For a second, I debate not telling her, but she was there, too. She’s not sleeping, either.

“Soleil didn’t.” My gaze locks with hers, but her expression doesn’t change. Swear to the gods, nothing fazes her. I envy that. “She was on the ground when she killed her. The way she channeled…it drained everything from the land. Everything touching the land. Including Soleil and Fuil. I watched it happen. I watch it happen every night when I close my eyes. It spread so quickly, and I know…I can’t outrun it. Not if I’m too far from Tairn. I’m not fast enough for any considerable distance.” I try to swallow the tightness in my throat, but the knot seems to live there lately.

“Yet,” Imogen says, yanking the door to the tunnel open. “We’re not fast enough yet. But we will be. Let’s go.”

***

“It’s weird as hell to be all the way up here,” Ridoc says from my left as we sit in the first Battle Brief of the academic year later that day, looking down at where the first-years take up more than a third of the room.

It’s standing-room only in the giant, tiered classroom for the third-years behind us. This is the only place in the quadrant besides the gathering hall designed to hold all the rider cadets, but it will take a few weeks of death rolls before we can all sit in front of the stories-tall map of the Continent.

It reminds me of the one in Brennan’s briefing room in Aretia. He thinks we only have six months until venin challenge the wards, and yet there’s not a single indication on this map.

“View is a little better,” Nadine remarks from his other side.

“Definitely easier to see the higher portions of the map,” Rhiannon agrees at my right, taking out her supplies and setting them on the desktop before her. “Did you have a good run this morning?”

“I’m not sure I’d call it good, but it was effective.” I put my notebook and pen on the table, wincing at the pain shooting up my shins, and reinforce my shields. Keeping them up at all times is harder than I thought, and Tairn loves to remind me when they slip.

“Look at all those first-years with their quills and ink,” Ridoc remarks, leaning forward to look down at the underclassmen.

“There once was a time we didn’t have lesser magic to power ink pens,” Nadine retorts. “Stop acting superior.”

“We are superior.” He grins.

Nadine rolls her eyes, and I can’t fight my smile.

Professor Devera walks down the narrow set of stone steps on our left that follows the tiers of seats, her favorite longsword strapped to her back. Her black hair is a little shorter since I saw her last, and there’s a fresh, jagged wound along the rich mahogany skin of her biceps.

“I heard she spent last week with the Southern Wing,” Rhiannon says quietly.

My stomach tenses and I wonder what, if anything, she saw.

“Welcome to your first Battle Brief,” Professor Devera announces. I tune out as she gives the same speech as last year and warns the first-years not to be surprised if the third-years are called into service early to man the mid-guard posts or shadow the forward wings. Her gaze rakes over them before she raises her attention to the seconds, her eyes crinkling for a heartbeat as she flashes a proud smile at me before continuing upward as she explains how necessary it is for us to understand the current affairs of our borders.

“This is also the only class where you will not only answer to a rider as your professor, but a scribe, as well,” she finishes, lifting her hand toward the stairs.

Colonel Markham lifts the corner of his cream-colored robes as he descends, heading for the recessed floor of the lecture hall.

My muscles lock, and I fight the urge to flick one of my daggers into his traitorous back. He knows everything. He has to. He wrote the fucking textbook on Navarrian history that all riders are taught from. And until last year, I was his star pupil, the one he’d handpicked to succeed in the Scribe Quadrant.

“You’ll respect Colonel Markham as you would any other professor,” Professor Devera says. “He is the foremost authority at Basgiath when it comes to all matters not only of our history but current events as well. Some of you may not know this, but information from the front is actually received at Basgiath before it’s sent to the king in Calldyr, so you’ll be hearing it first here.”

I glance down the tiers to where Aaric sits beside Sloane in the row with our squad’s first-years, and to his credit, he doesn’t flinch or even fidget in his seat. One good look, and Markham will know who he is, but with that haircut, if he keeps his head down, he’s got a shot at blending in.

