A chill of apprehension lifts the hairs on my neck.

“Well, Jack,” the male rider on my right says slowly, scratching the trim lines of his dark goatee. He’s not wearing a cloak, and the rain soaks into the bevy of patches stitched into a worn leather jacket. “Cadet Sorrengail has you by the actual balls here, in more ways than one. She’s right. Regs state that there’s nothing but respect among riders at formation. You want to kill her, you’ll have to do it in the sparring ring or on your own time. That is, if she decides to let you off the parapet. Because technically, you’re not on the grounds yet, so you are not a cadet. She is.”

“And if I decide to snap her neck the second I step down?” Jack growls, and the look in his eyes says he’ll do it.

“Then you get to meet the dragons early,” the redhead answers, her tone bland. “We don’t wait for trials around here. We just execute.”

“What’s it going to be, Sorrengail?” the male rider asks. “You going to have Jack here start as a eunuch?”

Shit. What is it going to be? I can’t kill him, not at this angle, and slicing off his balls is only going to make him hate me more, if possible.

“Are you going to follow the rules?” I ask Jack. My head is buzzing, and my arm feels so damned heavy, but I keep my knife on target.

“Guess I don’t have a choice.” A corner of his mouth tilts into a sneer, and his posture relaxes as he raises his hands, palms out.

I lower my dagger but keep it palmed and ready as I move sideways, toward the redhead keeping roll.

Jack steps down into the courtyard, his shoulder knocking mine as he walks by, pausing to lean in close. “You’re dead, Sorrengail, and I’m going to be the one to kill you.”

Blue dragons descend from the extraordinary Gormfaileas line. Known for their formidable size, they are the most ruthless, especially in the case of the rare Blue Daggertail, whose knifelike spikes at the tip of their tail can disembowel an enemy with one flick.

—Colonel Kaori’s Field Guide to Dragonkind

CHAPTER

THREE

If Jack wants to kill me, he needs to get in line. Besides, I have a feeling Xaden Riorson is going to beat him to it.

“Not today,” I respond to Jack, the hilt of my dagger solid in my hand, and I somehow manage to suppress a shudder as he leans over and breathes in. He’s scenting me like a fucking dog. Then he scoffs and walks off into the crowd of celebrating cadets and riders that’s gathered in the sizable courtyard of the citadel.

It’s still early, probably around nine, but already I see there aren’t as many cadets as there were candidates ahead of me in line. Based on the overwhelming presence of leather, both the second- and third-years are here as well, taking stock of the new cadets.

The rain eases into a drizzle, as if it had only come to make the hardest test of my life even harder…but I did it.

I’m alive.

I made it.

My body begins to tremble, and a throbbing pain erupts in my left knee—the one I slammed on the parapet. I take a step, and it threatens to give out on me. I need to bind it before anyone notices.

“I think you made an enemy there,” the redhead says, casually shifting the lethal crossbow she wears strapped along her shoulder. She glances at me over the scroll with a shrewd look in her hazel eyes as she looks me up and down. “I’d watch your back with that one if I were you.”

I nod. I’m going to have to watch my back and every other part of my body.

The next candidate approaches from the parapet as someone grips my shoulders from behind and spins me.

My dagger is halfway up when I realize it’s Rhiannon.

“We made it!” She grins, giving my shoulders a squeeze.

“We made it,” I repeat with a forced smile. My thighs are shaking now, but I manage to sheath my dagger at my ribs. Now that we’re here, both cadets, can I trust her?

“I can’t thank you enough. There were at least three times I would have fallen off if you hadn’t helped me. You were right—those soles were slick as shit. Have you seen the people around here? I swear I just saw a second-year with pink streaks in her hair, and one guy has dragon scales tattooed up his entire biceps.”

“Conformity is for the infantry,” I say as she loops her arm through mine and tugs me along toward the crowd. My knee screams, pain radiating up to my hip and down to my foot, and I limp, my weight falling into Rhiannon’s side.

Damn it.

Where did this nausea come from? Why can’t I stop shaking? I’m going to fall any second now—there’s no way my body can remain upright with this earthquake in my legs or the whirring in my head.

“Speaking of which,” she says, glancing down. “We need to trade boots. There’s a bench—”

A tall figure in a pristine black uniform steps out of the crowd, charging toward us, and though Rhiannon manages to dodge, I stumble smack into his chest.

“Violet?” Strong hands catch my elbows to steady me, and I look up into a pair of familiar, striking brown eyes, flared wide in obvious shock.

Relief sweeps through me, and I try to smile, but it probably comes out like a distorted grimace. He seems taller than he was last summer, the beard that cuts across his jaw is new, and he’s filled out in a way that makes me blink…or maybe that’s just my vision going hazy at the edges. The beautiful, easygoing smile that’s starred in way too many of my fantasies is far from the scowl that purses his mouth, and everything about him seems a little…harder, but it works for him. The line of his chin, the set of his brow, even the muscles of his biceps are rigid under my fingers as I try to find my balance. Sometime in the last year, Dain Aetos went from attractive and cute to gorgeous.

And I’m about to be sick all over his boots.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he barks, the shock in his eyes transforming to something foreign, something deadly. This isn’t the same boy I grew up with. He’s a second-year rider now.

“Dain. It’s good to see you.” That’s an understatement, but the trembles turn to full-on shakes, and bile creeps up my throat, dizziness only making the nausea worse. My knees give out.

“Damn it, Violet,” he mutters, hauling me back to my feet. With one hand on my back and the other under my elbow, he quickly guides me away from the crowd and into an alcove in the wall, close to the first defensive turret of the citadel. It’s a shady, hidden spot with a hard wooden bench, which he sits me on, then helps me out of my rucksack.

Spit floods my mouth. “I’m going to be sick.”

“Head between your knees,” Dain orders in a harsh tone I’m not used to from him, but I do it. He rubs circles on my lower back as I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth. “It’s the adrenaline. Give it a minute and it’ll pass.” I hear approaching footsteps on the gravel. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m Rhiannon. I’m Violet’s…friend.”

I stare at the gravel under my mismatched boots and will the meager contents of my stomach to stay put.

“Listen to me, Rhiannon. Violet is fine,” he commands. “And if anyone asks, then you tell them exactly what I said, that it’s just the adrenaline working out of her system. Understand?”

“It’s no one’s business what’s going on with Violet,” she retorts, her tone just as sharp as his. “So I wouldn’t say shit. Especially not when she’s the reason I made it across the parapet.”

“You’d better mean that,” he warns, the bite in his voice at odds with the ceaseless, comforting circles he makes on my back.

“I could ask you just who the hell you are,” she retorts.

“He’s one of my oldest friends.” The trembles slowly subside, and the nausea wanes, but I’m not sure if it’s from timing or my position, so I keep my head between my knees while I manage to unlace my left boot.

“Oh,” Rhiannon answers.