Fourth Wing Books in Order
Publication order is chronological order, and that is the whole of it.
- 01Fourth Wing 2023
- 02Iron Flame 2023
- 03Onyx Storm 2025
- 3.5Threshing Day stories · September
- 04Book four confirmed, no date
There is no prequel, and the three novels read first to third. The Empyrean is planned as five books in all.
Threshing Day is a bonus read rather than a step in the sequence. It arrives in September, its thirteen stories are set around the events of book one, and it sits at 3.5 because it is written for readers who already know the cast. Rebecca Yarros has said it is not vital to the enjoyment of book four.
The bonus chapters are free. Two Xaden point-of-view chapters from Fourth Wing began as a Waterstones exclusive and a third came from another special edition, and all three now sit on Rebecca Yarros’s site for anyone to read. Xaden’s Threshing Day story is going up there too.
Is Threshing Day Fourth Wing Book 4?
It is a collection of short stories rather than book four, and it is out in September.
Threshing Day is a collection of thirteen short stories, out on . Threshing is the day cadets bond with dragons, and each story belongs to a different rider. Xaden’s is the only point of view confirmed so far, and it is going up free on Rebecca Yarros’s site.
Book four is a separate novel, and Yarros has been clear about the difference. Announcing Threshing Day in July, she called it her next book in the Empyrean series and added “not book four” in the same line. She described it as a way back to Basgiath while she keeps working on the real one, and as a deeper understanding and a couple of reveals rather than anything you need before book four begins.
One thing about the title. Retailers list it as Threshing Day (Wing and Claw Collection), which reads like a subtitle. Wing and Claw is the publisher’s deluxe edition line across the whole series, so there are Wing and Claw editions of the other three books as well.
When Does Fourth Wing Book 4 Come Out?
Book four is confirmed and being written. There is no title and no date yet.
Here is what is known. Rebecca Yarros began drafting it early in 2026 and was back at it full time by March. In July she confirmed that the September release has not altered book four’s timeline in the least, and that it is not the graphic novel. The Empyrean is planned as five books, so there is one more after this.
Anything more specific than that is a guess. Trade commentary tends to land on 2027, which comes from reading a publishing calendar rather than from anything announced, and this page will carry a date the day there is one.
There is more of this world coming that is not the novel. Six graphic novels are planned across the first three books, there is an official colouring book, and Fourth Wing is now a Prime Video series — that is further down this page.
Fourth Wing Characters
Tell the page where you are and the cast fills in to match. Nobody you have not met yet is named.
Everything below is locked until you set this. A sealed tile means a character from a book further on than you have read.
Every card below is sealed. The spoiler control needs JavaScript, and with it switched off the cards stay that way rather than opening into a cast list you did not ask for.
Second Squad, Flame Section
Violet Sorrengail
Rider · narrator
Raised in the Archives to be a scribe, ordered into the Riders Quadrant by her own mother, and smaller and more fragile than anyone else on the parapet.
Where they end up
Her signet is lightning, and by the end of the third book she has a second one that would get her executed if the wrong people learned of it.
Rhiannon Matthias
Rider · Second Squad
Violet’s steadiest friend from the first day, and the one who rises to squad leader on competence rather than connections.
Ridoc Gamlyn
Rider · Second Squad
The squad’s comic relief, and a considerably better rider than he lets anyone believe.
Sawyer Henrick
Rider · Second Squad
A repeat first-year with something to prove and a talent for metal.
Where they end up
He loses a lower leg in the second book and is back in the sky on a prosthetic.
Dain Aetos
Rider · squad leader
Violet’s childhood best friend and her squad leader, and a rule-follower whose loyalty to the chain of command is the thing he is measured by.
Where they end up
His arc is the longest redemption in the series: a betrayal in the first book that he spends the next two answering for, ending with him fully committed to the other side of it.
Imogen Cardulo
Rider · marked one
Pink-haired, openly hostile, and second-year enough to make that stick.
Quinn Hollis
Rider · marked one
Imogen’s best friend, and a warmer presence than the company she keeps suggests.
Where they end up
Hers is the death readers of the third book talk about most.
