“I’m good to go.” I nod and turn toward the other woman as Rhiannon introduces us. Her name is Tara, and she’s from the Morraine province to the north, along the coast of the Emerald Sea. She has that same air of confidence Mira does, and her eyes dance with excitement as she and Rhiannon talk about how they’ve both obsessed over dragons since childhood. I pay attention but only enough to recall details if we need to form an alliance.
An hour passes, then another, according to the Basgiath bells, which we can hear from here. Then the last of the cadets walks into the courtyard, followed by the three riders from the other turret.
Xaden is among them. It’s not just his height that makes him stand out in this crowd but the way the other riders all seem to move around him, like he’s a shark and they’re all fish giving him a wide berth. For a second, I can’t help but wonder what his signet is, the unique power from the bond with his dragon, and if that’s why even the third-years seem to scurry out of his way as he strides up to the dais with lethal grace. There are ten of them in total up there now, and from the way Commandant Panchek moves to the front, facing us—
“I think we’re about to start,” I say to Rhiannon and Tara, and they both turn to face the dais. Everyone does.
“Three hundred and one of you have survived the parapet to become cadets today,” Commandant Panchek starts with a politician’s smile, gesturing to us. The guy has always talked with his hands. “Good job. Sixty-seven did not.”
My chest clenches as my brain spins the calculation quickly. Almost twenty percent. Was it the rain? The wind? That’s more than average. Sixty-seven people died trying to get here.
“I’ve heard this position is just a stepping stone for him,” Tara whispers. “He wants Sorrengail’s job, then General Melgren’s.”
The commanding general of all Navarre’s forces. Melgren’s beady eyes have always made me shrivel every time we’ve met during my mother’s career.
“General Melgren’s?” Rhiannon whispers from my other side.
“He’ll never get it,” I say quietly as the commandant welcomes us to the Riders Quadrant. “Melgren’s dragon gives him the signet ability to see a battle’s outcome before it happens. There’s no beating that, and you can’t be assassinated if you know it’s coming.”
“As the Codex says, now you begin the true crucible!” Panchek shouts, his voice carrying over the five hundred of us that I estimate are in this courtyard. “You will be tested by your superiors, hunted by your peers, and guided by your instincts. If you survive to Threshing, and if you are chosen, you will be riders. Then we’ll see how many of you make it to graduation.”
Statistics say about a quarter of us will live to graduate, give or take a few on any year, and yet the Riders Quadrant is never short volunteers. Every cadet in this courtyard thinks they have what it takes to be one of the elite, the very best Navarre has to offer…a dragon rider. I can’t help but wonder for the smallest of seconds if maybe I do, too. Maybe I can do more than just survive.
“Your instructors will teach you,” Panchek promises, his hand sweeping to the line of professors standing at the doors to the academic wing. “It’s up to you how well you learn.” He swings his pointer finger at us. “Discipline falls to your units, and your wingleader is the last word. If I have to get involved…” A slow, sinister smile spreads across his face. “You don’t want me involved.
“With that said, I’ll leave you to your wingleaders. My best advice? Don’t die.” He walks off the dais with the executive commandant, leaving only the riders on the stone stage.
A brunette woman with wide shoulders and a scarred sneer stalks forward, the silver spikes on the shoulders of her uniform flashing in the sunlight. “I’m Nyra, the senior wingleader of the quadrant and the head of the First Wing. Section leaders and squad leaders, take your positions now.”
My shoulder is jostled as someone walks by, pushing between Rhiannon and me. Others follow suit until there are about fifty people in front of us, spaced out in formation.
“Sections and squads,” I whisper to Rhiannon, in case she didn’t grow up in a military family. “Three squads in each section and three sections in each of the four wings.”
“Thank you,” Rhiannon answers.
Dain stands in the section for Second Wing, facing me but averting his eyes.
“First Squad! Claw Section! First Wing!” Nyra calls out.
A man closer to the dais raises his hand.
“Cadets, when your name is called, take up formation behind your squad leader,” Nyra instructs.
The redhead with the crossbow and roll steps forward and begins calling names. One by one, cadets move from the crowd to the formation, and I keep count, making snap judgments based off clothing and arrogance. It looks like each squad will have about fifteen or sixteen people in it.
