BUT FIRST! Each chapter opens with a little bit of in-universe flavor text, something from an in-universe book or from Brennan’s diary. Mostly it’s just worldbuilding nuggets that are fine but not relevant. This time we get:

Winning the War Games isn’t about strength. It’s about cunning. […] No one stays friends forever, Mira. Eventually those closest to us become our enemies in some way, even if it’s through will-intentioned love or apathy, or if we live long enough to become their villains.

Esprit de corps, motherfucker, ever heard of it?

I can’t even claim that the school, as we have seen so far, actually does this, but if that’s the intention (the author’s intention/the school’s intention/whatever) then it’s dumb as fuck because they’re a military. You want them to work together. Hell, last chapter we had Mira pointing out that unit cohesion is important! This book just has no sense of consistency in what kind of vibe it wants these riders to have.

Anyway, War Games is basically Squad Battle on ten shots of espresso and it’s coming up soon.

It’s two days after the events of last chapter and Violet is pestering one of her teachers for news of Mira and her squad. Xaden is hanging around with her, for support and also for bantering opportunities. They pounce on the teacher as soon as he comes out of his office and ask for information. The teacher says the whole incident is classified, but after some pestering at least tells Violet that no one died. Her sister is safe.

There’s a bunch of summary and then we skip ahead to the first day of War Games. It’s wing vs wing and one side is defending while another attacks. There are certain items in play that are worth points. The defending wing has a valuable dragon egg (fake) and the attacking wing has a less valuable flag and they’re going to go out and try to steal from each other. Finally, an exercise in this nonsense college that makes some amount of sense.

They walk out to the flight field to mount up and Tairn shows up in a saddle.

A fucking saddle.

A FUCKING SADDLE.

“I can’t use that.” I shake my head. “It’s not allowed.”

“I decide what’s allowed and what’s not,” Tairn growls

WHY IS IT NOW ALLOWED, BOOK? WHY? WHY DO YOU HATE SENSE THIS MUCH? WHO DISALLOWED IT?

Clearly the dragons don’t mind because Tairn is right here like “fuck it, this makes more sense and it’s not even uncomfortable and I’m find with it” and yet FOR SOME REASON it’s “not allowed”????

SAYS FUCKING WHO?

I have never been so mad at a FUCKING SADDLE before in my life, not because the saddle is bad but because it’s existence here means IT’S POSSIBLE AND Y’ALL KNOW IT’S POSSIBLE AND YOU DIDN’T DO IT BEFORE NOW AND JUST FUCKING WHY?

But I know why. It’s because the author wanted to write in a scene about disability accommodations. It’s clear in this interview she gives.

I can only speak for myself here, but there are plenty of times I don’t want to accept accommodations. I want to be capable of accomplishing the same feats as my peers—like signing thousands of books a day when necessary—without complaint or injury. But I also recognize that it’s not possible. My wrist simply won’t hold out and there’s every chance my hip will slide out when I sit incorrectly, or I’ll pass out when my heart races due to POTS. Violet accepts the accommodations she absolutely has to in order to be a dragon rider. She can definitely get in her own way and put her body through too much at times because of her stubbornness, which I’ve found to be a personal theme in my life. Accepting and asking for appropriate accommodations is a very personal journey, and it was important for me to show that in Fourth Wing for readers who may or may not struggle with the same choices.

And that is a noble goal. In fact, throughout this scene Violet is furious about being presented with an accommodation has to be talked into it, with other people and her dragons pointing out that this isn’t a failing and her life will be better and stronger if she takes it and she has complex feelings about it but ultimately accepts. And it’s good. On an emotional level, at least. It’s written with some strong emotion that comes through clearly and that’s great!

But why is about a fucking saddle?

PEOPLE HAVE DIED, BOOK.

CHARACTERS HAVE FALLEN OFF THEIR SEAT AND DIED MULTIPLE TIMES SO FAR.

WHY DON’T THEY GET A SADDLE?

WHY IS THE ONE FUCKING ACCOMMODATION THIS????

