The golden one moves out from under the shelter of the big one’s wing. It’s tiny compared to the monstrosity before me, and apparently completely defenseless with the exception of those teeth, like a playful puppy. “I can’t just leave it,” I say. “What if Oren wakes up or Jack comes back?”
The black dragon chuffs.
The golden one bends down, flexing its legs, and then launches into the sky, its golden wings catching the sun as it flies off, skimming the tops of the trees.
So it can fly. That would have been nice to know twenty minutes ago.
“Get. On,” the black dragon growls, shaking the ground and trees at the edge of the field.
“You don’t want me,” I argue. “I’m—”
“I’m not going to tell you again.”
Point taken.
Fear grasps my throat like a fist, and I hobble over to his leg. This isn’t like climbing a tree. There are no handholds, no easy path, just a series of hard-as-stone scales that don’t exactly give me a foothold. My ankle and arm aren’t doing me any favors, either. How the hell am I going to get up there? I raise my left arm and suck in a breath before placing my hand on his front leg.
The scales are larger and thicker than my hand and surprisingly warm to the touch. They layer into the next above them in an intricate pattern that leaves no space to grab hold.
“You are a rider, are you not?”
“That seems up for debate at the moment.” My heart thunders. Is he going to cook me alive for being too slow?
A low, frustrated grumble sounds in his chest, and then he shocks me to the core as he stretches forward, his front leg becoming a ramp. Dragons never supplicate for anyone, and yet here he is, bowing to make it easier for me to climb on. It’s steep but manageable.
I don’t hesitate, crawling up his front leg on my hands and knees to balance my weight and spare my ankle, but the strain on my arm has me gasping by the time I climb over his shoulder and reach his back, dodging the pointed spikes that ripple down most of his neck like a mane.
Holy shit. I’m on the back of a dragon.
“Sit.”
I see the seat—the smooth, scaly divot, just in front of his wings—and sit, bending my knees like Professor Kaori taught us. Then I grab ahold of the thick ridges of scales we call the pommel, where his neck meets his shoulders. Everything about him is bigger than any model we practiced on. My body isn’t built to stay on any dragon, let alone one of his size. There’s no way I’ll be able to stay seated. This is about to be the first and last ride of my life.
“My name is Tairneanach, son of Murtcuideam and Fiaclanfuil, descended from the cunning Dubhmadinn line.” He stands to his full height, bringing me eye level with the canopy of trees around the clearing, and I squeeze a little tighter with my thighs. “But I’m not going to assume that you’ll be able to remember that once we reach the field, so Tairn will do until I inevitably have to remind you.”
I inhale swiftly, but there’s no time to process his name—his history—before he bends slightly and launches us into the sky.
It feels like I imagine a stone does after being flung from a catapult, except it takes every ounce of strength I have to stay on this particular stone.
“Holy shit!” The ground falls away as we soar, Tairn’s enormous wings beating the air into submission and pitching upward.
My body lifts off his back, and I dig in with my hands, trying to keep anchored, but the wind, the angle, it’s all too much, and my grip falters.
My hands slip.
“Fuck!” Scrambling for purchase, my hands rake down Tairn’s back as I skid past his wings, rapidly approaching the sharp scales of his morningstar tail. “No, no, NO!”
He banks left and whatever hope I had of getting a handhold tumbles right off with me.
I’m in free fall.
Just because you survive Threshing doesn’t mean you’ll survive the ride to the flight field. Being chosen isn’t the only test, and if you can’t hold your seat, then you’ll fly straight into the ground.
—Page fifty, the Book of Brennan
CHAPTER
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.