Liam Mairi
Rider · marked one
Assigned to shadow Violet and relentlessly good-natured about it. Sources place him formally in Tail Section and functionally at her shoulder.
Soleil Telery
Rider · upperclassman
An upperclassman in Flame Section, and one of the riders Violet is sent to Athebyne with.
Sloane Mairi
Rider · marked one
A young marked rider carrying more grief than a first-year should have to.
Aaric Graycastle
Rider · late conscript
A cadet who turns up a year late with a story that does not quite hold. He is Prince Camlaen Aaric Tauri, the king’s third son, enrolled under a name that is not his.
The Sorrengail Family
General Lilith Sorrengail
Commanding general of Basgiath
Violet’s mother, who runs the war college her daughter is sent to and shows her exactly no favour for it.
Where they end up
She takes her daughter’s place at the wardstone in the second book, and it costs her.
Mira Sorrengail
Lieutenant · rider
Violet’s older sister, decorated and posted to a wall, who arms her with every piece of kit and advice she can smuggle out.
Brennan Sorrengail
Mender · Violet’s brother
Believed killed six years before the series opens, and running the revolution out of Tyrrendor instead. He is the last page of the first book.
Asher Sorrengail
Scribe · Violet’s father
Dead before the series opens, and present in it through his journals, which turn out to hold more than a scribe’s notes.
The Marked Ones and Tyrrendor
Xaden Riorson
Wingleader · narrator from book two
Son of the executed leader of the rebellion, wingleader of Fourth Wing, and the most dangerous person at Basgiath by a distance nobody disputes.
Where they end up
He channels from the earth at the end of the second book to save Violet, and finishes the third one fully venin and gone, with a note telling her not to look for him.
Garrick Tavis
Rider · Flame Section leader
Xaden’s oldest friend and the section leader above Violet’s squad.
Where they end up
He is among those missing at the end of the third book, and missing is as far as any of it goes.
Bodhi Durran
Rider · marked one
Xaden’s cousin, and the one in that group who will talk a problem down before drawing on it.
Fen Riorson
Former Duke of Tyrrendor
Xaden’s father, executed for leading the Tyrrish rebellion, and a name spoken like a curse for most of the first book.
Where they end up
The second book rewrites him: the rebellion was about the venin and the failing wards, and he was right.
Talia Riorson
Xaden’s mother
Long absent and long assumed lost, and found alive with a second family.
Basgiath Command and Faculty
General Augustine Melgren
Supreme commander of Navarre
The most powerful officer in the country, with a signet that shows him the outcome of a battle before he fights it.
Colonel Aetos
Dain’s father
The architect of a good deal of Violet’s trouble, and the officer who writes the orders that other people carry out.
Where they end up
He is promoted to general by the third book, which is why some recaps have a Colonel Aetos and a General Aetos and no explanation. Same man.
Commandant Lyron Panchek
Commandant of Basgiath
The officer in charge of the whole college, who reads as ordinary brass for two books.
Where they end up
The third book names him as the one feeding the venin from inside Basgiath. What happens to him after that is one of the few things sources genuinely disagree on.
Professor Kaori
Dragonkind
The faculty member most inclined to answer a question honestly, and the reason Violet understands dragons at all.
Professor Devera
Battle Brief
Sharp, fair, and the instructor who treats cadets as people who will shortly be officers.
Professor Carr
Signets
The signet instructor, more interested in what a power can do than in the cadet attached to it.
Professor Emetterio
Combat
The combat instructor, and the one who works out how someone Violet’s size is supposed to win.
Amber Mavis
Wingleader · Third Wing
Third Wing’s wingleader and a committed problem for Violet from early on.
Where they end up
She does not survive the first book, though several recaps put it in the second.
Aura Beinhaven
Rider · senior
An ambitious senior rider who has read which way the command structure leans and aligned herself with it.
Jack Barlowe
Rider · first-year
Violet’s most straightforward enemy in the quadrant, in that he says out loud what the others only arrange.
Where they end up
Violet is believed to have killed him at the end of the first book. He is mended in secret and comes back in the second, and what he does to the wardstone is the hinge of that ending.
