I can handle whatever he wants to punish me with if it means keeping Andarna safe.
“We go.”
An hour later, I’m not so sure I’m handling anything as much as I am enduring.
“Again,” Professor Carr orders, his thin white hair flopping with every gust of wind as we stand on the mountain peak we use when training my signet.
And to think…this is only a warning.
Fatigue washes over me again, but I know better than to complain. I’d made that mistake somewhere around strike twenty-five, and it had only added another mark to the tab Professor Carr was keeping in his notebook while Major Varrish supervised from his side.
“Again, Cadet Sorrengail.” Varrish repeats the command, smiling at me like he’s simply exchanging pleasantries. Their dragons, Breugan and Solas, stand as far back as possible without falling off the mountain. Tairn had lunged for their necks, snapped, and pulled back with inches to spare around strike thirteen. It was the first time I’d ever seen dragons scurry. “Unless you’d rather spend the foreseeable future in the brig.”
Tairn’s chest rumbles in a low growl as he stands behind me, his claws digging into the bare rock of the mountaintop. There’s only so much he can do, though. While he’s bound by the Empyrean, I have to follow the rules of the quadrant or risk the brig—and I’d rather bring down a thousand lightning strikes than spend one night locked in a cage at Varrish’s mercy.
When I don’t move, Carr sends me a pleading look, his gaze darting to Varrish.
I sigh but lift my hands, my arms trembling as I reach for Tairn’s power. Then, I ground my feet in the mental construct of the Archives in my mind so I don’t slip away into the fire that threatens to consume me. Swift and fast, the power rises again, and sweat beads on my face and drips down my spine as I struggle to control it.
Anger. Lust. Fear. It’s always the most extreme of my emotions that bring on the strikes. It’s rage that fuels me now as I summon that sizzling hot energy and release it, cracking open the sky with another lightning strike that hits a nearby peak.
“Thirty-two.” Carr jots it down.
There’s no care for if I can aim. Not a single consideration for mastery or strength. Their only goal here is to wear me down, while mine is to hold on to whatever scraps of self-control I can muster so I don’t wake Andarna.
“Again,” Varrish orders.
Gods, my body feels like it’s cooking itself alive. I reach for the buttons on my flight jacket and yank them open, letting some of the infernal heat escape.
“Violet?” Andarna asks sleepily.
Guilt slams into me harder than a lightning strike. “I’m fine,” I promise her.
“Waking is dangerous to the growth process,” Tairn lectures. “Sleep.”
“What’s happening?” She’s alarmingly alert now.
“Nothing I can’t handle.” Not quite a lie. Right?
“I’ve never seen her produce more than twenty-six strikes in an hour, Major. She’s at risk of overheating and burning out if you continue to push like this,” Carr says to Varrish.
“She can take it just fine.” He looks at me like he knows. Like he was there at Resson, watching me hurl bolt after bolt at the wyvern. If he’s the picture of control, then maybe I should be glad I don’t seem to have any.
“All it takes is her slipping in her grounding, or exhausting her physically, and she will burn out,” Carr warns, his gaze shifting nervously. “Punishing her for insubordination is one thing, but killing her is quite another.”
“Again.” Varrish lifts his brows at me. “Unless your golden one would like to fly up and say hello, since she failed to appear as ordered. If she joins us, we’ll only task you with three more.”
“This is about me?”
My shoulders drop and my stomach hits the ground.
“This is an example of what happens when dragons choose poorly,” Tairn counters. “Solas should never have given this barbarian more power.”
“I don’t want to submit her for tests or anything barbaric,” Varrish cajoles, as though he’d heard Tairn’s words. “I just want her to understand that she is not above the structure of command.”
“I fucking hate him,” I tell Tairn.
“I can feel this draining you! I’ll come—” Andarna starts.
“You’ll do no such thing, or you risk every feathertail in the Vale,” I remind her. “Do you want someone who takes joy in the pain of others like Varrish bonding a hatchling?”
Andarna growls in pure frustration.
Tairn angles his wing, directing the cooling wind over my scalding skin.
“Well?” Varrish asks, tugging his cloak around him as steam rises from my body.
Tairn snarls.
“Humans do not command dragons, and that includes you.” I lift my impossibly heavy arms and reach for power again.
Around strike forty, my knees buckle and I crumple to the hard rock. The ground rushes up at me, and I throw out my hands, sending pain shooting through my left shoulder as the joint partially subluxates from the impact. My mouth waters from the instant nausea, but I cradle my left arm and force myself to my knees just to take the weight off the joint.
Extending his neck, Tairn roars so loudly at Varrish and Carr that the notebook blows out of Carr’s hands and tumbles down the mountain, vanishing from sight.
“Silver One is done!” he shouts.
“They can’t hear you,” I remind him, breathing through the pain.