I am so absolutely furious because it’s an ‘accommodation’ that makes sense to an abled person because we all know what saddles are it’s just too fucking obvious. It’s something everyone already uses. There is going to be zero need to change any minds or thoughts when a character is given a saddle because it’s just “oh, yeah, of course” and also IT MAKES NO SENSE THAT THEY DIDN’T ALREADY HAVE ONE.

Look at that quote above. The author talks about how her hip slips out if she just sits for too long. Why not use that? Why not have saddles that she can’t use because they’re too wide and prolonged sitting messes up her joints? Why not have to modify her saddle into something that makes people go “wow, princess, you need a chaise lounge there?” Because in this book it’s a normal saddle and exactly zero other characters in the story have a problem with it.

Why doesn’t this book challenge literally anything about ableist ideas?

AND WHO IN-UNIVERSE SAID THAT RIDERS CAN’T HAVE SADDLES I’M STILL MAD ABOUT THAT ONE.

Also it’s dumb as shit that this comes up the same day as their field exercise because she has no chance to practice with it or get used to it or find out if, IDK, having her legs tied in place just pulls her hip joint out while they’re making hard turns. Feels like that’s something you need to safety test before you go into a battle with it, mock or not.

But this book cares shit all about safety procedures so off we go to have a little battle. Andarna decides she wants to come to. Sure, we haven’t seen her much this book, come on along.

Violet finds out she really loves flying when she’s not terrified of falling off all the time and her magic starts getting all sparky, implying she was too tense to manifest a signet before.

Violet’s group comes across another bunch of dragons and it’s quickly clear that this group is guarding the fake egg. Also this book still doesn’t understand what ‘training’ is and has the kids go after each other with full on magic and live weapons because sure, why the fuck not. Let’s burn some students to death. That’ll help things.

One of the egg defenders is Jack, who is being his usual dumbass self and picks Liam to grapple with. The dragons are fighting very close together in midair because sure, why not, and Jack jumps onto Liam’s dragon so he can go do a stabbity-stab.

I’m so tired of the sparing-but-with-knives in this book. It’s like…the only thing that happens. There’s a vague mention of weapon proficiency tests, but we don’t see anything like that, nor do we see them do any training except one-on-one on the mats here. (Well, not training, but you know.) Are they expected to do all of their fighting solo? Is there no training on how to work as a unit? The only thing we know they do with dragons is fly, occasionally in formation, but that isn’t covered well either. It’s just odd to me how individual everything in this school is.

All the better to make sure Violet gets to be special but also never a liability, I guess. We can cry about her shortcomings in abstract, but that’s it.

Fortunately we skip straight to the secret third thing, which is to have all of the squads identify and obtain something ‘advantageous to our enemies regarding the war effort.’ Our kids huddle up and start tossing around ideas, until Violet realizes that the best option is to steal information from her mom’s office. (I like it because someone else said ‘information’ first, and Violet is uniquely knowledgeable in her mom’s office, so it’s not quite as special snowflake as she’s been thus far in the book.)

They make plans off page and we come back to them sneaking through the fortress. Sneaking loudly, because they can’t stop bantering. Sure would be nice if they’d had some classes in squad movements, or mission planning, or literally anything. Fortunately, this college is also as nonsense as the kids are so they don’t get caught. One of the squad members lures the only guard out of the way using an astral projection, they break into the poor lock on the door, and they start searching the office.

They end up stealing a giant map that has the current location and strength of every military unit the nation has, and after a brief skirmish with the guard again, they get back to the judges and win game. Overall a pretty competent chapter.

Of course, their ‘prize’ for winning is a trip to the front lines which is…confusing. If this is something that’s supposed to be useful, then everyone should be getting it. However it’s not a pleasant outing so it’s not a prize in that regard. What’s so prize-ful about this? Feels like the author just wanted the book to go here and there’s the only reason.

They head to a fort called Montserrat, which it turns out is very close to Rhiannan’s home. She and Violet immediately make plans to sneak out. While the squad is touring the place, we find out that one of the riders stationed there is Mira. Oops, sorry, no time for a sisterly reunion here, we immediately skip to two days later.

Violet and Rhiannon are going to sneak out to visit her family, and they get caught by Mira. They hastily convince Mira not to tattle, and then convince her to join them. A whole paragraph later, Rhiannon is happily reunited with her family and meeting her newborn nephew for the first time, and Violet and Mira sit outside and chitchat.