Oren Seifert
Unbonded cadet
A cadet with no dragon and a role in an attempt on Violet’s life.
Major Burton Varrish
Vice Commandant
Installed to bring the Riders Quadrant to heel, and a sadist about it. He is a Navarrian loyalist rather than anything stranger — the enforcement is the point.
Scribes and Healers
Jesinia Neilwart
Scribe cadet
Violet’s oldest friend, a Deaf scribe who signs, and the reason Violet can still get into the Archives after she leaves them.
Professor Markham
Curator of the Archives
The man who taught Violet to read the old languages, and the keeper of what Navarre lets people know.
Nolon Colbersy
Senior mender
The most senior healer in Navarre, and the one they send for when a rider should not have survived.
Where they end up
He is the one who quietly mended Jack Barlowe.
The Royal House of Navarre
King Tauri
Ruler of Navarre
The king the whole war is nominally fought for, and a distant presence for most of it.
Prince Halden
Crown prince
The heir, who turns up in the third book on the voyage rather than at court.
Poromiel and the Gryphon Fliers
Catriona “Cat” Cordella
Flier · third in line to a throne
A Poromish flier who arrives at Basgiath under a treaty nobody likes, and Xaden’s former betrothed, which is how Violet finds out about the betrothal.
Maren Zina
Flier
Cat’s best friend, and the one who works out how to live alongside riders considerably faster than Cat does.
Viscount Tecarus
Poromish nobleman
A collector with something Violet’s side needs badly enough to negotiate for. He is a viscount rather than a king, whatever the recaps say.
Trager
Flier
A flier who joins the quest party in the third book, and Cat’s.
The Isle Kingdoms
King Courtlyn
Deverelli
The ruler of Deverelli, and the first of the island courts the voyage has to convince.
Queen Marlis
Unnbriel
The ruler of Unnbriel, on an island that has kept itself out of the Continent’s war.
Calixta
Zehyllna · mistress of ceremonies
The face Zehyllna presents to visitors. She is not its queen, and its queen is never named.
Narelle Anselm
Deverelli bookseller
A bookseller who knew Violet’s father, which is not a coincidence the voyage was expecting.
The Venin
Berwyn
Sage
A venin powerful enough to walk through dreams, and unnamed for a whole book before the third one gives him one. The ladder below him runs initiate, asim, sage, maven.
Theophanie
Maven
Ancient, silver-haired, and the top of that ladder. She is the third book’s antagonist and a fallen high priestess of Dunne, which is the detail that explains how she can be killed at all.
The Dragons
Tairneanach — “Tairn”
Black morningstartail · Violet
Enormous, ill-tempered and old enough to have opinions about every rider he has outlived. Bonding him at all is unprecedented for someone Violet’s size.
Andarnaurram — “Andarna”
Golden feathertail · Violet
A feathertail, which means far too young to bond, hatched gold and burning her one gift to keep Violet alive. Violet bonding two dragons has no precedent at all.
Where they end up
She is not a black dragon growing up. The second book reveals a seventh breed that had withdrawn from human wars, and the third names it — irid — and explains that irids do not use magic so much as consist of it. Whether her bond holds through the end of the third book is genuinely disputed between sources.
Sgaeyl
Blue daggertail · Xaden
Xaden’s dragon, mated to Tairn, which is why Violet and Xaden cannot get far from each other whatever either of them wants.
Deigh
Red swordtail · Liam
Liam’s dragon, and a bond that reads on the page as the easiest one in the squad.
Codagh
Black morningstartail · Melgren
The largest dragon on the Continent, bonded to the man who commands it.
Teine
Green daggertail · Mira
Mira’s dragon, whose shed scales become the armour Violet is wearing in every scene that matters.
Marbh
Brown swordtail · Brennan
Brennan’s dragon, and a second reason to believe the man standing in front of Violet is who he says he is.
Thoirt
Brown daggertail · Sloane
Sloane’s dragon, bonded in the second book.
Leothan and Dasyn
Irids
Two more of the breed the third book names, which settles the question of whether Andarna is the last of anything.
