FIFTEEN

Terror clogs my throat and stutters my heart. Air rushes past me as I plummet toward the mountainous terrain beneath, and the sun catches the scales of the golden one far beneath me.

I’m going to die. That’s the only possible outcome.

Vises clamp around my ribs and over my shoulders, stopping my descent, and my body jerks with whiplash as I’m yanked upward again.

“You’re making us look bad. Stop it.”

I’m clasped in Tairn’s claws. He’s actually…caught me instead of finding me unworthy and letting me fall to my death. “It’s not like it’s easy to stay on your back when you’re doing acrobatics!” I shout up.

He glances down at me, and I swear the ridge above his eye arches. “Simple flight is hardly acrobatics.”

“There is absolutely nothing simple about you!” I wrap my arms around the knuckles of his claws, noting that his sharp talons are draped harmlessly around the sides of my body. He’s huge, but he’s also careful as he flies us along the mountain.

He’s one of the deadliest dragons in Navarre. Professor Kaori’s lesson. What else had he said? The only unbonded black dragon hadn’t agreed to bond this year. He hadn’t even been seen in the last five years. His rider died in the Tyrrish rebellion.

Tairn swings me upward and then releases me, sending me flying high above him, and I flail. My stomach drops at the height of his toss, and then I fall for two heartbeats before Tairn rushes up, catching me on his back between his wings.

“Now get in the seat and actually hold on this time, or no one is going to believe that I’ve actually chosen you,” he growls.

“I still can’t believe you’ve chosen me!” I have half a mind to tell him that getting back to the seat isn’t as easy as he’s implying, but he levels out and his wings catch the air in a gentle glide, cutting the wind resistance. Inch by inch, I crawl up his back until I reach the seat and settle in again. I hold on to his ridges so hard, my hands cramp.

“You’re going to have to strengthen your legs. Didn’t you practice?”

Indignation ripples up my spine. “Of course I practiced!”

“There’s no need to shout. I can hear you just fine. The entire mountain can probably hear you.”

Was everyone’s dragon a curmudgeon? Or just mine?

My eyes widen. I have…a dragon. And not just any dragon. I have Tairneanach.

“Grip harder with your knees. I can barely feel you back there.”

“I’m trying.” I push my knees in and the muscles of my thighs tremble as he banks left, softer this time than last, his angle not quite as steep as he changes course in a wide arc, taking us back toward Basgiath. “I’m just…not as strong as other riders.”

“I know exactly who and what you are, Violet Sorrengail.”

My legs shake until they lock, the muscles freezing in place as though bands have been wrapped around them, but there’s no pain. I glance over my shoulder and see his morningstar tail, what feels like miles behind us.

He’s doing this. He’s holding me in place.

Guilt settles in my stomach. I should have focused more on strength training for my legs. I should have spent more time preparing myself for this. He shouldn’t have to spend his energy on keeping his rider seated. “I’m sorry. I just didn’t think I’d make it this far.”

A loud sigh resonates through my mind. “I didn’t think I would, either, so we have that in common.”

I sit higher in the seat and look out over the landscape, wind ripping tears from the corners of my eyes. No wonder most riders choose to wear goggles. There are at least a dozen dragons in the air, each putting their rider through a trial of dips and turns. Reds, oranges, greens, browns, the sky is speckled with color.

My heart lurches as I see a rider fall from the back of a Red Swordtail and, unlike Tairn, the dragon doesn’t dip to catch the first-year. I look away before the body hits the ground.

It’s not anyone you know. That’s what I tell myself. Rhiannon, Ridoc, Trina, Sawyer… They’re all probably safely bonded and already waiting at the field.

“We’re going to have to put on a show.”

“Awesome.” The idea is anything but.

“You will not fall. I will not allow it.” The bands around my legs extend to my hands, and I feel the pulse of invisible energy. “You will trust me.”

Not a question. An order.

“Let’s get it over with.” I can’t move my legs, my fingers, my hands, so there’s nothing I can do but sit back and hope I enjoy whatever hell he’s about to put me through.

His wings give a mighty beat, and we lurch upward in what feels like a ninety-degree climb, leaving my stomach back at the lower altitude. He crests the top of the snow-dusted peaks, and we hang there for a breath of a second before he twists, diving back down at the same terrifying angle.

It’s the most horrifying and yet exhilarating moment of my life.

Until he twists again, sending us into a spiral.

My body is wrenched this way and that as he completes turn after turn, pulling us out of the dive only to bank so hard, I swear the land becomes the sky, then repeats it all until my face splits into a grin.

There is nothing like this.

“I think we made our point.” He pulls us level, then banks right, starting up the valley that leads to the box canyon of the training fields. The sun is close to setting behind the peaks, but there’s plenty of light to see the golden dragon up ahead, hovering as though it’s waiting. Maybe it didn’t choose a rider, but it will live to decide again next year, and that’s all that matters.

Or maybe it will see that we humans aren’t so great after all.

“Why did you choose me?” I have to know, because as soon as we land, there are going to be questions.

“Because you saved her.” Tairn’s head inclines toward the golden as we approach, and she follows after us. Our speed slows.

“But…” I shake my head. “Dragons value strength and cunning and…ferocity in their riders.” None of which defines me.

“Please, do tell me more about what I should value.” Sarcasm drips from his tone as we pass over the Gauntlet and crest the narrow entrance to the training fields.

I suck in a sharp breath at the sight of so many dragons. There are hundreds gathered along the rocky edges of the mountain slopes behind the bleachers that were erected overnight. Spectators. And at the bottom of the valley, in the same field I’d walked only a couple of days before, are two lines of dragons facing each other.

“They are divided between those still in the quadrant who chose in years past and those who chose today,” Tairn tells me. “We are the seventy-first bond to enter the fields.”

Mom will be here, on the dais in front of the bleachers, and maybe I’ll get more than a cursory glance, but her attention will mostly be on the seventy or so newly bonded pairs.

A ferocious roar of celebration goes up among the dragons as we fly in, every head swinging our way, and I know it’s in deference to Tairn. So is the parting of the dragons at the very center of the field, making room for Tairn to land. He releases the bands holding me in my seat, then hovers over the grass for a few wing beats, and I see the golden dragon flying furiously to catch up.

How ironic. Tairn is the most celebrated dragon in the Vale, and I’m the most unlikely rider in the quadrant.

“You are the smartest of your year. The most cunning.”

I gulp at the compliment, brushing it off. I was trained as a scribe, not a rider.