Violet and Rhiannon discuss the make-out in the way that best friends have always discussed embarrassing make-outs. Much wailing, teasing, and gossip. Rhiannon reveals that she got her special magic, which is to summon/teleport things. Any rider can use the lesser magic to telekinetic things, but teleporting is special. Apparently it’s rare and uber special, just like every other power a main character has. Go figure.

On the way to their class, Dain stops Violet and wants to talk. He’s very hurt that she wouldn’t share her memory of the attack with him, but she would share it with everyone. Violet has to point out that he never asked her to share, he just reached out to grab her head.

She also unloads on him about the way he’s treated her thus far, trying to get her out of the college and trying to protect her. Which makes sense if the main hangup was sexism or something, or if task wasn’t something very physically dangerous that she didn’t want. But she has EDS and is in a murder college that doesn’t take basic safety seriously and also bodily throws people around, which as far as Dain knows she doesn’t and never did want to be part of. Getting her out is the most logical response in the world.

Emotionally, as a mostly able-bodied reader, Violet’s reaction to him makes sense to me. I feel it. It’s well done. Until I back out a scootch and then remember Violet is very different and, idk, probably shouldn’t be reacting in the same way that I would?

But the Rider’s Quadrant stripped away the fear and even the anger about being thrown into this quadrant, and it revealed who I really am. At my core, Dain, I’m a rider.

…when? How? We’ve been in this chick’s head the entire time and nothing about her thoughts has changed. I would say nothing about her feelings, as well, but outside of fear and horny her feelings mostly aren’t described. She can be a very distant narrator when good things are going on.

We get a quick summary of the next month or so, including the news that Violet won two of her sparing-with-a-chance-of-murder matches.

I did a quick look for EDS people doing martial arts and found several redit posts of people talking about their experience. There’s some jargon I don’t get, but the overall consensus seems to be: plenty of people do it, but you have to be really careful, inform all of your partners ahead of time, and even then people usually quit or scale back within a couple of years. And these are people doing it as a sport, so they can come up with work-arounds when necessary, not people going to a class and saying “yeah, just fuck me up, coach.”

Violet finds out that her next match is against Jack, and she talks to Liam about it. They’re both worried about Jack’s hard-on for murdering her. Funny enough, no one has ever mentioned that Jack is good at anything. She beat two other people (without poisoning them first) and it’s brushed over, but Jack prompts a whole conversation. During which, at no point, does anyone say “oh no, but he’s so good at fighting!” Just saying.

Violet’s narration slyly hints that she’s got something up her slee- it’s orange juice. Come on, you’re not sly there, book. It’s so obviously orange juice. You bungled your chance to try and be secret with that one.

They get to the gym and find out who is challenging who and everyone is all GASP about Jack/Violet and I’m still not convinced Jack is even good at anything.

They fight, it’s kind of standard. Jack gets her in an arm lock and tries to stab her.

“He’s using death blows!” Ridoc shouts. “That’s not allowed!”

“Pull it back, Barlowe!” [Professor] Emetterio bellows.

It is? Since when? Also, why do they have knives if not allowed to stab each other? And if you really don’t want kids to stab each other, that’s a pretty weak response.

There is more fighting, more non-lethal stabbing (which is fine?), until finally Jack gets the upper hand by using some sort of magic that…hurts? It’s described as ‘pouring energy into her body and that causes agony’ so his signet is literally just hurting people? Bit on the nose, book.

Violet keeps herself together long enough to dump her vial of orange juice in his mouth and send him into allergy shock that way, and then she tells the teacher what she did and passes out.

She wakes up in the infirmary with Xaden watching over her. Since she told the staff what she gave Jack, they were able to treat him in time and he’s alive, which Xaden is unhappy about.

So go kill him or whatever. This book cannot decide if it wants to be a real murder college or not.

Violet wants to talk about the kiss from a month ago that he still hasn’t addressed, and Xaden brushes it off. He’s all ‘we’re going to be stuck together because of our dragons, let’s not make it even more awkward by getting involved.’ And then he decides he’s going to take over her hand-to-hand training because oh no she almost got killed that’s scary he definitely hasn’t already caught feelings.

Which they start doing the next day.

She still has stitches. She passed out.

“The enemy doesn’t give a shit if you’re wounded. They’ll use it to their advantage. If you don’t know how to fight in pain, then you’ll get us both killed.”

Being a solider is going to age a person, because actually you can’t just take damage over and over again and keep trucking. That’s why I have a bum leg. That’s why my best army friend has a shitty back. Another of my friends is missing half the muscles in this arm. There’s a whole slew of us that that took metaphorical hits until we couldn’t anymore and then retired.

Few of those hits came in training. A few did, sure, but most came from doing the job. And that’s because there’s only so many you can take before you’re down for good so better put them to good use. Wrecking yourself during training isn’t helpful, it just ups the odds that you’ll never make it to active duty and shortens the amount of time you’re useful while active. That is why training is simulated and has safety rails.

An able-bodied person would already be retired from how much damage the characters in this book have been through.

But no, gotta keep on trucking, because…reasons. Rule of cool. Shit.

Getting hurt doesn’t train you; it just hurts.

Xaden claims that she’s good with daggers but it’s too easy to take them from her because they’re not … made for her body type? No clue what this means. He unveils a bunch of daggers that he had made just for her. They are apparently very pretty and have special carvings, but we don’t find out what would make them more body-type-appropriate. Possibly he’s making shit up in order to not say that they’ve got special magic that will be important later, but I feel like Violet should call him out if it’s meant to be a lie and she’s meant to be soooo smart. 

Because the nonsense rules of this school say you can only have a weapon if you brought it with you or won it in a fight, she’s got to fight him for them. He makes it absurdly easy, they flirt a lot, and now Violet has 12 new daggers.

Another month goes by, and we come to again with the friends talking about signet powers. Apparently one kid died because his fire powers manifested too strongly and he burned himself. Oops. (See? There are plenty of ways for kids to die here without also making things unsafe on purpose!) Violet is nervous about her own special powers not showing up.

I’m proving to be the one thing my mother hates – average.

What the ever-loving fuck? You have TWO dragons, one of which is the biggest ever! The dragons claim you’re the smartest kid in the year! You’ve poisoned multiple people! Also, powers never showing up is rare so even in that case you wouldn’t be average at all! Dead, but not average!

Sorry, book, but you’ve put too much time into making her special to pull this off now.

They talk some about this Squad Games thing that’s coming up, and then Violet gets pulled out of classes to go have a meeting with the brass. Her mom is there, too. There’s some tension between mother and daughter, the group asks for permission to study Andarna (no), and there’s little nuggets dropped in about future plot points. Relevant nuggets dropped naturally, not like the oranges thing, which makes that bit even weirder. The book can do this right, so why was that one so wrong?