He turns and glances over me. “You look…different.”

“It’s the leathers.” I shrug. “Why? Is different bad?” It takes a second to close my rucksack and haul it up and over my shoulders. Thank you, gods, the ache in my knee is manageable with it bound like this.

“It’s just…” He shakes his head slowly, teasing his lower lip with his teeth. “Different.”

“Why, Dain Aetos.” I grin and walk toward him, then grasp the door handle at his side. “You’ve seen me in swimwear, tunics, and even ballgowns. Are you telling me it’s the leather that does it for you?”

He scoffs, but there’s a slight flush to his cheeks as his hand covers mine to open the door. “Glad to see our year apart hasn’t dulled your tongue, Vi.”

“Oh,” I toss over my shoulder as we walk into the hallway, “I can do quite a few things with my tongue. You’d be impressed.” My smile is so wide that it almost hurts, and just for a second, I forget that we’re in the Riders Quadrant or that I’ve just survived the parapet.

His eyes heat. Guess he’s forgotten, too. Then again, Mira’s always made it clear that riders aren’t an inhibited bunch behind these walls. There’s not much reason to deny yourself when you might not live through tomorrow.

“We have to get you out of here,” he says, shaking his head like he needs to clear it. Then he does the hand thing again, and I hear the lock slide into place. There’s no one in the hallway, and we make it to the stairwell quickly.

“Thanks,” I say as we start descending. “My knee feels way better now.”

“I still can’t believe your mother thought putting you into the Riders Quadrant was a good idea.” I can practically feel the anger vibrating off him next to me as we walk down the stairs. There’s no banister on his side, but he doesn’t seem to mind, even though a single misstep would be the end of him.

“Me neither. She announced her decree about which quadrant I’d choose last spring, after I passed the initial entrance exam, and I immediately started working with Major Gillstead.” He’ll be so proud when he reads the rolls tomorrow and sees that I’m not on them.

“There’s a door at the bottom of this stairwell, below the main level, that leads to the passage into the Healers Quadrant farther up the ravine,” he says as we approach the first floor. “We’ll get you through that and into the Scribe Quadrant.”

“What?” I stop as my feet hit the polished stone landing at the main floor, but he continues downward.

He’s already three steps beneath me when he realizes I’m not with him. “The Scribe Quadrant,” he says slowly, turning to face me.

This angle makes me taller than he is, and I glare down at him. “I can’t go to the Scribe Quadrant, Dain.”

“I’m sorry?” His eyebrows fly up.

“She won’t stand for it.” I shake my head.

His mouth opens, then shuts, and his fists clench at his sides. “This place will kill you, Violet. You can’t stay here. Everyone will understand. You didn’t volunteer—not really.”

Anger bristles up my spine, and my gaze narrows on him. Ignoring who did or did not volunteer me, I snap, “One, I’m well aware of what my chances are here, Dain, and two, usually fifteen percent of candidates don’t make it past the parapet, and I’m still standing, so I guess I’m beating those odds already.”

He backs up another step. “I’m not saying you didn’t just kick absolute ass by getting here, Vi. But you have to leave. You’ll break the first time they put you in the sparring ring, and that’s before the dragons sense that you’re…” He shakes his head and looks away, his jaw clenching.

“I’m what?” My hackles rise. “Go ahead and say it. When they sense I’m less than the others? Is that what you mean?”

“Damn it.” He rakes his hand over his close-cropped light-brown curls. “Stop putting words in my mouth. You know what I mean. Even if you survive to Threshing, there’s no guarantee a dragon will bond you. As it was, last year we had thirty-four unbonded cadets who have just been sitting around, waiting to restart the year with this class to get a chance at bonding again, and they’re all perfectly healthy—”

“Don’t be an asshole.” My stomach falls. Just because he might be right doesn’t mean I want to hear it…or want to be called unhealthy.

“I’m trying to keep you alive!” he shouts, his voice echoing off the stone of the stairwell. “If we get you to the Scribe Quadrant right now, you can still ace their test and have a phenomenal story to tell when you’re out drinking. I take you back out there”—he points to the doorway that leads to the courtyard—“it’s out of my hands. I can’t protect you here. Not fully.”

“I’m not asking you to!” Wait…didn’t I want him to? Wasn’t that what Mira suggested? “Why would you tell Rhiannon to put me in your squad if you just wanted to sneak me out the back door?”

The vise around my chest squeezes tighter. Next to Mira, Dain is the person who knows me best on the entire damned Continent, and even he thinks I can’t hack it here.

“To make her leave so I could get you out!” He climbs two steps, shortening the distance between us, but there’s no give in the set of his shoulders. If determination had a physical form, it would be Dain Aetos right now. “Do you think I want to watch my best friend die? Do you think it’ll be fun to see what they’ll do to you, knowing you’re General Sorrengail’s daughter? Putting on leathers doesn’t make you a rider, Vi. They’re going to tear you to shreds, and if they don’t, the dragons will. In the Riders Quadrant, you either graduate or die, and you know that. Let me save you.” His entire posture droops, and the plea in his eyes shreds some of my indignation. “Please let me save you.”