The Pairings
Violet and Xaden
Mutual death threats for most of a book, then the spine the other two hang from. They are married by the end of the third one, in twelve hours Violet cannot remember, and he is gone by the time she wakes up.
Cat and Trager
The quiet one, built on the voyage rather than at the war college, and the reason Cat reads differently in the third book than she does in the second.
Ridoc and Sawyer
Readers have been reading this one into the squad scenes since the first book. Nothing in the text confirms it, which is most of what keeps it going.
The one thing this page will not guess at. A rider close to Xaden turns venin at the end of the third book and is described as his brother in the sense of a shared Sage rather than shared blood. His identity is deliberately unrevealed, Rebecca Yarros has told readers to pay attention to who is missing, and every name in circulation is a theory.
What Happens in Each Fourth Wing Book
Pick a book. The setup is spoiler-free; the plot stays shut until you open it.
Every book is listed below. With JavaScript enabled you get one at a time, chosen from the covers.
Fourth Wing
Violet Sorrengail was raised in the Archives and meant for a quiet life among books, until her mother, the commanding general, orders her into the Riders Quadrant instead. Dragons do not bond to fragile humans; they incinerate them. The only two ways out of Basgiath are graduation and a body bag.
SpoilersRead the Full Plot of Fourth Wing
Violet survives the parapet and the Gauntlet, and at Threshing she bonds two dragons rather than one — the enormous black Tairn and the golden feathertail Andarna. There is no precedent for it. Her signet manifests as lightning. What she has with wingleader Xaden Riorson, son of the executed rebellion leader, moves from mutual death threats to something neither of them planned on.
The turn is Dain. He reads Violet’s memories without asking and reports what he sees to his father, and the squad is sent to Athebyne on what is presented as a War Games exercise. It is a trap. What they find there takes the whole premise of the war apart: the enemy is not Poromiel’s gryphon fliers but the venin, humans who channel power out of the earth itself, and the wyvern they make from it. Navarre’s leadership has known for centuries.
Liam Mairi and Soleil Telery are killed. Violet is poisoned, and Xaden takes her over the border to Tyrrendor. She wakes in Aretia to find her brother Brennan, dead for six years, alive and running the revolution.
Iron Flame
Everyone expected Violet to die in her first year, Violet included. The second year is the real one: harder, deliberately crueller, and run by a new vice commandant who has decided to teach her exactly how powerless she is unless she gives up the man she loves.
SpoilersRead the Full Plot of Iron Flame
Violet returns to Basgiath under Vice Commandant Varrish, who puts her through sustained interrogation and forced memory extraction, while Xaden graduates and builds the revolution out of Aretia. In the Archives Violet works out what the wards actually are: blood magic, made by the First Six, and reproducible. Her mother supplies the journal that proves it, quietly, and Aretia’s wardstone comes online.
Jack Barlowe, believed killed at the end of the first book, comes back venin and shatters the wardstone that protects all of Navarre. A thousand wyvern arrive at an unwarded Basgiath. Repairing the stone takes all seven dragon breeds, and the seventh turns out to be Andarna, who is not a black dragon and never was — she waited six hundred and fifty years in the shell for Violet.
Violet moves to power the ward herself, which would kill her. Her mother takes her place instead. The last page is the cliffhanger: Xaden channelled from the earth to keep Violet alive, and his eyes are rimmed in red.
Onyx Storm
Eighteen months in, Violet is out of time for lessons. The war is on the wards and inside the ranks at once, and the only allies left are past the edge of the map, in kingdoms Navarre has spent a century pretending are stories.
SpoilersRead the Full Plot of Onyx Storm
Violet’s party sails for the Isle Kingdoms looking for allies and for the seventh breed. They find both. Andarna is an irid, a breed that withdrew from human wars on purpose and left her egg behind as a test of whether anyone had stopped weaponising dragons. Violet develops a second signet on the voyage — dream-walking, an intrinsic magic that carries a death sentence in Navarre if the wrong people learn of it.
Commandant Panchek is the one who has been feeding the venin from inside Basgiath. Theophanie, a venin maven and a fallen high priestess of Dunne, is the antagonist of the book, and Violet kills her with a marble dagger from Dunne’s own temple, which works for a reason the book saves until it is needed. Quinn Hollis is among the named dead.
