“You do not speak to dragons you do not ride, human.” Andarna snaps her teeth in Cat’s direction.
“You looked like a part of the cliff.” I stare at Andarna like I’ve never seen her before. Maybe I never have.
“I told you I could hide.” She blinks at me.
I open my mouth, then shut it, searching for words where there are none. That wasn’t hiding. Her scales are as black as Tairn’s now. Maybe I’m seeing things?
Tairn lands to the right, sending slush flying, then looks over our small battlefield with quick appraisal. “You made quick work of it.”
“She did.” I point to Andarna as Sgaeyl and Sliseag land behind Tairn.
“You breathe fire,” Tairn acknowledges, a note of pride in his voice.
“I breathe fire.” Andarna extends her neck to the fullest.
“Melgren orders us to the Vale.” Tairn’s eyes narrow, and his head swivels toward Sgaeyl.
“They’re pulling the whole squad to the Vale?” I glance upward, noting there are only two wyvern left in our sector.
The horde tires of hovering, waiting for permission to attack. That’s what the dark wielder said. The final wave hasn’t struck yet.
“Not the whole squad. Just us,” Xaden clarifies, walking around Tairn. Tiny tendrils of steam rise where rain meets the exposed skin of his arms. He looks as tired as I feel, and there’s a laceration on his forearm, but the lack of any other visible damage makes my shoulders dip in relief.
“They haven’t sent their last wave yet, and Sawyer and Aotrom are already wounded. Moving the two of us leaves the squad and Brennan and the wardstone too exposed.” I shake my head. We can’t let that happen. Brennan’s our best chance at surviving this.
“Exactly,” Xaden says as he reaches my side. “You’re all right?” His arm winds around my shoulders as he presses a hard kiss on my temple. “They’re holding their own up there while this wave recedes. We need to go argue our point quickly.”
“I’m all right,” I promise. “Let’s go.”
“They’re out front. We’ll meet you there,” Tairn says.
“Go to Marbh,” I tell Andarna, pushing on my left shoulder and rotating the joint to try and ease the sharp, pulsing pain deep within the joint.
“I will be where you need me,” she huffs.
“Fine, as long as that’s with Marbh.” I lift my eyebrows. At a dragon.
She flicks her tail twice, then walks off, but at least she’s headed in the direction of the wardstone chamber safely below.
The halls of Basgiath teem with chaos as we pass by a line of gryphons and enter the guarded side door beneath the bell tower. My stomach drops. Wounded infantry and riders sit against the wall near this level’s entrance to the infirmary in various states of injury, but mostly burns, their cries of pain filling the stone corridor as second- and third-year healers race from patient to patient.
“They ran out of beds twenty minutes ago,” Cat tells us quietly. “Infantry is the heaviest hit so far.”
“They usually are,” Xaden notes, keeping his gaze focused across the hall on the door that leads to the courtyard and off the dozens of wounded to our right.
We stop abruptly as a platoon of infantry races by. The insignia on their collars show them as first-years.
“Violet.” Cat grabs hold of my elbow, and I turn toward her, pausing as Xaden pushes open the door. “Tell your mother we’ll fight in the air if she can stop the rain, and if not, deploy us like the infantry. We have more experience fighting venin than almost anyone here, and gryphons are exceptionally quick on the ground.”
There’s only sheer determination in her brown eyes, so I nod. “I’ll tell her.” She drops her hand, and Xaden and I walk into the courtyard.
It’s pure fucking mayhem as we make our way through the lines of squads in dark blue being briefed by trembling second-years. It’s as though their ranks have broken and they’re cobbling together units with whoever hasn’t been injured.
Once we reach the center, we have a clear view of the leadership meeting going on just in front of the open gate.
“At least they could shut the damned gate!” one of the infantry cadets shouts at Xaden and me as we pass.
“Shutting the gate isn’t going to help you,” Xaden replies, pointing left to the dead body of a wyvern poking through the partially demolished roofline. “Even if they were on foot, the five seconds it will take for them to get through isn’t worth losing the necessary egress.”
I shoot the second-year a sympathetic look and follow Xaden out. “You could be a little…”
“Nicer? Softer?” he counters. “Kinder? How the hell is that going to help them?”
He’s not wrong.
“Hey,” a second-year in dark blue says from a squad on the right, her gaze flicking over my shoulder.
“I’m sorry, but he’s right. Shutting the gate isn’t going to help.” I say it as gently as I can.
“That’s not why I stopped you.” She points behind me. “There’s a scribe chasing you down.”
I turn to see Jesinia jogging toward me in the rain, her hand hidden beneath her robes.
She’s keeping the journal dry.
“See if you can talk her into getting somewhere safe,” Xaden suggests. “In the meantime, I’ll start picking the fight without you.” He walks into the thirty-footthick archway that serves as Basgiath’s gate, crossing under the first portcullis and continuing on, immediately gaining the attention of my mother, General Melgren, and three of his aides standing at the edge of the second portcullis. The tails of their dragons swing just past them, forming a wall half the height of the fortress itself, even more in the case of Codagh.
“You should be—” I start signing to Jesinia, then drop my hands when I realize there’s nowhere safe for her to be.
