Fourth Wing

By the end of the school year at Basgiath, Violet Sorrengail has survived Threshing, the Gauntlet, and a brutal cull of her fellow cadets to become a bonded rider twice over: first to Tairn, an ancient, famously solitary black dragon who should never have chosen a human, and later to Andarna, a much younger dragon who bonds herself to Violet outside of any sanctioned Threshing, making Violet the only cadet with two dragons. Because Tairn is mated to Sgaeyl, the dragon of her wingleader Xaden Riorson, Violet and Xaden end up tied together on a level neither of them wanted, and the antagonism between them curdles into a real relationship over the course of the year, despite Xaden originally being pressured by his own people to see her killed in retribution for what her mother did to his family.

The official story cadets are fed all year is that Navarre's old enemy, Poromiel, is massing at the border and that venin - the ancient, magic-draining monsters of history - were wiped out generations ago. Violet's digging as a frustrated scribe-in-training turns up evidence that this isn't true: venin are alive, they drain life and magic from anything they touch, and they are the real reason the protective wards around Navarre are failing. She also learns that her older brother Brennan, long believed dead in a border skirmish, is actually alive and has spent years quietly building a resistance against the venin threat out of Tyrrendor, working alongside people loyal to Xaden's late father, who led a rebellion six years earlier trying to expose this same truth and was executed for it on the order of Violet's mother, General Sorrengail.

The truth stops being theoretical during a late-year field exercise near the border, when Violet's squad is hit by an attack that isn't the expected Poromiel raid at all - it's venin, riding wyverns, and the fight kills several cadets and riders. Violet fights and kills one of the venin herself, seeing firsthand the ashen skin and blackened veins that confirm everything she's uncovered. The battle leaves no doubt that the leadership of Navarre, including her own mother, has known about the venin for years and chosen to keep training riders for the wrong war.

Rather than blow up the cover-up publicly, Violet chooses, by the book's end, to throw her lot in with Xaden and the hidden resistance network built around Brennan and the surviving Tyrrendor rebels, keeping what she knows secret from the wider college for now. She and Xaden come out of their first year together as a couple, bonded in more ways than one, with Violet fully committed to him and to the fight against the venin - even as the official war against Poromiel, the true scope of the threat outside the wards, and her mother's exact role in the cover-up remain unresolved questions hanging over the year to come.

Violet Sorrengail entered Basgiath War College's Riders Quadrant at twenty, forced there by her mother, General Lilith Sorrengail, instead of the Scribe Quadrant she'd trained for her whole life. Small and physically fragile compared to her peers, she survived the college's deadly early culls (including the Parapet crossing) and, at Threshing, bonded with Tairn, an ancient and famously solitary black dragon who wasn't supposed to choose a human at all. Later in the year she also bonded a second, younger dragon, Andarna, outside the normal rules - making her the only rider in her year bonded to two dragons.

Her wingleader, Xaden Riorson, is the son of the man who led a rebellion in Tyrrendor six years earlier, an uprising crushed and its leaders executed on the order of Violet's own mother. Xaden's dragon, Sgaeyl, is mated to Violet's Tairn, which links the two riders whether they like it or not. Xaden began the year under pressure from his own people to see Violet dead as payback against her mother, but instead the two grew close and became a couple over the course of the year. Violet's childhood friend Dain Aetos also cared for her and tried to look out for her throughout, but she ended the year firmly with Xaden, not him. Her close circle also includes her roommate Rhiannon Matthias and other squadmates who survived the year's culls alongside her.

The larger plot of the book centers on a cover-up: cadets are taught that Poromiel is Navarre's enemy and that venin - ancient magic-draining monsters - were destroyed long ago. Violet's own research proves otherwise: venin are real, they're the actual cause of the protective wards failing, and Navarre's leadership, including her mother, has known this and hidden it. Violet also learns that her brother Brennan, long presumed dead, is alive and has been secretly leading resistance efforts against the venin threat, working with people connected to Xaden's father's old rebellion. The truth becomes undeniable near the end of the book when a field exercise near the border turns into a real attack by venin and their wyverns rather than the expected Poromiel raid; several riders and cadets die, and Violet personally fights and kills a venin, confirming everything she's uncovered.

The book ends with Violet choosing not to expose the cover-up publicly but instead to align herself with Xaden and the hidden resistance network tied to Brennan and the Tyrrendor rebels, while continuing to live and study within the official Riders Quadrant. Going into the next book, the open threads are: the true scale of the venin threat and how far the wards have really degraded; how much Violet's mother and the rest of Navarre's leadership know and are still concealing; the future of Violet and Xaden's relationship now that they're openly bonded and allied; Andarna's unusual, still-not-fully-understood nature as a young dragon who bonded outside the normal rules; and how long Violet can keep operating inside the official college structure while secretly working against its leadership's version of the truth.