“It is if it means you get preferential treatment!” Luca adds in.

“For fuck’s sake,” Rhiannon mumbles, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Luca, Tynan, shut up. They’re not sleeping together. They’ve been friends since they were kids, or do you not know enough about our own leadership to know his dad is her mom’s aide?”

Tynan’s eyes widen, like he’s actually surprised. “Really?”

“Really.” I shake my head and study the course.

“Shit. I’m…sorry. Barlowe said—”

“And that’s your first mistake,” Ridoc interjects. “Listening to that sadistic ass is going to get you killed. And you’re lucky Aetos isn’t here.”

True. Dain would more than take exception to Tynan’s assumptions and probably assign him cleanup duty for a month. Good thing he’s on the flight field this time of day.

Xaden would just beat the shit out of him.

I blink, shoving that comparison and any other thought of Xaden Riorson far out of my head.

“Here we go!” Professor Emetterio walks to the head of our line. “You’ll get your time at the top of the course, if you make it, but remember, you’ll still have nine practice sessions before we rank you for Presentation in two and a half weeks, which will determine if the dragons find you worthy at Threshing.”

“Wouldn’t it make more sense to let first-years start practicing this thing right after Parapet?” Rhiannon asks. “You know, to give us a little more time so we don’t die?”

“No,” Professor Emetterio replies. “The timing is part of the challenge. Any words of wisdom, Sawyer?”

Sawyer blows out a slow breath, his gaze following the treacherous course. “There are ropes every six feet that run from the top of the sheer cliffside to the bottom,” he says. “So if you start to fall, reach out and grab a rope. It’ll cost you thirty seconds, but death costs you more.”

Awesome.

“I mean, there’s a perfectly good set of steps over there.” Ridoc points to the steep staircase carved into the cliff beside the wide switchbacks of the Gauntlet.

“Stairs are for reaching the flight field on the top of the ridgeline after Presentation,” Professor Emetterio says, then lifts his hands toward the course and flicks his wrist, pointing at various obstacles.

The fifteen-foot log at the start of the uphill climb begins to spin. The pillars on the third ascent shake. The giant wheel at the first switchback starts its counterclockwise rotation, and those little posts Aurelie mentioned? They all twist in opposite directions.

“Every one of the five ascents on this course is designed to mimic the challenges you’ll face in battle.” Professor Emetterio turns to look at us, his face just as stern as it is during our usual combat training. “From the balance you must keep on the back of your dragon, to the strength you’ll need to hold your seat during maneuvers, to”—he gestures upward, toward the last obstacle that looks like a ninety-degree ramp from this angle—“the stamina you’ll need to fight on the ground, then still be able to mount your dragon at a second’s notice.”

The posts knock a chunk of granite loose, and the rock tumbles down the course, smacking every obstacle in its path until it crashes twenty feet in front of us. If there was ever a metaphor for my life, well…that’s it.

“Whoa,” Trina whispers, her brown eyes wide as she stares at the pulverized rock. I’m the smallest of our squad, but Trina is the quietest, the most reserved. I can count on both hands the number of times she’s spoken to me since Parapet. If she didn’t have friends in First Wing, I’d worry, but she doesn’t have to open up to us to survive the quadrant.

“You all right?” I ask her in a whisper.

She swallows and nods, one of her auburn ringlet curls bouncing against her forehead.

“What if we can’t make it up?” Luca asks from my right, securing her long hair in a loose braid, her usual haughtiness not so in-your-face today. “What’s the alternative route?”

“There’s no alternative. If you don’t make it, you can’t get to Presentation, can you? Take your position, Sawyer,” Professor Emetterio orders, and Sawyer moves to the beginning of the course. “After he makes it past the final obstacle, so everyone can learn from this cadet completing the course, the rest of you will start every sixty seconds. And…go!”

Sawyer is off like a shot. He easily runs the fifteen feet across the single log spinning parallel with the cliff face and then the raised pillars, but it takes him three rotations inside the wheel before he jumps through the lone opening, but other than that, I don’t see a single misstep in the first ascent. Not. One.