That was a lot of shuffling around for a sisterly chat that could have happened several pages earlier.

The sisterly chat involves…tactical discussions. So loving. Mira relays some of the places she’s seen action, and Violet notices again that there’s a lot of things going on that don’t get covered in battle brief. I’m annoyed that this foreshadowing comes up again, because Mira gives the same excuse we had last time: you’re in school, you don’t need to know every single detail of the tactical situation, some of which is above your clearance level. Because, that’s legit! The way it comes up, the book wants us to think this is something suspicious, but it’s not!

Also, Mira has the book of fables that Violet loves and couldn’t find at the library.

And then, low and behold, Xaden shows up. Turns out that about three days is the max time that bonded dragons will put up with being separated. Xaden takes to chilling in the background while the squad goes about their…uh, ‘prize.’ (It occurs to me that family visits could have been the prize and this all would have played out exactly the same.)

Today they are talking through battle scenarios and the kids are doing my favorite trick of “I’m going to ruin this game by taking everything you say literally.”

“There’s a new fort here on this map and-“ “They built it in a day?” “Ugh, fine, they took over an existing one and-“ “The locals didn’t notice and warn us?” “I hate all of you.”

No really, it is my favorite game, lol. Even if it is unhelpful. Mira’s attempts to lead this little thought exercise are even more hindered by Dain sniping at Xaden every chance he gets and Xaden finding that amusing.

Once they finally struggle their way through how to retake the fictional outpost, Mira calls an end to the class so she can chew out Dain in relative privacy. She rightfully points out that he’s being an ass, destroying his squad’s cohesion, and ruining any chance at being a wingleader.

Then she moves on to yelling at Violet and Xaden saying they need to figure out a better fix for this whole ‘can’t be separated’ thing, because next year Xaden will no longer be in school. She intimates that forcing Violet out of her training and preventing her from being successful might be Xaden’s plan of retribution. Can’t believe we’re still on this. It would help if Xaden had literally done anything mean ever.

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.

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 pointed 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, alerted by the dragons, kicked in the door right before the time freeze, so Violet stumbles over to his side right before time starts up again. Poor Andarna can’t hold frozen time for long. Xaden is furious, and a short bit of begging from Oren and the others doesn’t help.

Xaden’s shadows grab every assailant but Oren by the throat, then constrict. They struggle, but it doesn’t matter. Their faces turn purple, the shadows holding tight as they sag to their knees, falling in an arc in front of me like lifeless puppets.

So…not shadows? Basically his power is just some sort of demon forcefield that’s dark like shadows? Who knows, because this book has zero care for the fact that shadows don’t have mass.

It’s a shame because someone’s powers being legitimately just shadows would be interesting. There’s lots of limitations there, but limitations is where creativity thrives. I read someone once describe liking The Flash as like “he’s only got one power and he has to figure out how to use it to solve every problem, whereas Superman has every power but uses all of them to just punch.” (And yeah, Superman has other interesting things, but his powers ain’t one of them.)

Oren, being the only named character in the room, gets to be murdered by more conventional, knifey means.

Garrick and Bodhi, two marked kids that are part of Xaden’s general friend group, show up out of nowhere and basically go “aw, we missed it all, bummer.” They get started on cleanup duty like they’ve done this a million times before. Hmmmm….

Violet is currently freaking the fuck out, due to the murder attempt, the display of murderous power, and the fact that she has broken ribs. So naturally Xaden has to tend to her wounds. Which mostly consists of trying to get her to calm down and looking very mad at her bruises.

Oh, and taking off her armor to get a better look at her injuries. Of course. Can’t forget that.

Once all the bodies are removed from her room, Xaden gets Violet out and practically drags her up to the flight field, bickering all the way. Mostly about random stuff. Violet points out that he’s fully dressed at 2am and so were all of his marked buddies, but Xaden declines to explain.

At the field, all three dragons are waiting for them. Her two dragons and his one. And Xaden starts yelling and scolding at house-sized Mr. Tairn, which is kind of funny.

Turns out they can all talk to each other. Thanks to Tairn and Sgaeyl being mates, those two dragons and the two humans are all telepathic with each other. Andarna is out of the loop, but meh.

