“Fine.” He puts his hands up. “I’ll let him maintain his delusion of grandeur.”
“Oh, so you’ll listen to her—”
“She’s my squad leader. You’re not.”
“So, you only respect rider squad leaders,” Calvin prods.
Aoife furiously writes in her notebook.
“Shut it, Calvin,” a cadet from behind me says with more than a little exasperation.
“You want my respect? Earn it.” Ridoc shrugs. “Cross the parapet, climb the Gauntlet, survive Threshing, and then we’ll be on equal footing.”
“What, like we don’t go through some shit in the Infantry Quadrant?” someone behind us challenges.
“See her?” Sawyer says, and I swear I can feel him pointing at me. “She bonded not only one of the biggest fucking dragons on the Continent, but a second dragon, and then went into combat against the gryphons a couple of months ago and came out alive. You go through that kind of shit in your quadrant?”
The cadets around us fall silent. Even Aoife’s pencil remains poised above her notebook as she stares at me.
Awkward. And wrong. No one in our little group knows what we’re really against out there. And my silence? It’s starting to feel a lot less like self-preservation and more like I’m complicit.
“You’re a Sorrengail, aren’t you?” Mirabel asks. “The commanding general’s daughter?” She winces. “The hair kind of gives you away.”
“Yes.” There’s no use denying it.
“Your mother is terrifying,” she whispers.
The scribe glances between us before putting pencil to parchment again.
I nod. “That’s one of her more prominent qualities.”
“Hey, guys?” Brisa raises her voice behind us. “I think I know why it feels like we’re getting nowhere.”
“Why is that?” Rhiannon asks over her shoulder.
“Calvin’s right, but so are you. They gave us two different maps,” she says as the first of us crest the hill…and freeze.
Even my heartbeat comes to a standstill as Rhiannon throws up her hand to stop the rest of the group.
An Orange Club—nope, that’s a Scorpiontail—growls at us low in her throat from where she’s been lying in wait on the other side of the hill. Our heads tilt to follow the movement as she rises to her full height, dominating the skyline, her tail whipping behind her.
Baide. Jack Barlowe’s dragon. Or at least she was.
“Amari help us,” Calvin whispers, his panic palpable.
I drop my eyes in deference just like Kaori taught us as my pulse leaps and my brain fights the urge to panic. “Oranges are the most unpredictable. Eyes down. Do not run,” I whisper. “She’ll kill you if you run. Try not to show any fear.” Shit, this is what we should have been talking about instead of arguing about which quadrant is superior and which forest we’re in.
My chest tightens when my immediate instinct—to reach for Tairn—is denied. With any other dragon, I would bet against risking the anger of our dragons by torching us, but the cadets behind us are a whole other story. And since I killed Jack last year? All bets are off.
She has nothing to lose, and given the hot blast of steam that levels the grass and makes my face sticky, she remembers exactly who I am.
“Riders!” Rhiannon calls out. “Take the front!” She’s obviously thinking the same way. “Infantry, guard the healers and scribe!” She glances at me sideways, careful not to raise her eyes. “Violet, maybe you should—”
Keeping my head down, I push past Calvin to stand in the front, catching movement in my peripheral vision. “I’m not hiding.”
“What are you doing? It’s going to eat you,” one of the cadets behind us hisses.
I look over and see a healer, Dyre, a few feet to my right, staring straight at Baide, his mouth agape.
A growl rumbles up the orange’s throat, and I lunge, gripping the strap of Dyre’s medical pack and yanking him behind us, passing him to Ridoc, who quickly shoves him to safety and moves to my side.
“No, she’s not,” Sawyer says, moving forward with Ridoc so the infantry is behind us. “That’s why we’re taking the front.”
Baide swivels her head, then opens her mouth and curls her tongue, and I chance a quick glance, catching her hazy golden eyes narrowing to slits as she arches her neck, changing her angle instead of lowering her head to strike in the typical—
I inhale sharply. “Rhi, she’s going to blast right past us just like Solas.”
Rhi takes less than a second to assess and decide. “Second Wing,” she calls back. “Halt and cover the infantry where you are!”
Movement behind us ceases as Baide flexes her claws in the ground and swivels again, choosing a target.
“It’s… It’s…” Calvin babbles.
“Drop your eyes and shut up,” Rhi orders.
“Gods, they all smell scared,” Ridoc whispers from my right.
“Exactly how pissed at you do you think she is?” Sawyer asks me from Rhi’s left.
