Violet now has to go about her day with Liam playing bodyguard, including when she goes to do her library chores. Fortunately, he’s pretty chill to get along with. Unfortunately, he’s very dedicated to being a bodyguard.

While at the library and waiting for requests to be pulled, they chat about Xaden. Specifically, how Liam and Xaden know each other, other than just the general ‘we are the kids of traitors and taking on collective punishment for it.’ Liam and Xaden went to the same foster house, when all the kids were divvied up among loyal families. Violet is surprised to hear about the extra cruelties heaped on this group, such as both of Liam’s parents being killed and not just the traitor parents, or how his sister was sent to a different house. There are 107 of these kids ranging in age from 23 to 6.

And that’s as much as Liam wants to make small talk about his traumatic past. Understandable.

Jesinia comes back to hand over the books, make doe eyes at Liam, and deliver a report for one of the teachers. On the way out, they drop the scroll report and catch a bit of news about a village being attacked, but they don’t read deeply because they figure they’ll be going over it in class.

This chapter has a lot of random little bits in it, small talk that goes nowhere, but it’s cool. I like it. They’re trying to establish rapport between Violet and Liam and I like that best when it’s done through small and calm moments. Just doesn’t make for good summarizing.

Later the kids are chatting and teasing before their battle brief class. Violet is upset about Xaden, the others poke at her for having a crush on him, it’s all very friendly. But two pages earlier we had:

‘Sympathy’ isn’t a word found in our quadrant. There’s rage, wrath, and indignation…but no sympathy.

And yet a lot of the downtime in this book is Violet hanging out with her friends and having, I will admit, pretty well written banter and small talk. It’s chill and shows good friendship, and Rhiannon consistently cares about Violet’s wellbeing. This book feels like the writer couldn’t commit to brutality so figured that Violet’s thoughts could patch the holes, but it comes off disjointed instead.

“Oh, are we telling dick jokes now?” Ridoc asks from Liam’s side. “Because my entire life has led up to this very moment.”

Heh. I laughed.

We get our first mention of something called Squad Battle, which is pretty self-explanatory. Winners this year get a trip to the front lines. Because…??? Plot?

But then class starts in earnest and there’s no mention of the village that Violet read about earlier. She finds that odd, then dismisses it. She’s a student, after all, of course she doesn’t know everything that the teachers are told.

A whole month goes by. We rejoin the characters during a sparring practice.

Per [Dain’s] recent orders, Tuesday nights are for squad hand-to-hand combat practice, because the full academic load we’re carrying, coupled with flight lessons and now wielding instructions for some of us isn’t leaving much time for the mat.

But…why is it not one of your classes? Even West Point makes you take PT and combatives and maneuvers and all that shit. Or is it one of the classes and we just never find out? We’ve had mention of a history class and a physics class, and lord knows I don’t want to sit in on them, but some sort of mention of what her day-to-day looks like would be really helpful. Especially since fighting and flying is all that this school seems to care about, but all it gives instruction about is…not those things.

The weekly fights start again in a month, because we have to give time for Violet to heal from the various things that have tried to kill her recently. Wait, no, that’s not the reason, it’s because….uh….reasons?

We get distracted for a full two pages because Xaden takes his shirt off to practice sparring. In case you were curious, he’s still hot.

Jack pipes up from his own practice to mock Violet for being short and weak. Again. And then mid-rant this happens:

[Jack’s] friend from First Wing offers him something – a slice of the orange he’s eating – and Jack shoves his hand away at the wrist. “Get that noxious shit away from me. Do you want me to end up in the infirmary?”

So, pretty clearly Jack is allergic to oranges and this becomes relevant later. And also pretty clearly, this fact had to be established in the editing stage. But why did it get shoved into THIS scene? There have been so many scenes in the chow hall where it would have much far more natural, but no, there’s just a guy randomly shoving oranges in his face during a workout?

Violet taunts Jack back and then her various bodyguards have to remove him from the gym because he flies into a rage about it. This kid…is not good military material. I mean, lord knows I’ve seen tons of people who weren’t suited for it back when the army was in recruitment mode, so I’m not saying he can’t be here. I just felt like pointing it out. If they weren’t hard-up for bodies in this military I would seriously be questioning why he’s allowed to stay.

Violet, Dain, and Xaden get in an angry sniping match at each other, but because Violet doesn’t…idk, stab someone, the dragons decide that counts as controlling her temper and that she’s ready to channel some magic now. Weird criteria, since a short temper has been part of her character thus far.

Later that night, Violet is suddenly overcome with power. Because the dragons decided to start channeling to her but also waited several hours? It knocks her over pretty good until she gets used to it, but afterwards she’s excited to go tell her friends. When she leaves her room, Liam is there standing guard in the hallway, and she’s suddenly overcome by how hot he is and how much she wants to jump his bones.

Thankfully, she figures out pretty quickly that Tairn is getting his dragon bones on and the lusty thoughts are a spillover effect. To avoid doing something regrettable with/to Liam, she beats a hasty retreat and then sneaks outside to be alone in the cold. It’s not as helpful as hoped.

Also Xaden is out there for the same reason. Smoking a fantasy cigarette. Because we can have November and December in this fantasy world, but we can’t have tobacco. (No really, they use the same weekday names and month names.)

Xaden laughs at her going through this the first time, until he realizes she’s getting it worse because she hasn’t been taught how to block out the dragon’s thoughts/feelings yet.

“You’re actually going to help me?”

“I’ve been helping you for months.” […]

“No, you sent Liam to help. […]”

“I’m the one who burst through your door and killed everyone who attacked you, and then I removed the other threat to your life with a very public, very polarizing display of vengeance. Liam didn’t do that. I did.”

I mean, yeah all that but also he’s been giving her advice throughout the book so far and also HASN’T EVER TRIED TO HURT HER. So bored with this.

“Have you always been this tall?” I blurt the first thing that comes to mind.

“No. I was a child at some point.”

I lol-ed.

I honestly don’t have a problem with Xaden in this book. Sure, he’s cliched, but he’s a cliché done well so whatever. He’s got some snarky lines, his backstory and internal issues have a lot of potential. Other than being party to the toxic perseverance shit, he’s unobjectionable.

It’s just Violet’s reactions to him that are sooooooo overdone and annoying.

Violet herself isn’t that bad either. She’s just in the wrong story, so she doesn’t make sense. There’s a version of all this that could have been so much better. Let Violet be a scribe. Let her deal with her disability there. Let her and Xaden have some real danger between them, which goes unrealized because they rarely meet being in different quadrants. Let her then bond to Tairn anyway, probably through some shenanigans. Then we can skip the nonsense danger school, we can have a whole thing about how humans have been imposing their own standards on dragons, Xaden can honestly struggle with his life being tied to a mortal enemy, etc etc.

Alas, we don’t have that, we have Nonsense Murder School and Toxic Perseverance instead.

Xaden teaches her to block out the dragons using…imagination. It’s all just visualizing stuff. She takes to it immediately, despite all this supposedly being very hard to do. I guess she has ‘extreme motivation’ on her side, what with all the dragon lust.

Shielding can’t block out your dragon completely, though, so Violet is still horny. Conveniently, so is Xaden. Also conveniently, he’s still super hot. Much make-out ensues. This author comes from the romance genre, and it shows. This is not a complaint, the make-out is perfectly fine, it’s just a particular style, lol.

Xaden breaks it off first, realizing that they’ll never be able to tell how much of that lust is genuine and therefore carrying on could be a big mistake. Violet ends the chapter going home and feeling horribly embarrassed.