Chapter Text
Sloane knew she should yield, but it was sort of hard to do that with black spots beginning to cloud her vision.
The rider from Third Wing had her down on the mat, both knees solid around her ribs and an unbelievably wet palm pressed firm to her windpipe. Sloane gasped for air, vaguely aware that the other rider was pressing her cheek into a patch of her own blood on the mat.
Sloane hated sparring. The mats always smelled like feet, the room too loud with all the grunting and groaning. It was impossibly claustrophobic for such a large gym. Most of all, she hated this part— the slick and sweaty press of skin against hers, the horrible sensation of someone else’s power bubbling underneath her hands.
“Yield.” Thoirt’s voice was loud in her ears. “He is suffocating you.”
Sloane opened her mouth, gasped, garbled. She was faintly aware of feet shifting around the mat. The words wouldn’t come out.
“Luka. Enough. She yields.” Aetos—because it had to be Aetos, of course it was—was using that infuriating tone of voice where he sounded strict and bored and furious all at the same time. The pressure on her windpipe immediately eased, and Sloane instinctively grabbed for her neck, curling a knee underneath her on the mat the moment she was free.
“That was a close one,” Thoirt said. Sloane grimaced and leveraged an elbow onto the mat, pushing herself up.
“Very observant, thank you.”
Someone knelt beside her on the mat, and she didn’t have to look up to know it was Aaric, concerned brows furrowed over his bright green eyes. “You okay?”
Sloane nodded, inspecting her wounds. There was no doubt her neck would bruise, and she was bleeding profusely from a slash on her upper arm. She was lucky to have made it out with that little, to be honest. This had been one of her worst challenges yet.
Aaric let out a low whistle. “Does that need stitches?”
“No.” Sloane sounded more confident than she felt. “I’ll just bandage it and it’ll be fine.” She pushed herself onto her feet, aware of Aaric’s hand shooting out as if to help her by the elbow but never quite making the contact. She was grateful for his hesitance.
Hers had been the last fight of the sparring session. The rest of her squad had been dismissed, now floating around the gym guzzling water and wrapping their knuckles. Sloane’s head swam a little bit as she glanced around, orienting herself before she went in search of something to staunch the bleeding.
“Greycastle,” someone called. Both Sloane and Aaric turned, although Sloane rolled her eyes and turned back around when she realized who it was. Dain Aetos made his way through the scattered riders toward them, his face drawn.
By the time he made it to them, Sloane had already dug through her bag by the wall and retrieved spare gauze, soaking the blood from her arm.
“What’s up?” Aaric sounded a little too casual.
“Violet mentioned needing you for something.” Dain’s voice dropped a little, hardly audible over the chatter of the room. “Archives, tonight?”
Aaric let out a breath, and Sloane raised an eyebrow, purposefully keeping her eyes trained low. She was used to all this by now— members of Violet’s inner circle, which Sloane would not count herself a part of, were seemingly always summoning each other for one secretive meeting or another. Despite her extremely vested interest, Sloane couldn’t be mad at the fact that she was often excluded from those endeavors. Couldn’t blame Sorrengail for not wanting to involve the girl who’d killed her mother in whatever she was up to these days.
“Sounds good. Thanks for letting me know.”
Sloane glanced up just in time to catch Aetos’s nod, but he wasn’t looking at Aaric. His eyes were focused on her blooded fingers, clasping the gauze to her arm. He parted his lips as if he wanted to say something, then met Sloane’s gaze and clearly thought better of it. His mouth shut and, without further decorum, Aetos turned on his heel and marched away.
Good. She didn’t want him looking at her, anyways.
###
Sloane shot out of bed, chest heaving, cheeks wet. Her breaths were loud and jagged in the otherwise silent room.
She wasn’t new to the nightmares, but this had been the worst one in a while. Lilith Sorrengail’s life draining from her, the sound of Violet’s awful cries as she had begged Sloane to stop— Sloane’s inability to stop. In the dream, she drained them all. Violet, Xaden, Aaric, even Liam had been there. He was always there, in the periphery, cheeks of a child swollen with freckles and final breaths.
“Thoirt?” Even in her head, Sloane’s voice felt shaky. Her hands were sweaty against her sheets.
