The Empyrean: the story so far

Violet Sorrengail had trained her whole life to be a scribe. Her mother, General Lilith Sorrengail, sent her into the Riders Quadrant at Basgiath War College instead, where a cadet whose joints dislocate on their own does not usually last a day. Crossing the parapet killed several of them before Violet was through the door.

Xaden Riorson led the wing she landed in. His father had led the rebellion and her mother had executed him, and the marked children of those rebels had been conscripted to die quietly. Jack Barlowe tried to kill her outright. Her childhood friend Dain Aetos wanted her to quit.

At Threshing, Tairn chose her, a black dragon who had already lost a rider, and so did Andarna, a small golden one, which nobody had heard of before. Two dragons gave her a lightning signet and a channel straight into Xaden's head, and eventually into the rest of him.

The war games sent her squad to Athebyne, and Athebyne was a trap. What they met at Resson were venin, humans who drain the life out of the earth, and the wyverns they make, both of which Basgiath teaches its cadets are folklore. Liam Mairi died covering her. Violet burned the field with lightning while Andarna stopped time, and it very nearly killed her.

She woke in Aretia. Xaden's rebellion had been smuggling weapons past the wards for years, because Navarre's command knows the venin are real, knows the villages outside the wards are being emptied, and has chosen to defend only itself. Then her brother Brennan, dead for six years, walked in and welcomed her to the revolution.

Violet went back to Basgiath knowing what Navarre was hiding, and the college had a new vice commandant, Major Varrish, whose job was finding out what she knew. She cut Dain off for reading her memories without asking. Xaden was posted to Samara, and whatever they had ran on stolen nights and the things he would not tell her.

She worked with the scribe Jesinia on the First Six who raised the wards, and found that an unactivated wardstone was sitting in Aretia. Varrish had her taken and questioned for it. Dain, sent in to strip her memories, saw the venin in them, understood he had been lied to his whole life, and turned on Varrish. Xaden finished it.

The rebellion dropped wyvern carcasses at Navarre's own outposts so the lie could not hold. Violet translated the journals: the wardstone needed the breath of dragons from seven dens, and only six were known to exist.

Jack Barlowe came back as venin and killed his own dragon to bring Basgiath's wards down, and the venin poured in. Violet was burning herself out trying to fill the wardstone when her mother took it from her. General Sorrengail poured her own life into it through Sloane and died doing it. Andarna, who had never been a black dragon at all but the last of a seventh breed, gave the seventh breath, and the stone lit.

They held Basgiath. Afterwards Xaden told Violet what he had done to kill the sage and keep her alive. He had drawn power straight from the earth. He was venin.

Violet had a venin for a partner and told nobody. She had Imogen wipe another venin's memory to keep it buried, and went looking for a cure in the one place it might exist: the seventh dragon breed, Andarna's own kind.

Navarre, Poromiel and the Tyrrendor revolutionaries were forced into an alliance. Violet committed treason by rewriting the wardstones so gryphon fliers could hold magic inside the wards, and was posted to Samara for it. Xaden became Duke of Tyrrendor and was kept away from her.

She took her father's research and a crew out across the sea, island by island, trading for armies and hunting the irids. Deverelli cost her Captain Grady. Zehyllna bought forty thousand troops and cost her Trager. The irids, when she found them, wanted nothing to do with a war and thought Andarna had been raised wrong. Violet told Andarna to break the bond and go, and she went.

Theophanie turned out to be a storm wielder rather than a lightning wielder, and killing her took three of them at once: Xaden's shadows blacking out the field, Andarna cutting off her escape, and Violet driving a marble dagger from Dunne's temple through her heart. The dagger had come from Aaric, who had been hiding a precognition signet the whole time.

Xaden channelled to end the battle and save Violet and Sgaeyl, and went fully venin, with one thread of himself left holding on.

Violet woke unable to account for the previous twelve hours. On her hand was a gold ring set with the emerald missing from Xaden's father's sword, and a certificate from the temple of Dunne saying she had married him. Imogen had taken those hours at Violet's own request. People and dragons had died in them, and everyone believed Xaden had killed them.