“You can’t,” I whisper. “She said she’d haul me right back. I either leave here as a rider or as a name on a stone.”

“She didn’t mean it.” He shakes his head. “She can’t mean that.”

“She means it. Even Mira couldn’t talk her out of it.”

He searches my eyes and tenses, as if he sees the truth of it there. “Shit.”

“Yeah. Shit.” I shrug, like it’s not my life we’re talking about here.

“All right.” I can see him mentally changing gears, adapting to the information. “We’ll find another way. For now, let’s go.” He takes my hand and leads me to the alcove we disappeared from. “Get out there and meet the other first-years. I’ll go back and enter from the turret doorway. They’ll figure out we know each other soon enough, but don’t give anyone ammunition.” He squeezes my hand and lets go, walking away without another word and disappearing into the tunnel.

I grip the straps of my rucksack and walk into the dappled sunlight of the courtyard. The clouds are breaking, and the drizzle is burning off as the gravel crunches beneath my feet on my way toward the riders and cadets.

The massive courtyard, which could easily fit a thousand riders, is just like the map in the archives recorded. Shaped like an angular teardrop, the rounded end is formed by a giant outer wall at least ten feet thick. Along the sides are stone halls. I know the four-story building carved into the mountain with the rounded end is for academics, and the one on the right, towering over the cliff, is the dorms, where Dain took me. The imposing rotunda linking the two buildings also serves as the entrance to the gathering hall, commons, and library behind it. I quit gawking and turn in the courtyard to face the outer wall. There’s a stone dais on the right side of the parapet, occupied by two uniformed men I recognize as the commandant and executive commandant, both in full military dress, their medals winking in the sunlight.

It takes me a few minutes to find Rhiannon in the growing crowd, talking to another girl whose jet-black hair is cut just as short as Dain’s.

“There you are!” Rhiannon’s smile is genuine and full of relief. “I was worried. Is everything…” She lifts her eyebrows.

“I’m good to go.” I nod and turn toward the other woman as Rhiannon introduces us. Her name is Tara, and she’s from the Morraine province to the north, along the coast of the Emerald Sea. She has that same air of confidence Mira does, and her eyes dance with excitement as she and Rhiannon talk about how they’ve both obsessed over dragons since childhood. I pay attention but only enough to recall details if we need to form an alliance.

An hour passes, then another, according to the Basgiath bells, which we can hear from here. Then the last of the cadets walks into the courtyard, followed by the three riders from the other turret.

Xaden is among them. It’s not just his height that makes him stand out in this crowd but the way the other riders all seem to move around him, like he’s a shark and they’re all fish giving him a wide berth. For a second, I can’t help but wonder what his signet is, the unique power from the bond with his dragon, and if that’s why even the third-years seem to scurry out of his way as he strides up to the dais with lethal grace. There are ten of them in total up there now, and from the way Commandant Panchek moves to the front, facing us—

“I think we’re about to start,” I say to Rhiannon and Tara, and they both turn to face the dais. Everyone does.

“Three hundred and one of you have survived the parapet to become cadets today,” Commandant Panchek starts with a politician’s smile, gesturing to us. The guy has always talked with his hands. “Good job. Sixty-seven did not.”

My chest clenches as my brain spins the calculation quickly. Almost twenty percent. Was it the rain? The wind? That’s more than average. Sixty-seven people died trying to get here.

“I’ve heard this position is just a stepping stone for him,” Tara whispers. “He wants Sorrengail’s job, then General Melgren’s.”

The commanding general of all Navarre’s forces. Melgren’s beady eyes have always made me shrivel every time we’ve met during my mother’s career.

“General Melgren’s?” Rhiannon whispers from my other side.

“He’ll never get it,” I say quietly as the commandant welcomes us to the Riders Quadrant. “Melgren’s dragon gives him the signet ability to see a battle’s outcome before it happens. There’s no beating that, and you can’t be assassinated if you know it’s coming.”

“As the Codex says, now you begin the true crucible!” Panchek shouts, his voice carrying over the five hundred of us that I estimate are in this courtyard. “You will be tested by your superiors, hunted by your peers, and guided by your instincts. If you survive to Threshing, and if you are chosen, you will be riders. Then we’ll see how many of you make it to graduation.”

Statistics say about a quarter of us will live to graduate, give or take a few on any year, and yet the Riders Quadrant is never short volunteers. Every cadet in this courtyard thinks they have what it takes to be one of the elite, the very best Navarre has to offer…a dragon rider. I can’t help but wonder for the smallest of seconds if maybe I do, too. Maybe I can do more than just survive.

“Your instructors will teach you,” Panchek promises, his hand sweeping to the line of professors standing at the doors to the academic wing. “It’s up to you how well you learn.” He swings his pointer finger at us. “Discipline falls to your units, and your wingleader is the last word. If I have to get involved…” A slow, sinister smile spreads across his face. “You don’t want me involved.