I’ve spent my life around dragons, but always from a distance. They don’t tolerate humans they haven’t chosen. But these eight? They’re flying straight for us—at speed.
Just when I think they’re about to fly overhead, they pitch vertically, whip the air with their huge semitranslucent wings, and stop, the gusts of wing-made wind so powerful that I nearly stagger backward as they land on the outer semicircular wall. Their chest scales ripple with movement, and their razor-sharp talons dig into the edge of the wall on either side. Now I understand why the walls are ten feet thick. It’s not a barrier. The edge of the fortress is a damned perch.
My mouth drops open. In my five years of living here, I’ve never seen this, but then again, I’ve never been allowed to watch what happens on Conscription Day.
A few cadets scream.
Guess everyone wants to be a dragon rider until they’re actually twenty feet away from one.
Steam blasts my face as the navy-blue one directly in front of me exhales through its wide nostrils. Its glistening blue horns rise above its head in an elegant, lethal sweep, and its wings flare momentarily before tucking in, the tip of their top joint crowned by a single fierce talon. Their tails are just as fatal, but I can’t see them at this angle or even tell which breed of dragon each is without that clue.
All are deadly.
“We’re going to have to bring the masons in again,” Dain mutters as chunks of rock crumble under the dragons’ grips, crashing to the courtyard in boulders the size of my torso.
There are three dragons in various shades of red, two shades of green—like Teine, Mira’s dragon—one brown like Mom’s, one orange, and the enormous navy one ahead of me. They’re all massive, overshadowing the structure of the citadel as they narrow their golden eyes at us in absolute judgment.
If they didn’t need us puny humans to develop signet abilities from bonding and weave the protective wards they power around Navarre, I’m pretty sure they’d eat us all and be done. But they like protecting the Vale—the valley behind Basgiath the dragons call home—from merciless gryphons and we like living, so here we are in the most unlikely of partnerships.
My heart threatens to beat out of my chest, and I absolutely agree with it, because I’d like to run, too. Just thinking that I’m supposed to ride one of these is fucking ludicrous.
A cadet bolts out of Third Wing, screaming as he makes a run for the stone keep behind us. We all turn to look as he sprints for the giant arched door at the center. I can almost see the words carved into the arch from here, but I already know them by heart. A dragon without its rider is a tragedy. A rider without their dragon is dead.
Once bonded, riders can’t live without their dragons, but most dragons can live just fine after us. It’s why they choose carefully, so they’re not humiliated by picking a coward, not that a dragon would ever admit to making a mistake.
The red dragon on the left opens its vast mouth, revealing teeth as big as I am. That jaw could crush me if it wanted, like a grape. Fire erupts along its tongue, then shoots outward in a macabre blaze toward the fleeing cadet.
He’s a pile of ash on the gravel before he can even make it to the shadow of the keep.
Sixty-eight dead.
Heat from the flames blasts the side of my face as I jerk my attention forward. If anyone else runs and is likewise executed, I don’t want to see it. More screaming sounds around me. I lock my jaw as hard as I can to keep quiet.
There are two more gusts of heat, one to my left and then another to my right.
Make that seventy.
The navy dragon seems to tilt its head at me, as if its narrowed golden eyes can see straight through me to the fear fisting my stomach and the doubt curled insidiously around my heart. I bet it can even see the wrap binding my knee. It knows I’m at a disadvantage, that I’m too small to climb its foreleg and mount, too frail to ride. Dragons always know.
But I will not run. I wouldn’t be standing here if I’d quit every time something seemed impossible to overcome. I will not die today. The words repeat in my head just like they had before the parapet and on it.
I force my shoulders back and lift my chin.
The dragon blinks, which might be a sign of approval, or boredom, and looks away.
“Anyone else feel like changing their mind?” Xaden shouts, scanning the remaining rows of cadets with the same shrewd gaze of the navy-blue dragon behind him. “No? Excellent. Roughly half of you will be dead by this time next summer.” The formation is silent except for a few untimely sobs from my left. “A third of you again the year after that, and the same your last year. No one cares who your mommy or daddy is here. Even King Tauri’s second son died during his Threshing. So tell me again: Do you feel invincible now that you’ve made it into the Riders Quadrant? Untouchable? Elite?”
No one cheers.
Another blast of heat rushes—this time directly at my face—and every muscle in my body clenches, preparing for incineration. But it’s not flames…just steam, and it blows back Rhiannon’s braids as the dragons finish their simultaneous exhale. The breeches on the first-year ahead of me darken, the color spreading down his legs.
They want us scared. Mission accomplished.
“Because you’re not untouchable or special to them.” Xaden points toward the navy dragon and leans forward slightly, like he’s letting us in on a secret as we lock eyes. “To them, you’re just the prey.”
The sparring ring is where riders are made or broken. After all, no respectable dragon would choose a rider who cannot defend themselves, and no respectable cadet would allow such a threat to the wing to continue training.
—Major Afendra’s Guide to the Riders Quadrant
(Unauthorized Edition)
CHAPTER
FOUR
“Elena Sosa, Brayden Blackburn.” Captain Fitzgibbons reads from the death roll, flanked by two other scribes on the dais as we stand in silent formation in the courtyard, squinting into the early sun.
This morning, we’re all in rider black, and there’s a single silver four-pointed star on my collarbone, the mark of a first-year, and a Fourth Wing patch on my shoulder. We were issued standard uniforms yesterday, summer-weight tight-fitted tunics, pants, and accessories after Parapet was over, but not flight leathers. There’s no point handing out the thicker, more protective combat uniforms when half of us won’t be around come Threshing in October. The armored corset Mira made me isn’t regulation, but I fit right in among the hundreds of modified uniforms around me.
After the last twenty-four hours and one night in the first-floor barracks, I’m starting to realize that this quadrant is a strange mix of we-might-die-tomorrow hedonism and brutal efficiency in the name of the same reason.
“Jace Sutherland.” Captain Fitzgibbons continues to read, and the scribes next to him shift their weight. “Dougal Luperco.”
I think we’re somewhere in the fifties, but I lost count when he read Dylan’s name a few minutes ago. This is the only memorial the names will get, the only time they’ll be spoken of in the citadel, so I try to concentrate, to commit each name to memory, but there’s just too many.
My skin is agitated from wearing the armor all night like Mira suggested, and my knee aches, but I resist the urge to bend down and adjust the wrap I managed to put on in the nonexistent privacy of my bunk in the first-year barracks before anyone else woke up.