He turns and rushes toward a series of giant hanging balls that makes up the second ascent, jumping and hugging one after another. His feet back on the ground, he turns again and heads up the third ascent, which is divided into two sections. The first part has giant metal rods hanging parallel to the cliff wall, and he easily swings arm over arm, using his body’s weight and momentum to swing the bar forward and reach the next bar hanging half a foot higher than the previous as he climbs the side of the cliff. From the last bar, he jumps onto a series of shaking pillars that make up the second half of this ascent before finally leaping back onto the gravel path.

By the time he reaches the fourth ascent, the spinning logs Aurelie’s brother warned us about, Sawyer’s made it all look like child’s play, and I start to feel a bubble of hope that maybe the course isn’t as difficult as it looks from the ground.

But then he faces a giant chimney formation rising high above him at a twenty-degree angle and pauses.

“You got this!” Rhiannon yells from my side.

As though he heard, he sprints toward the leaning chimney and flings himself upward, grabbing onto the sides by forming an X with his body, then starts hopping up the conduit until he reaches the end and drops down in front of the final obstacle, a massive ramp that reaches up to the top of the cliff’s edge at a nearly vertical climb.

My breath catches in my throat as Sawyer sprints toward the ramp, using his speed and momentum to carry him two-thirds of the way up the ramp. Just before he starts to fall, he reaches up with one arm and grasps the lip of the ramp and hauls himself over the edge.

Rhiannon and I scream and cheer for him. He made it. In an almost flawless approach.

“Perfect technique!” Professor Emetterio calls out. “That’s exactly what you should all be doing.”

“Perfect, and yet he was still passed over at Threshing,” Luca snarks. “Guess the dragons have some sense of taste.”

“Give it a rest, Luca,” Rhi says.

How could someone as smart and athletic as Sawyer not bond? And if he didn’t, what the hell kind of hope is there for the rest of us?

“I’m too short for the ramp,” I whisper to Rhi.

She glances over at me, and then back to the obstacle. “You’re wicked fast. If you get your speed up, I bet the momentum will take you to the top.”

Pryor—the shy cadet from the Krovlan border region—struggles on the swinging steel rods in the third ascent due to some rather predictable hesitation on his part, but he makes it just as Trina nearly falls at the shaking pillars, reaching for a rope. I can only make out the flash of red from her hair when she starts the rotating stair steps, but I hear her scream all the way to my toes as that particular rope sways near the ground.

“You can do it!” Sawyer shouts down from the top.

“They go in opposite directions!” Aurelie calls up.

“Tynan, start,” Professor Emetterio orders, watching his pocket watch and not the course.

My heart thuds in my ears when Trina makes it past the steps, and the drumming doesn’t let up as Rhiannon is called to start. She passes the first ascent with the grace I’ve come to expect from her before coming to a halt.

Tynan hangs from the second of five buoy balls on the second ascent, right where the ground drops out. If he falls, he’s got a minuscule chance of hitting the single spinning log from the first ascent and overwhelming odds of dropping thirty feet to the ground below.

“You have to keep moving, Tynan!” I shout, though it’s doubtful he can hear me from here. He might be a gullible ass, but he’s still my squadmate.

He shrieks, his arms wrapped around the swinging ball. It’s impossible for him to reach his hands completely around—that’s the point, and he’s slipping.

“He’s going to screw her time,” Aurelie says, blowing out a bored sigh.

“Good thing this is only practice, then,” Ridoc says, then bellows up at Tynan. “What’s the matter, Tynan? Scared of heights? Who’s the liability now?”

“Stop.” I elbow Ridoc in the side. He’s not quite as lean now. The last seven weeks have put some muscle on him. “Just because he’s a dick doesn’t mean you have to be.”

“But he’s giving me so much material to work with,” Ridoc replies, a corner of his mouth lifting into a smirk as he backs away, heading toward the starting position.