welcomed by the gesture. At least someone seemed to want her around. Jack appreciated her presence. She wasn't sure how much it was just because of what she could give him but it seemed… it seemed like there was more to him than that.

Violet pushed his shirt up and Jack took over, pulling it over his head.

With his shirt all the way off, now she could see more of him than she had before—she could see where the serpent traced his collarbone all the way down to the hollow there. The points she had seen peeking out from his shirt were from a large red and black star on his shoulder that traced the scar she'd given him during threshing. She wondered if he was hiding it or making art of the damage she'd done to him.

His body had warmed since her bedroom, and she could feel energy under his skin now. He felt alive to her in a way he hadn't earlier.

Jack slid his hands under her shirt, letting one rest on her hip while the other snuck up toward her breast. He was more hesitant than Violet had expected and she wondered how far she was going to let him take this.

She pressed her hand against his core, letting energy flow into him. Each time she did it, it was easier than the last to control it. Each time it was more intimate, less like an act of medical care and more of a gift. Jack bit his lip and closed his eyes. A moment later she felt him pull harder than she liked, tugging against her own core.

"Jack…" she said, a low warning in her voice.

"Need you," he mumbled, hands grasping at her like he couldn't stop.

Violet broke the connection between them, grabbing for the dagger she'd slid into her thigh holster.

Jack's hand twitched against her hip.

Violet held the dagger against his throat and Jack's body stilled beneath her. "I think I'm the one in charge here, Jack. I'm the fox. You're the hare."

"Put your teeth on my throat then," Jack answered, leaning just far enough into the blade that a thin line of red welled up. "I need more of you."

She hesitated, watching a bead of blood start to form at the edge of the cut. How much more of herself did she have to give? She still wasn't sure whether she believed in souls, but something inside of her felt stretched pretty fucking thin.

It was just the other day that Violet had thought she and Jack were the same, after all. Maybe outside of this room she was a girl who needed other people to fix her mistakes, but right now she wasn't that. If something in her was wrong, it was something she and Jack shared, something no one else seemed willing to see in her.

But Jack saw the worst of her and liked what he saw.

Violet moved the dagger away, leaning down and replacing the pressure on his throat with her tongue. She tasted his blood in her mouth and it seemed to set her on fire. Violet leaned closer so she could press her teeth against the place where his neck met his shoulder.

"You get what I give you, Jack." Violet whispered into his ear. She liked saying his name, liked the way it felt in her mouth. Liked feeling in control of him. "You don't take. Understood?"

He keened, his hips pressing up against her. She could feel where he was hard inside his shorts.

"Be a good boy for me." He still didn't manage words, but he dropped his hands to the mattress. Violet sat back on her heels above him, considering. Despite screaming at Xaden and attacking Brennan and fleeing Basgiath, despite drawing from the earth in the first place, despite everything, this seemed like the line she couldn't return from crossing.

Not just fucking Jack Barlowe, but wanting to fuck Jack Barlowe. And she did, and in a way she had from that day on the Parapet, wanted to see again that frustrated look he gave her when she held her dagger to his balls. She wanted him to give in to her, not because he was soft for her like Xaden, but because she made him.

Heat pooled in her belly at the thought. She reached down and drew her hand up his thigh, digging her nails in there, leaving sore red lines behind. Jack groaned underneath her, his hips bucking but his hands staying obediently fisted into the mattress on either side of him.

Violet slid off of the bed, letting him whine in disappointment before his eyes followed her. She met his gaze before she began loosening her leathers and sliding them off. Watching him as he watched her, she saw how his vision traced her curves, travelling to the floor along with her leathers and then raking back up her body. She saw his breath hitch as her panties followed, then her top and her corset.

"You're not fucking with me?" Jack rasped, the need plain on his face.

"Just fucking you, don't worry," Violet answered. She was a little faster getting back in the bed than she'd intended, because even with the fire burning, it was chill enough that her nipples were already hard and she felt goosebumps on her arms and thighs.

Maybe some of that was anticipation, but she hurried back under the blankets anyway. She lay on her side next to Jack, pressing herself up against his relic and noticing the way she could feel his body responding to her. It wasn't just his hard-on, though there was definitely that to take in as she freed his cock and slid his shorts down his thighs.

It was also the pull of the energy inside him, something that had belonged to her and been freely given. Now something of her rested inside of him, and she could feel that power within him calling to her like she held a magnet inside of her core.

Violet wanted.

She tugged experimentally on that energy, at the same time sliding her hand along his cock, tracing with her fingers from the base to the tip. The energy came with her touch, and Jack shivered beneath her hand.

Violet smiled to herself as she knelt over him and lowered herself down onto his cock. She rested both of her hands on his chest, pushing her energy into him and pulling his, and the feedback loop set her nerves on fire.

Jack's eyes were blown wide; his mouth was moving but at first she didn't realize he was saying words. He wasn't really speaking to her. He sounded like the the snake-tenders in Zihnal's temple, speaking in tongues and not truly hearing themselves: she was Violet and she was goddess, she was my fox and my death, and he begged her to feed him, to drain him, to raise him up and to sacrifice him.

Violet threw her head back, reaching, wanting to push harder, to see how far she could go. She pulled from the ground below them and the sky answered too, lightning flashing outside the battened windows. As she came she was the sky and the earth both, a complete circuit with Jack, and she screamed. There were no words, just power ripping out of her any way it could, in her voice, in her nails digging into Jack's shoulders, in the steam rising from her body.

When they'd finished, she all but collapsed on top of Jack before rolling off of him onto the mattress. Jack's eyelids fluttered and he smiled at her. She'd never noticed before how long his eyelashes were. His skin glowed with sweat and he looked more peaceful than she'd ever seen him.

Violet allowed herself one minute to imagine Xaden watching the lightning storm she'd just called, then put him away in a box, closing her eyes to put the thought away in the back of her mind.

She looked around the wreckage of her Archives, kicking whatever the mental equivalent of rocks was into the hole that had swallowed the floor. Books lay everywhere, and she wondered for the first time how much this mental construct represented her actual mind. Were those memories she'd re-evaluated and thrown aside? Feelings that no longer felt honest?

"No regrets?" Jack's arm snaked around Violet's waist.

Violet considered the dark chaos inside her mind and sighed contentedly. It was quiet for the first time in over a year. "None."