Page 596 - Fourth Wing

the punishment Colonel Aetos delivered. For a crime she didn’t even know

I was committing. Didn’t even suspect.
I run a hand through my hair. She wasn’t the only one who suffered.

Liam would be alive.

Liam. Guilt pairs with soul-sucking grief, and I can barely inhale around
the pain in my chest. I’d ordered my foster brother to keep her safe, and that

order got him killed. His death is on me.

I should have known what was waiting for us at Athebyne—
“You should have told her about the venin. I waited for you to impart the

information, and now she’s suffering,” Tairn growls. The dragon is the

living, fire-breathing embodiment of my shame. But at least the bond that
links the four of us is still in place, even if he can’t communicate with her—

which means Violet’s alive.
He can yell at me all he wants as long as her heart’s beating.

“I should have done a lot of things differently.” What I shouldn’t have

done was fought my feelings for her. I should have grabbed on to her after
that first kiss the way I wanted and kept her at my side, should have let her

all the way in.
My eyelids scratch like sandpaper each time I blink, but I’m fighting

sleep with every bone in my body. Sleep is where I hear her heartbreaking

scream, hear her cry that Liam died, hear her call me a fucking traitor over
and over.

She can’t die, and not just because there’s a chance I won’t survive. She

can’t die because I know I can’t live without her even if I do. Somewhere
between the shock of our attraction at the top of that turret to realizing she

risked her own life by giving up a boot for someone else on the parapet that

first day to her throwing those daggers at my head under the oak tree, I
wavered. I should have realized the danger of getting too close the first time

I put her on her back and showed her how easily she could kill me on the
mat—a vulnerability I’ve allowed no one else—but I brushed it off as an