“I’m here.” Thoirt’s voice was rougher than usual. She’d been asleep. She knew what Sloane wanted, and before she could even ask, Thoirt continued. “East side of the field.”
Sloane sighed gratefully and shoved the sheets off herself, getting dressed quickly in the dim magelights before sneaking out to the flight field. It was the earliest part of the morning, hours before the sun would crack over the horizon and Sloane would need to report for archives duty. She had time.
Thoirt’s sigh reverberated in her head as she caught sight of the dragon, already curled up in the field. She was as discreetly tucked away as a dragon could be, which Sloane always appreciated. “We can’t keep doing this.”
“Just this once,” Sloane promised, although it was what she had said the last time and they both knew it was what she would say the next. Thoirt sighed again, but said nothing else as Sloane leaned against her, tucking her knees up to her chest and pressing her back to Thoirt’s warm scales. This wasn’t the most comfortable way to sleep— her neck and back were always sore the next morning, but the ground was frozen half-solid and it would be less comfortable to stretch along Thoirt’s side as she had done before.
Sloane rarely slept as well as she did when she was near Thoirt. It only happened a few times a month, and she knew it was a bad habit, but she only felt safe there. She never had nightmares if she fell asleep with her head tucked against scales.
Even now, feeling the rumble of Thoirt’s breaths beneath her, Sloane’s own breathing began to ease. “Thank you,” Sloane murmured aloud, and felt Thoirt chuff beneath her as she drifted off.
###
On nights where the dreams were bad enough she couldn’t sleep well but not bad enough that she needed to crawl underneath Thoirt’s wing, Sloane got up early to train. It was a habit suggested to her by Imogen, who tended to try and outrun her own sleepless nights. Sloane wasn’t a big fan of cardio, but could always use a few more hours of strength training.
There were usually a few others in the gym when she arrived, and this morning was no exception. She recognized a few third-years sparring in the corner, and a second-year was doing crunches by the door when she’d walked in.
She didn’t pay much attention to any of them, of course, because the minute she entered the room, her eyes had been locked on Dain Aetos.
He was shirtless and using one of Imogen’s favorite machines, the one that pushed your thighs apart until you forced them back together against the weights. That one always left Sloane feeling trembly and weak, her legs quaking, but Dain hardly seemed to struggle. She could see by the notches on the machine that he was pushing far more weight than she could, the muscles of his thighs not necessarily highlighted by his workout pants but certainly not hidden. He didn’t look up at her, focused entirely on his movements.
Sloane felt herself gawking and shuddered, steering herself abruptly towards a punching bag that faced the wall. It was generally against her personal principles to put her back to a room, but in this circumstance, she felt she had to.
She centered her feet the way Garrick had shown her and began to swing. The form came much easier to her now than it had before, which was a relief.
Before long, her knuckles were aching, her forearms over-tensed in a way she knew they weren’t supposed to be. She tried to focus on relaxing her stance but throwing more power behind her punch, which was the critique she received the most often when training with older riders. It’s all about the core, she heard Bodhi saying, and tried tensing that too, just to see what would happen.
“You’re bleeding.”
Sloane jumped, throwing a hand over her heart as she turned to face who she knew was standing there. “What?”
Dain had snuck up on her and was watching her with unimpressed, flat eyes. “You’re bleeding,” he repeated. He nodded towards her arm, where the scrape from the other day was still bandaged. She looked down and, sure enough, blood was seeping out of the wrapping and beginning to drip down her arm.
Sloane swore and began to unwrap the bandage, using the loose parts of it to sop up the blood as she inspected the wound.
“It probably needed stitches.” Dain’s voice was dry. “You could still see a healer about it. And who did that wrapping job? It’s awful.”
Sloane rolled her eyes, reaching for her pack to see if she had any spare bandages. She did, just barely enough to wrap around her arm. It would be difficult to do with her non-dominant hand, but probably possible.
Dain lingered in her periphery as she bit the edge of the wrapping to straighten it out. She tried to angle her shoulder so that he couldn’t see the awkward fumbling of her fingers as she tried to tie the bandage, but that only made her task harder. Sloane swore again as the fabric slipped out of her mouth and flapped uselessly against her arm.