Jack is called into the Flame Section of First Wing.
Tara is called into the Tail Section, and soon they start on Second Wing.
I let loose a thankful sigh when the wingleader steps forward and it isn’t Xaden.
Rhiannon and I are both called to Second Squad, Flame Section, Second Wing. We get into formation quickly, lining up in a square. A quick glance tells me that we have a squad leader—Dain, who isn’t looking at me—a female executive squad leader, four riders who look like they might be second- or third-years, and nine first-years. One of the riders with two stars on her uniform and half-shaved, half-pink hair has a rebellion relic that winds around her forearm, from her wrist to above her elbow, where it disappears under her uniform, but I look away so she won’t catch me staring.
We’re silent as the rest of the wings are called. The sun is out in full now, beating into my leathers and scorching my skin. I told him not to keep you in that library. Mom’s words from this morning haunt me, but it’s not like I could have prepared for this. I have exactly two shades when it comes to the sun, pale and burned.
When the order sounds, we all turn to face the dais. I try to keep my gaze on the roll-keeper, but my eyes jerk right like the traitors they are, and my pulse leaps.
Xaden watches me with a cold, calculating look that feels like he’s plotting my death from where he stands as the wingleader for Fourth Wing.
I lift my chin.
He cocks his scarred eyebrow. Then he says something to Second Wing’s wingleader, and then every wingleader joins in on what’s obviously a heated discussion.
“What do you think they’re talking about?” Rhiannon whispers.
“Quiet,” Dain hisses.
My spine stiffens. I can’t expect him to be my Dain here, not under these circumstances, but still, the tone is jarring.
Finally, the wingleaders turn around to face us, and the slight tilt to Xaden’s lips makes me instantly queasy.
“Dain Aetos, you and your squad will switch with Aura Beinhaven’s,” Nyra orders.
Wait. What? Who is Aura Beinhaven?
Dain nods, then turns to us. “Follow me.” He says it once, then strides through formation, leaving us to scurry after him. We pass another squad on the way from…from…
The very breath freezes in my lungs.
We’re moving to Fourth Wing. Xaden’s wing.
It takes a minute, maybe two, and we take our place in the new formation. I force myself to breathe. There’s a fucking smirk on Xaden’s arrogant, handsome face.
I’m now entirely at his mercy, a subordinate in his chain of command. He can punish me however he likes for the slightest infraction, even imaginary ones.
Nyra looks at Xaden as she finishes assignments, and he nods, stepping forward and finally breaking our staring contest. I’m pretty sure he won, considering my heart is galloping like a runaway horse.
“You’re all cadets now.” Xaden’s voice carries out over the courtyard, stronger than the others. “Take a look at your squad. These are the only people guaranteed by Codex not to kill you. But just because they can’t end your life doesn’t mean others won’t. You want a dragon? Earn one.”
Most of the others cheer, but I keep my mouth shut.
Sixty-seven people fell or died in some other way today. Sixty-seven just like Dylan, whose parents would either collect their bodies or watch them be buried at the foot of the mountain under a simple stone. I can’t force myself to cheer for their loss.
Xaden’s eyes find mine, and my stomach clenches before he looks away. “And I bet you feel pretty badass right now, don’t you, first-years?”
More cheers.
“You feel invincible after the parapet, don’t you?” Xaden shouts. “You think you’re untouchable! You’re on the way to becoming the elite! The few! The chosen!”
Another round of cheers goes up with each declaration, louder and louder.
No.That’s not just cheering, it’s the sound of wings beating the air into submission.
“Oh gods, they’re beautiful,” Rhiannon whispers at my side as they come into view—a riot of dragons.
I’ve spent my life around dragons, but always from a distance. They don’t tolerate humans they haven’t chosen. But these eight? They’re flying straight for us—at speed.
Just when I think they’re about to fly overhead, they pitch vertically, whip the air with their huge semitranslucent wings, and stop, the gusts of wing-made wind so powerful that I nearly stagger backward as they land on the outer semicircular wall. Their chest scales ripple with movement, and their razor-sharp talons dig into the edge of the wall on either side. Now I understand why the walls are ten feet thick. It’s not a barrier. The edge of the fortress is a damned perch.