At Draithus, Xaden channels without limit — the onyx storm — and turns the battle. Twelve hours later Violet wakes at Riorson House with a wedding ring and no memory of putting it on. He has gone, with Sgaeyl, six stolen eggs and several riders, and a note: Don’t look for me. It’s yours now. The last turn is hers: she asked Imogen to take those twelve hours, so that nothing could be pulled out of her under a memory-read.
How Spicy Is Fourth Wing?
Spice Rating Scale
- Closed door, no on-page content
- Mild. Kisses, fade to black
- On-page intimacy, restrained
- On-page intimacy, multiple scenes
- Explicit and frequent
- Erotica-adjacent, dark themes
Fourth Wing Spicy Chapters
Fourth Wing
- Ch. 22A kiss, not explicit
- Ch. 30The first explicit scene
- Ch. 32The one most often named the book’s best
Iron Flame
- Ch. 12Buildup
- Ch. 20Buildup
- Ch. 27The shower
- Ch. 37Explicit
- Ch. 48The throne room
- Ch. 60Explicit
Onyx Storm
- Ch. 3Brief and early
- Ch. 11–12Buildup
- Ch. 18Buildup
- Ch. 24–25Explicit
- Ch. 48Buildup
- Ch. 49Explicit, a full chapter
Threshing Day
- —Not yet rated
Chapter 48 of Iron Flame is the throne room, and it is the best-known scene in the series. Chapter 37 is the one guides more often rank as the most explicit.
Content Warnings
Everything readers flag most often, book by book.
Across the Series
- Graphic violence
- War
- Death
- Murder
- Blood and gore
- Injury detail
- Grief
- Death of a parent
- Fire and burns
- Animal and dragon death
- Chronic illness
- Ableism
- Medical trauma
- Emotional abuse
- Genocide
- Panic attacks
- Explicit sexual content
- Strong profanity
Fourth Wing
- Falling deaths
- Dismemberment
- Sanctioned duels
- Attempted murder
- Poisoning
- Death of a friend
- Memory extraction
- Bullying
- Child death
- Body horror
- Body shaming
- Toxic friendship
- Gaslighting
- Classism
- Vomit
- Animal cruelty
Iron Flame
- Sustained on-page torture
- Interrogation
- Confinement
- Kidnapping
- Physical abuse
- Gaslighting
- Authoritarian violence
- Suicidal thoughts
- Self-harm
- Drugging
- Alcohol use
- Body horror
- Cliffhanger ending
Onyx Storm
- Dragon death
- Graphic deaths
- Abandonment
- Addiction
- Torture
- Confinement
- Kidnapping
- Injury rehabilitation
- Toxic relationship
- Mental illness
- Suicidal thoughts
- Memory loss
- Body horror
- Cliffhanger ending
Iron Flame is the step up. Readers flag it for graphic content roughly thirteen times as often as the first book, and most of that is the torture. If the first book sat comfortably, the second is worth going into knowing that.
Violet has a disability and it is on the page throughout: joint dislocations, chronic pain and fragile bones, in a place that treats all three as a reason she should not be there. Rebecca Yarros wrote it from her own experience of hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.
On age, readers land anywhere from fifteen up. Common Sense Media rates it 16+ and calls it young adult fiction with adult-rated content, which is the fairest summary going.
Threshing Day is not listed. It is unreleased, and this page will carry its warnings when there are some.
Is There a Fourth Wing TV Show?
Yes. Here is what is known so far.
Prime Video ordered Fourth Wing to series on , which is the point at which a studio commits to making episodes. Meredith Averill is the showrunner and Lisa Joy directs the pilot, with Jonathan Nolan, Michael B. Jordan, Liz Pelletier and Rebecca Yarros among the executive producers.
There is no cast and no premiere date, so every name in circulation is a fancast for now. This page will carry the real ones when they arrive.
One Place for Every Series You Read
The Codex is six linked databases: books, series, authors, characters, tropes and quotes. It arrives with 246 books across 70 series already in it, so it works before you add anything of your own. It is built in Notion and it is yours to keep.
See what’s inside