“Let me do it.” Warm fingers brushed against hers suddenly and Sloane practically jumped away from the contact, letting the bandage be tugged into his grasp as she flinched away.
His eyebrows flew up, but Dain looked otherwise unphased. “I’m sorry, I should have asked before I touched you.”
“I don’t need your help.” Sloane practically bit out the words, although it was more embarrassment than anger that colored her tone.
He gestured toward the wound on her arm, which was beginning to sting. “It kind of looks like you do. Come on, Mairi, don’t be stupid.”
“I’m not stupid.” The words were instant, hot out of her mouth. Regret instantly colored Dain’s face.
“I didn’t mean it like that.” He reached again, gently, for her arm. “Just let me do this, okay? I don’t need first-years bleeding all over the training gym.”
Before she could really even respond, Dain was tying the bandage expertly around her arm. His fingers moved nimbly, just barely grazing against her skin as he wrapped it tightly but not so tightly that it felt like it might cut off her circulation. Sloane bit her lip, at a sudden loss for words. It was too early in the morning for this. He was still shirtless, though she was trying her best not to notice.
“There.” Dain’s voice was quiet as he finished tying the knot, sliding one finger assuredly along the bottom of the bandage before his hands returned to his sides. Sloane realized belatedly that he appeared to be staring at the spot where her bottom lip rolled between her teeth and quickly let it go.
“I’m not thanking you,” she muttered.
“I didn’t ask you to.” Dain took a light step back. “Your punching looks good. You have to relax your elbows more, though. If they’re too rigid it’ll be easy for an opponent to get under them and tell where your next hit is going to be.”
Sloane sighed and turned back to the punching bag, focusing on the positioning of her arms by her ribs. She’d heard the same comment from Garrick before, and it was annoying to know that Aetos knew how to do all this stuff, too.
He didn’t bother her again for the rest of the morning. She hardly noticed when he slipped out from the gym.
###
Dain Aetos had a staring problem.
She could feel his eyes on her all day long, even when she looked up quick enough to catch him and only witnessed a flash of cheek, a distracted hand scratching at his jaw.
“What’s going on with Aetos?” Baylor murmured beside her in the hall. “He kept looking at us during lunch and during class. It was weird.”
Sloane sighed as if disinterested. “Don’t know, don’t care.”
The truth is, she had a feeling she knew why Dain was staring. They’d not spoken since their confrontation in the amphitheater the day before, when he’d revealed in front of everyone that she wasn’t training her signet with Carr. It was an open secret, but she was still mad at him for acting like he cared if she lived or died, wingleader or not.
“You still working on that thing you have for him?”
“I do not—” Sloane’s voice was indignant and too loud as her head whipped towards Baylor in shock. He laughed, teasing but not unkind, and Sloane let out a huffy breath, crossing her arms over her chest and walking faster as if she could be rid of him. She glanced warily at the hand he brought to her shoulder, as if to pat her fondly, and it shot back down to his side, his face immediately guilty.
Baylor had been among the first to learn that he shouldn’t touch Sloane anymore after her signet had manifested. He’d thrown an arm around her after class and on instinct she’d shot an elbow into his solar plexus. It didn’t take the others much longer to pick up on it— Imogen, blinking in surprise when Sloane had winced away from her gentle grasp on her wrists, correcting the positioning of the dagger she’d been about to throw, and Lynx nudging her elbow in class only for her to flinch so hard she’d sent her parchment and quill flying. No one asked, but it felt like they all kept such careful eyes on her all the time. It was infuriating.
It’s not that Sloane didn’t want to be touched. If anything, she missed the physical ease that tended to come with being a rider. Everyone was so used to everyone else’s bodies from all the fighting and the teasing and the close brushes with death that it seemed pretty normal to always be touching each other, hands patting and punching and grabbing for hold. Dunne knew there was enough frenzied hooking up between the riders to encourage a certain familiarity with each other. But Sloane hadn’t let herself be touched outside of the sparring mat in a long, long time. Not since what she’d done to Sorrengail’s mother.
Except that she had been touched recently. Her mind flickered briefly to the early morning light in the gym a few days before, Aetos’s sure fingers brushing against her bicep. She swallowed and pushed the image away as quickly as it had come.
