Barry Keoghan and Charles Melton for Vanity Fair’s Hollywood Issue ✨✨✨

📸 by Landon Nordeman

Barry Keoghan

for Vanity Fair's 30th Annual Hollywood Issue

HEAVY BREATHING

IT’S HAPPENING

IT’S FINALLY HAPPENING

HEART IS PUMPING

Violet to dain in iron flame:

“I appreciate the elevation to deity, but my name will do.”

-Xaden Fucking Riorson

Iron Flame Spolier

I had a realization that when Violet is getting tortured for 5 days that Tairn could hear and feel everything that Violet was experiencing. Since the first time the took away and returned the bonds during that SRC training Tairn said he could feel and hear Violet but she couldn’t respond.

Also Xaden could hear too through the mate bond

FOURTH WING IMPLIED SPOILER

Tairn before leaving for the Empyrean: I leave my rider to yours, Sgaeyl. For her protection.

Sgaeyl, growling: Really? Are you sure about that?

Tairn: Are you worried he won’t protect her?

Sgaeyl: Oh no, I’m not worried about them. It’s about me.

Tairn: …

Sgaeyl, sighing: This idiot is in love with your small rider and can’t seem to control himself around her but he has some issues admitting it to himself. He won’t stop, Tairn, he’s a pain in my ass. “Violence this, Violence that”. Just fuck her already!

Tairn: …

Sgaeyl: Fine. I’ll tell him.

Xaden saying fuck you to the revolution he gave his life to for his woman is my Roman Empire

no but the contrast between xaden spending 90% of the book refusing to coddle violet (to the point of him just being an asshole), and his sudden "i can't stand the thought of you being cold" is just so so meaningful to me

cause when you realize he's actually been dying to baby her out of love but actively held that back because he could see how much she hated it ("i know you don't like other people to see you vulnerable")

imagine the relief baby boy felt just being able to express that he didn't want to see her shivering from the cold for a couple of mins at formation, like it's truly been a STRUGGLE for him

tairn and xaden always arguing is just so special to me for many reasons. first, it's grumpier and grumpiest so of course their relationship is mostly arguments (it's the only way they could possibly bond. that's grumpy math or something idk)

but xaden's bravery in yelling at tairn even though he knows he's toeing the line of getting barbecued, and usually risking it in the first place due to his concern for violet?

and tairn refraining from torching xaden only bc sgaeyl and violet would be sad? settling instead for pure pettiness in retaliation, like refusing to let xaden on his back just to make sure the saddle would work as intended?

amazing. this is a very important dynamic to me personally

Obviously we knew Xaden knows he’s better than Dain and has never questioned that but Violet being like “I didn’t sleep with Dain” and Xaden being like “yeah I knew that as soon as I saw that awkward as fuck threshing kiss” was just everything

Hinted Iron Flame spoilers

I’m going to need Violet and Sgaeyl’s relationship to get a lot more screen time in the next book.

No one will fight as fiercely for Xaden as his girls will, and those two together would be a forced to be reckoned with.

IRON FLAME SPOILERS theories & shit

Iron flame spoiler (ending)

Wow… wow! I’m not okay!

But also, I am. As devastated as I am after finishing Iron Flame, it was also so satisfying.

Xaden turning venin is exactly what I expected to happen during this series. (My personal prediction was for at the end of book three, but since book two was divided in two parts, I’ll take that, too.) But that’s not even it.

Xaden and Violet were both in the exact same situation, quite possibly at the exact same time. After fighting for so long, they were burning out, putting everything they had into the one task they had to accomplish. They were at the absolute end of their strength, at the ground, defeated, hopeless. They both felt the power of the earth beneath their hands, both knew how wrong it was to use it… yet also that it would be the one thing that could save them. And they both would have made the same decision.

But while Violet had her friends and family around them, the people she loved, the people she couldn’t cut out of her life even when it would have been for the best, Xaden was alone. And where Violet had people fighting for her, keeping her from doing the unthinkable, sacrificing themselves for her… Xaden had no one.

It’s tragic poetry, this parallel to how they live their lives.

JAW? DROPPED. MIND? BLOWN. TRAJECTORY OF LIFE? CHANGED.

When he says “ily” but Xaden Riorson said “I’m grateful my life is tied to yours because it means I won’t have to face a day without you in it. My heart only beats as long as yours does, and when you die, I’ll meet Malek at your side. It’s a damned good thing that you love me too, because you’re stuck with me in this life and every other that could possibly follow.