“Swing to the next one!” Trina suggests from the top of the course.

“I can’t!” Tynan’s shriek could break glass as it echoes down the mountain, and it makes my chest tighten.

“Ridoc, start!” Professor Emetterio commands.

Ridoc charges over the log.

“Rhi!” I shout up. “The rope is between the first and second!”

She nods down at me, then jumps for the first buoy ball, clasping it up top, near where the chains hold it to the iron rail above, and swinging her weight around the side.

It’s an utterly inspired approach, one that might just work for me.

Gravel crunches beneath my boots as I move to the starting position. Oh, look, it is possible for my heart to beat faster. The damned thing practically flutters as I wipe my clammy palms on my leather pants.

Rhiannon gets the rope into Tynan’s hand, but instead of using it to swing to the next ball, he climbs…down.

My jaw practically unhinges as he descends. Definitely didn’t see that one coming.

“Violet, begin!” Emetterio orders.

Be with me, Zihnal. I haven’t spent nearly enough time at temple for the god of luck to care much about what happens to me right now, but it’s worth a shot.

I bolt up the first part of the ascent, coming to the spinning log within seconds. My stomach feels like it’s being stirred by this balance beam from hell. “It’s just balance. You can balance,” I mumble and start across. “Quick feet. Quick feet. Quick feet,” I repeat all the way across, jumping off the end to land on the first of four granite columns, each one higher than the last.

There are about three feet between them, but I manage to leap from one pillar to the next without skidding off the ends. And this is the easy part. A knot of fear works its way up my throat.

I jump into the rotating wheel and run, leaping over the only opening as it flies by once, then watching it come around a second time. Timing. This one is all about timing.

The opportunity comes and I seize it, racing through the opening and turning back onto the gravel path of the second ascent. The buoy balls are just ahead, but I’m going to fall on my ass if I don’t calm down and get my palms to stop sweating.

Feathertail dragons are the breed we know the least about, I recite in my mind, needing every ounce of my lung capacity as I spring from the edge of the path onto the first ball, grasping it up top like Rhiannon did. The immediate strain on my shoulders makes me tense every muscle to keep the joints from dislocating.

Stay calm. Stay calm.

Throwing my weight, I force the ball to rotate, swinging me toward the next one. This is because feathertails reportedly abhor violence and are not suitable for bonding.

I repeat motions, grasping from one ball to the next, keeping my eyes on the chains and nothing else.

Though this scholar cannot be certain, as one has never left the Vale within my lifetime. I continue reciting from memory as I reach the fifth and final ball. With one last swing, I throw myself sideways, releasing the ball and landing on the shoulder-wide gravel path without rolling an ankle.

It’s all momentum for the next ascent.

“Green dragons,” I mutter under my breath, “known for their keen intellect, descend from the honorable Uaineloidsig line, and continue to be the most rational of dragonkind, making them the perfect siege weapons, especially in the case of clubtails.” I finish as I line my body up with the first metal rod and get ready to sprint forward.

“Are you…studying?” Aurelie calls up from where she leaps onto the first ball below.

“Calms me down,” I shoot back in quick explanation. There’s no time to be embarrassed here—that can wait for later.

There are three iron rails in front of me, each lined up like a battering ram toward the next. “The Scribe Quadrant is looking pretty good right now,” I grumble under my breath, then launch myself toward the first. At least the texture gives me something to keep hold of as I work my way hand over hand. The ache in my shoulders grows into a throbbing pain when I reach the end of the first rail, swinging my feet to work up the momentum for the next.

The first clang of iron as the rails meet makes my fingers slip, and I gasp as terror claws its way out of my stomach. Orange dragons, coming in various shades of apricot to carrot, are the most—I throw myself to the next rail—unpredictable of dragonkind and therefore always a risk. I move across the rail with the same hand-over-hand motion, ignoring the outright protests of my shoulders. Descending from the Fhaicorain line—

My right hand loses purchase and my weight swings me into the face of the steep mountainside, my cheek slamming into the rock. A high-pitched ringing erupts in my ears and my vision darkens at the edges.

“Violet!” Rhiannon shouts from the top.

“Next to you! The rope is next to you!” Aurelie calls up.

Iron scrapes my fingertips as my left hand slips, but I spot the rope and take hold, bracing my feet on the knot beneath me and clinging tight until the ringing fades in my head. I have to swing over or climb down.

I’ve survived seven weeks in this damned quadrant, and this course isn’t going to beat me today.

Pushing off the edge, I swing out for the rail and make it, immediately starting the hand over hand to get me to the next one and then the next, until I finally let go, landing on the first shaking iron pillar. My brain is rattled as the thing shudders violently, and I leap to the next, barely gaining a foothold before jumping to the gravel path at the end of the ascent.

Aurelie is right behind me, landing with a grin. “This is the best!”

“You clearly need to see the healers. You must have hit your head if you think this is fun.” My breaths are choppy gasps, but I can’t help but smile at her obvious joy.

“Just run straight across this one,” she says as we reach the twisting staircase posts jutting straight from the side of the cliff face.

Each three-foot-wide timber rotates from its base in one of the steepest sections of the course. I quickly calculate if you fall off one of the posts, you’d probably drop at least thirty or forty feet onto the rocky terrain below. I swallow down the terror trying to crawl up my throat and focus on the possibility my agility and lightness will give me an edge on this particular obstacle.

She continues. “Trust me. If you pause, it’ll roll you right off.”

I nod and bounce on my feet, dredging up whatever courage I have left. Then I run. My feet are quick, making contact with each post only long enough to push off for the next, and within a few heartbeats, I’m on the other side.

“Yes!” I shout, throwing my fist up in celebration as I get out of the way for Aurelie.

“Go, Violet!” she shouts. “Here I come!” Her footwork is more agile than mine as she springs from spinning post to post.

A roar sounds from overhead, and I jerk my gaze up just in time to see the underbelly of a Green Daggertail as it flies directly over us, headed back to the Vale.

I’m never going to get used to that.

Aurelie cries out and my head snaps toward hers just in time to see her wobble and slip on the fifth post. The air freezes in my lungs as she careens forward, her belly hitting the next-to-last spinning log as if in slow motion.

“Aurelie!” I scream, lunging for her, my fingertips skimming the seventh post.

Our eyes meet, shock and terror filling her wide black eyes as the post rolls her away from me and she falls. Halfway down the cliff.

…

The sun burns my eyes as we stand in morning formation.

“Calvin Atwater,” Captain Fitzgibbons reads, his voice solemn like always.

First Squad, Claw Section, Fourth Wing. He sits two rows behind me in Battle Brief. He sat.