At least until his father sounds the alarm that he’s missing from his gold-plated bed in Calldyr.

“First discussion point,” Markham says when he reaches the floor of the hall, his silver eyebrows knitting. “There were not one but two attacks on our border by drifts of gryphons in the past week.”

A murmur goes through the hall.

“The first,” Professor Devera says as she lifts her hand and uses lesser magic to move one of the flag markers from the side of the map to the border we share with the Braevick province of Poromiel, “was near the village of Sipene, high in the Esben Mountains.”

An hour’s flight from Montserrat.

The only sound is pen and quill against parchment as we take notes.

“Here’s what we can tell you,” Markham says, folding his hands behind his back. “The drift attacked two hours past midnight, when all but a few villagers were asleep. It was unprovoked, and because Sipene is one of the villages that lies beyond the wards, the violence went undetected by the Eastern Wing for some matter of hours.”

My shoulders dip, but I keep writing, pausing only to look up at the map. That village is at eight-thousand feet, an altitude unpleasant for gryphons. What were they looking for? Maybe I should have spent last night reading about what’s in those mountains instead of six-hundred-year-old political ramifications of establishing our war college here and not in Calldyr to the west.

“The drift was routed by three dragons on patrol from the local outpost, but by the time they arrived, most of the damage had been done. Supplies were stolen, homes were burned. The last gryphon flier was found in some of the local caves above the village, though neither he nor his gryphon could tell us the motivation for attack, as they were both burned on sight.”

Hard for prisoners to talk about the venin they’ve been fighting if they’re dead.

“That’s what they get,” Ridoc mutters, shaking his head. “Going after civilians.”

But were they? Markham didn’t mention civilian casualties, only destruction.

I look up over my shoulder at where Imogen stands with Bodhi and Quinn, her arms folded over her chest. She glances down at me, her mouth tightening before she gives her attention back to Markham.

Shit. I want to be standing up there with them, asking what they really think, or even with Eya, who’s with her third-year squad up in the corner. We might not be close, but at least she knows the truth. More than anything, I want to talk to Xaden. I want answers he’s not willing to give me.

“As for the second,” Professor Devera continues, moving another flag, this one to the south. My breakfast churns in my stomach when she puts the flag in place. “The outpost of Athebyne was attacked three days ago.”

I gasp and the pen falls from my hand, hitting the desk loudly in the quiet room.

“Are you all right?” Rhiannon whispers.

“Something you have to say, Cadet Sorrengail?” Markham asks, cocking his head and looking at me in that characteristically unreadable expression he’s so fond of. But the challenge I’ve often seen when he used to try and dig a correct answer out of me is there in the simple lift of his brow.

I know he’s well aware of what is happening beyond our borders, but did Colonel Aetos tell him that I know, too?

“No, sir,” I answer, grabbing my pen before it can roll off my desk. “I was startled, that’s all. As far as I know from what you taught me in preparation for the Scribe Quadrant, outposts are rarely ever attacked directly.”

“And?” He leans back against the desk in the center of the floor, tapping a finger along the side of his bulbous nose.

“And Montserrat was also directly attacked in the last year, so I can’t help but wonder if this tactic is becoming more commonly used by our enemy?”

“Interesting thought. It’s something we’re considering among scribes.” The smile on his face is anything but friendly as he pushes off the desk, clasping his hands behind his robes as he nods at me.

“We usually start with first-years,” Professor Devera says, cutting a look at Colonel Markham. “Finishing the details we can give you about the Athebyne attack, it occurred a little before midnight, while nine of the twelve dragons stationed there were still out on their patrols. The enemy totals were around two dozen from what we can tell, and they were defeated by the three present dragons, with help from the infantry. Two gryphon riders made it into the lower level of the outpost before being caught and killed.”

“Shields,” Tairn growls, and I build them back up.

“I didn’t even notice they’d slipped.”

“They should be like clothes at this point,” he lectures, snapping a little more than usual.