Whisper [Fourth Wing]

Chapter Nine

IT WAS SEPTEMBER ALREADY. The sun was back at its highest. The days were warm and bright and long. Everything about the world had faded from that cold mess of winter into the joy of summer.

Everything but me.

Warmth didn't reach my icy skin or tan my pale arms. The sun did not light my path or push away the shadows lurking around every corner. It did not bring me any highs or joy or peace. Only longer days of loss.

Almost twenty more names have been added to the death roll in the last month for the first-years alone, not to mention the dozen second-years we've lost due to either flight training, challenges or RSC. Just last week one of the second-years in third-wing was scorched by their own dragon after getting in the way during RSC.

That poor dragon.

Sometimes, when nobody else is around and I'm left alone with the cold and the darkness, I wonder how long it will be till my name is on that list. How many more days of this hell I'll have to force myself through before I can finally find peace. Sometimes...I wish it were my name that Pancheck read out during morning formation. I wish for death.

"Sorry, Violet," Professor Emetterio says, scratching his short black beard. "You were supposed to challenge Rayma, but she's been taken to the healers because she can't seem to walk in a straight line."

Tearing my gaze away from the tear down the edge of our mat that I've been staring at since we walked into the gymnasium this afternoon, I glance up to find Violet shuffling in her place. She'd managed to get through every challenge without killing any of her opponents. Though, they did all end up in the infirmary with certain poison related symptoms.

I still didn't know how nobody else had realised. Surely Nolon found it bizarre that all of Violet's opponents happened to come to him ill on the very day she had challenged him. How long had the guy being mending her? Years. Yet he still hadn't realised.

Not that anyone was complaining. God knows what would happen if someone else knew.

"That's too bad." Violet says with a wince. "Should I just..." she starts, already backing up to get off the mat.

Like Emetterio would let her get off that easily.

"I'm happy to step in."

That voice. That tone. That prickle of ice along my scalp... Oh no. Hell no. No. No. No. Of all the times he had to open his mouth, why now? Had he not already pissed Dain off enough by breaking his ankle last week? It certainly looked like it from the way the already glaring Dain seemed to go bright red.

Yep. This was going to end gloriously well.

"You sure?" Professor Emetterio asks, glancing over his shoulder.

"Absolutely."

My stomach hits the floor. And Xaden walks onto the mat. Violet is so completely screwed.

Xaden steps forward—all six-foot-everything of him—dressed in midnight fighting leathers and a tight-fitted short-sleeve shirt that only seems to make the shimmering, dark rebellion relics on his skin seem even darker than before. They glimmer beneath the gymnasium lights just like they do beneath the moon. Just like that large dragon relic from Sgaeyl on his back.

Now that was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. Unlike my own which was the smallest thing ever.

"That's because you're small and already had burns on your back," grumbles Luisaidh, her sharp tone just like a mother scolding her children. If I didn't know better, I'd think she was talking to Cridhe and not me. "Unless you'd rather I have burnt you even further so your skin pealed from your bones."