Xaden wants to know what kind of magic happened back there in the room because from his viewpoint it looks like Violet teleported.

The dragons explain that what happened wasn’t a signet. Andarna is too young to do the mixing between dragon and human that produces a signet, but she can directly give her own magic to Violet and let Violet wield it. It’s risky to do because a rider taking too much could kill the dragon. Also we find out that Andarna is only two years old and will get bigger, and it seems that yes feathertail is a baby thing not a breed thing.

There is much bickering among the group, mostly the humans yelling at the dragons for letting essentially a child bond and the dragons being like “eh, she’s very willful.” They all agree to keep this time-stopping thing a secret, since it’s way too powerful and also a baby dragon thing and the dragons don’t want humans to know what their babies can do.

We also find out that Violet recognized someone in the murder group, someone who got away. A rider who let the others into the room and then bounced.

The next morning at formation, Violet and Rhiannon talk about how surprising it is that they tried to kill her.

“Even worse, I think I’m getting used to it.” Either I have kick-ass compartmentalization skills or I really yam acclimating to always being a target.

This book has talked about her always being a target far more than it has actually targeted her. The only two times anyone has actually tried to do a murder before this, it’s been Jack, and the rest of the ‘threat’ has been people standing still while Violet goes “aaah!”

To be honest, I feel like there’s a perfectly fine amount of murder in this school if you take out them talking about it. The lack-of-safety-based deaths are completely absurd, but other than that it’s just one severely disturbed kid and a bunch of dragons. Without Violet getting spooked at shadows, the rest is fine and the night time murder attempt is appropriately shocking.

Oh and also let’s take some time to muse about how sexy Xaden is, why not.

Xaden switches a kid named Liam into Violet’s squad. Liam is a first year in Xaden’s inner circle and Violet immediately groks onto the fact that he’s there to bodyguard her. Violet is particularly pissed about this and insists that she doesn’t need a bodyguard, which makes sense if we follow what actually happens in the school and doesn’t make sense if we follow what Violet tells us about the school.

Well, I mean, it makes sense if Violet considers the previous night to be an aberration that is unlikely to happen again. It makes sense as a stupid thing that a character might do because people are illogical. But following her pages and pages of “oh no, this place is so dangerous, everyone wants me dead, I’m a target if I take crutches” talk, it’s out of step.

And it’s a disconnect that’s been present throughout. The author maybe just didn’t have time to add in all the personal danger she wanted, or maybe just didn’t feel it necessary, or just lost the thread while writing, but something got dropped probably in the editing stage. Because through the whole thing the book wants us to think that Violet is in danger but can’t bear to have her react appropriately to such because…idk, probably for the same ableist reason that Violet refuses medical care. Because there’s a strict view of what a strong and tough character looks like and the protagonist isn’t allowed to deviate from it.

Anyway, the kids don’t have time to argue too much about the bodyguard thing, because formation isn’t over. Side note, why do they have the time and space to chat incessantly during morning formations? Eh, nothing else this military has done has shown decent discipline, I guess. The command announces that someone has been accused of breaking one of the Big Rules, and…handling this with the appropriate authorities just isn’t how they do things here, I guess. Instead they handle it in front of the whole school by having Xaden walk up front and air his grievances.

Because of course. How else could the viewpoint character relay the scene to us? (By being a direct witness to the violation and thus involved in whatever trial happens? Psh, nah.)

Xaden announces to the whole formation (why?????? Ugh) the events of last chapter and then names Amber as the rider who facilitated the attack. She’s a bit character who is friends with Dain and doesn’t like Violet. Dain is incensed by the accusation and demands that Violet deny it, then tries to touch her to get her memories of the previous night. She refuses, mostly because Dain is being an ass about it.

Apparently Xaden makes his accusation publicly but then after that all the leadership gets in a huddle to argue about it and just omg why is this happening in this forum????? Violet asks Tairn to share her memory – but just the Amber parts of it – with…everyone. Apparently that’s possible, dragons are just generally telepathic and it’s not an actual function of any bond. This fact is literally never brought up again. It’s rude to…talk widely, I guess.