My mouth drops open. In my five years of living here, I’ve never seen this, but then again, I’ve never been allowed to watch what happens on Conscription Day.
A few cadets scream.
Guess everyone wants to be a dragon rider until they’re actually twenty feet away from one.
Steam blasts my face as the navy-blue one directly in front of me exhales through its wide nostrils. Its glistening blue horns rise above its head in an elegant, lethal sweep, and its wings flare momentarily before tucking in, the tip of their top joint crowned by a single fierce talon. Their tails are just as fatal, but I can’t see them at this angle or even tell which breed of dragon each is without that clue.
All are deadly.
“We’re going to have to bring the masons in again,” Dain mutters as chunks of rock crumble under the dragons’ grips, crashing to the courtyard in boulders the size of my torso.
There are three dragons in various shades of red, two shades of green—like Teine, Mira’s dragon—one brown like Mom’s, one orange, and the enormous navy one ahead of me. They’re all massive, overshadowing the structure of the citadel as they narrow their golden eyes at us in absolute judgment.
If they didn’t need us puny humans to develop signet abilities from bonding and weave the protective wards they power around Navarre, I’m pretty sure they’d eat us all and be done. But they like protecting the Vale—the valley behind Basgiath the dragons call home—from merciless gryphons and we like living, so here we are in the most unlikely of partnerships.
My heart threatens to beat out of my chest, and I absolutely agree with it, because I’d like to run, too. Just thinking that I’m supposed to ride one of these is fucking ludicrous.
A cadet bolts out of Third Wing, screaming as he makes a run for the stone keep behind us. We all turn to look as he sprints for the giant arched door at the center. I can almost see the words carved into the arch from here, but I already know them by heart. A dragon without its rider is a tragedy.A rider without their dragon is dead.
Once bonded, riders can’t live without their dragons, but most dragons can live just fine after us. It’s why they choose carefully, so they’re not humiliated by picking a coward, not that a dragon would ever admit to making a mistake.
The red dragon on the left opens its vast mouth, revealing teeth as big as I am. That jaw could crush me if it wanted, like a grape. Fire erupts along its tongue, then shoots outward in a macabre blaze toward the fleeing cadet.
He’s a pile of ash on the gravel before he can even make it to the shadow of the keep.
Sixty-eight dead.
Heat from the flames blasts the side of my face as I jerk my attention forward. If anyone else runs and is likewise executed, I don’t want to see it. More screaming sounds around me. I lock my jaw as hard as I can to keep quiet.
There are two more gusts of heat, one to my left and then another to my right.
Make that seventy.
The navy dragon seems to tilt its head at me, as if its narrowed golden eyes can see straight through me to the fear fisting my stomach and the doubt curled insidiously around my heart. I bet it can even see the wrap binding my knee. It knows I’m at a disadvantage, that I’m too small to climb its foreleg and mount, too frail to ride. Dragons always know.
But I will not run. I wouldn’t be standing here if I’d quit every time something seemed impossible to overcome. I will not die today. The words repeat in my head just like they had before the parapet and on it.
I force my shoulders back and lift my chin.
The dragon blinks, which might be a sign of approval, or boredom, and looks away.
“Anyone else feel like changing their mind?” Xaden shouts, scanning the remaining rows of cadets with the same shrewd gaze of the navy-blue dragon behind him. “No? Excellent. Roughly half of you will be dead by this time next summer.” The formation is silent except for a few untimely sobs from my left. “A third of you again the year after that, and the same your last year. No one cares who your mommy or daddy is here. Even King Tauri’s second son died during his Threshing. So tell me again: Do you feel invincible now that you’ve made it into the Riders Quadrant? Untouchable? Elite?”
No one cheers.
Another blast of heat rushes—this time directly at my face—and every muscle in my body clenches, preparing for incineration. But it’s not flames…just steam, and it blows back Rhiannon’s braids as the dragons finish their simultaneous exhale. The breeches on the first-year ahead of me darken, the color spreading down his legs.
They want us scared. Mission accomplished.
“Because you’re not untouchable or special to them.” Xaden points toward the navy dragon and leans forward slightly, like he’s letting us in on a secret as we lock eyes. “To them, you’re just the prey.”