“Are we heading to a study room before flight maneuvers? I still haven’t finished that report for Sorrengail.” Avalynn bounced up beside them.
“I still can’t believe we have to write those,” Baylor grumbled. “Like our stupid papers will help anything when we have venin flying in on us.”
“You never know,” Sloane said. “If that’s what she says she needs, it’s what Sorrengail needs.”
They turned the corner and made their way into the study room. Aaric was conspicuously absent after class, but he was doing that more and more often lately. Sloane set up her notes at the big table next to Baylor’s, knowing she’d already finished Sorrengail’s paper but had another physics assignment that she’d been putting off.
She’d only made it through a few of the problem sets when there was a quick, quiet knocking sound. She glanced up and found Aetos standing in the open doorway, his intense brown eyes fixed on her.
He cleared his throat as the first-years stared at him. “Mairi. Come with me.”
She blinked, so surprised at the demand that she found herself almost instantly sweeping her parchment into her bag. “Why?”
“Just do it.” Dain cast a glance around their studying spot, his eyes almost approving as Sloane shoved her bag over her shoulder.
“If I’m not back by dinner, make sure you come find my body.” She directed this over her shoulder at her friends as she brushed past Dain in the doorway.
“Ha, ha. Very funny.” His voice was flat as he turned to lead them down the hall. Sloane followed him, resisting the urge to let her eyes trace over his back in his riding leathers.
He lead them to an empty classroom, shutting the door behind Sloane in a way that was ominous. Maybe he really was there to off her, Sloane thought. The idea was almost relieving, in the deepest and darkest part of her. Maybe they’d realized she was too dangerous to let live.
“Stop thinking like that,” came Thoirt’s annoyed voice. “The wingleader means you no harm.”
“His very existence harms me,” Sloane thought back. She leaned against a desk and folded her arms across her chest, eyes stuck on Dain as he lingered by the door. He was watching her right back, his eyes sharp.
Thoirt let out an amused snort. “Oh, I know all about how he haunts you, the way you think about him—”
“Stop talking immediately.” Sloane nearly grit her teeth together with the insistence behind her message. Dain noticed the irritation on her face and let out a breath.
“Listen, Mairi, I think I owe you an apology for yesterday. It wasn’t right to bring up the fact that you’re not training your signet in front of everybody else.”
Sloane’s back stiffened. Of everything she’d thought he’d say, an apology was the least expected. She sniffed dismissively and raised her chin, but didn’t respond.
Dain took a step closer, although there was still at least a couple feet of distance between them. He took another breath. “What I’m not sorry for, though, is pushing you to train your signet. You need to work on it. Do you know how much good you could do with that power if you knew how to properly wield it?”
Sloane gnawed on her lower lip, but stayed silent, frozen with her arms still tight around each other. He kept going.
“Siphoning is one of the most powerful signets a rider can have. I’ve been reading about it”—at this, Sloane made some sort of strangled sound, but he kept talking—“and if you knew how to siphon properly, it would be a game changer. That’s not to mention how bad of an idea it is to just let your power fester inside of you like that. Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to have someone out on the battlefield with an untrained signet?”
Sloane felt anger ignite inside of her. “Dangerous?” Her voice was pitched, wild sounding, even in her own ears. “Trust me, I know how dangerous I am. All I have is the ability to suck power out of something, to suck life out of something. I could suck the life out of you, right now, if I wanted to.”
Dain swallowed, and took a tentative step closer to her. He had a look on his face like he was trying to calm a spooked animal. Sloane’s hackles rose higher.
“You could,” he said softly. “You could do that. You could kill me right now, and I know you want to. But what I’m asking you to do with me today is just try something else.” Dain reached into his pocket and slid out a stone the size of his palm, smooth and dark like obsidian.
“What is that?” Sloane narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
“It’s a conduit. It soaks up power, makes sure it goes somewhere safe.” He held it out towards her, and despite herself, she took it. Her thumbs rubbed over the glossy stone, feeling for imperfections and ridges that weren’t there. Having something to do with her hands relaxed her infinitesimally.
“You have the ability to suck the power out of something, sure, but you also have the ability to give power to something. To imbue it.” Dain nodded towards the stone. “I want you to practice on me. Push my power into the conduit.”
