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.
There’s nothing special about this morning. Our first trial on the Gauntlet has made the roll longer, but it’s just another list on just another day…except it’s not. The exceptional cruelty of this ritual has never hit me this hard before. It’s not like the first day anymore. I know more than half of the names as they’re called. My vision blurs. “Newland Jahvon,” he continues.
Second Squad, Flame Section, Fourth Wing. He had breakfast duty with me.
We have to be in the twenties by now. How can this be all there is? We say their names once and then go on as if they never existed?
Rhiannon shifts her weight at my side, and she abruptly sniffles, the motion jerking her shoulders once.
“Aurelie Donans.”
A single tear escapes and I bat it away, ripping open one of the scabs along my cheek. A trickle of blood follows as the next name is called, but I let that one stain me.
…
“You’re sure about this?” Dain asks the next night, two worried lines between his brows as he clasps my shoulders.
“If her parents aren’t coming to bury her body, then I should be the one to handle her things. I’m the last person she saw,” I explain, rolling my shoulders to adjust the weight of Aurelie’s pack.
Every Basgiath parent has the same option when their cadet is killed. They can retrieve the body and personal effects for burial or burning or the school will put their body under a stone and burn their effects themselves. Aurelie’s parents have chosen door number two.
“And you don’t want me to go with you?” he asks, palming my neck.
I shake my head. “I know where the burn pit is.”
He mutters a curse. “I should have been there.”
“You couldn’t have done anything, Dain,” I say softly, covering his hand with mine so our fingers lightly lace. “None of us could have. She didn’t even have time to reach for the rope,” I whisper. I’ve replayed that moment over and over in my head, coming to the same conclusion each time.
“I never got the chance to ask you if you made it all the way up,” he says.
I shake my head. “I got caught at the chimney formation and had to use a rope to get back down. I’m too short to span the distance, but I’m not thinking about that tonight. I’ll figure something out before the official timed Gauntlet on Presentation day.”
I’ll have to. They don’t allow cadets to climb back down on the final day. You either complete the Gauntlet—or you fall to your death.
“All right. Let me know if you need me.” He lets me go.
I nod and make every excuse to get out of the dormitory hallway. The weight of Aurelie’s pack is staggering. She was strong enough to carry so much over the parapet, and yet she fell.
And I’m somehow still standing.