Sloane blinked at him. “You realize how stupid that sounds, right? I won’t even practice with Carr. Why the fuck would I practice with you?”
He grimaced. “Because you need to, and you know you need to if you want to be any help at all in this war.” He paused. “And because it’ll hurt me.”
Sloane’s brows drew together. “It’ll hurt you?”
“Isn’t that what you want?” His smile was self-deprecating. “I’m giving you an open opportunity to cause me pain. You can’t act like that’s not something you’ve been looking forward to doing since you got here.”
“Why are you doing this?” Sloane swallowed in an attempt to quiet the unprecedented quaver in her voice. She couldn’t think when he looked at her like that, his eyes scanning her face like he was trying to read her thoughts. He was being too nice to her. Defensive, she sneered and hardened her voice. “Because you owe it to Liam?”
Her words didn’t appear to land as harshly as she wanted them to. Dain nodded, infuriatingly calm. “I probably do owe it to Liam. But I also owe it to you. I’m your wingleader. You need to train. This is what I got.”
He gestured to the conduit, somehow still cold to the touch.
“I’m not your responsibility.” She wanted to take a step back, but the desk was biting into her back. Dain inched a little closer.
“I’m just asking you to try,” he said. It was so agitating, how relaxed he seemed, how somehow this was the most civil conversation they’d ever had. Sloane wanted to rage, wanted to sink her teeth into him. She didn’t want to stand here and have a stupid conversation about her stupid powers that only existed so she could hurt people.
He stretched his hand out to her, palm facing the floor.
“Just try it.” Dain’s tone was mild. “Take the power from me, and put it into the stone.”
“What— what if I take too much?” There was a flutter of worry in her stomach, her voice somehow weak to her own ears. “You’re really going to trust me to only take a little, and not all of it? Is that how dumb you are?”
Dain nodded, his face unmoving. “I’m trusting you.”
“Just try it,” Thoirt chided. “I didn’t give you all that power just so you could waste it on using pens in class.”
Hesitantly, Sloane sighed and reached out for him. Her fingers found his wrist, warm to the touch. Instantly, she felt the well of his power yawning open to greet her. She paused.
“You shouldn’t have this much,” she said. It was more than she had ever felt in another rider. Dain nodded again, but didn’t say anything. His power practically fizzed under her fingertips, begging for her to take it.
She palmed the conduit in her other hand and began to draw from him. At first, it was like using the fingers of her own power to unfurl something from within him, a steady and delicate stream curling up and into her. He hissed, but kept his face composed. Her grip tightened as she felt the magic dancing and drifting through her. The conduit began to warm.
The worst part was that it felt good. Her whole body alight with hot and insistent power, the kind that slightly singed her edges. Sloane focused on pulling more from Dain.
His face was screwed up with pain, his breaths jagged and awful. Her own exhales were shaky and afraid. She only lasted a few more seconds before she dropped both the conduit and Dain’s hand with a gasp.
“Holy shit,” she breathed. “Are you okay?”
Dain nodded, one hand reflexively braced over where Sloane had grabbed him. “I’m fine.”
“I didn’t leave a mark, did I?” Her voice was nearly panicked.
“No.” Dain lifted his arm to reveal a stretch of unblemished, tan skin where her hand had been. “It’s fine, see? You didn’t hurt me.” He nodded toward the conduit on the floor. “Pick it up again. See how different it feels.”
The stone hummed softly in her hand as she picked it up, and Sloane gasped as she turned it over. Where the stone had been unmarked before, thin gold veins of light now flickered through it. She held it closer to her face, marveling at the shimmer of power within the conduit.
“It’s cool, right?” Dain’s breaths were beginning to even out.
Sloane abruptly realized that she was staring with open, unfaltering wonder at a rock Dain Aetos had given her and quickly gathered her composure, setting it on the desk between them.
“Well, now that we’ve proven I can do that.” She pushed the strap of her bag back onto her shoulder. “Am I free to go?”
She hardly waited for his nod before she was shouldering past Dain and out of the classroom, surreptitiously shaking her hand out like she could erase the feeling of his warm skin beneath hers.