“Fuck! She’s awake!” Moonlight reflects off a sword slicing through the air above me.

Oh. Shit. I roll toward the opposite side of my bed, but not fast enough, and the blade slams into the side of my back with a force even my thick winter blankets can’t diffuse.

Adrenaline camouflages the pain as the sword rebounds, unable to split the dragon scales.

My knees slam into the hardwood floor, and I thrust my hands beneath my pillow, drawing back two daggers as I untangle from the covers and gain my feet. How the hell did they get my door unlocked?

Blowing my unbound hair out of my face, I meet the wide, shocked eyes of an unbonded first-year, and he’s not the only one. There are seven cadets in my room. Four are unbonded men. Three are unbonded women—I gasp with recognition—make that two as she runs for the door and slams it on the way out.

She opened the door. There’s no other explanation.

The rest are all armed. All determined to kill me. All standing between my unlocked door and me. My hands curl around the hilts of my daggers and my heart rate skyrockets. “Guess it won’t do me much good to ask you to leave nicely?”

I’m going to have to fight my way out of here.

“Get away from the wall! Don’t let them trap you!”

Good point. But there’s not exactly a lot of places to go in this tiny room.

“Damn it! I told you her armor is impenetrable!” Oren hisses from the other side of the room, blocking my exit. Fucking asshole.

“I should have killed you during Threshing,” I admit. My door is closed, but surely someone will hear if I sc—

A woman lunges for me, scrambling across my bed, and I dodge, sliding along the icy pane of the window. The window!

“It’s too high. You’ll fall to the ravine, and I can’t get there fast enough!”

No window. Got it. Another woman throws her knife, rending the fabric of my nightgown’s sleeve as it lodges in the armoire, but she missed any flesh. I spin, leaving the sleeve behind as it rips away, and flick my dagger as I round the end of my bed. It lands in her shoulder, my favorite target, and she goes down with a cry, clutching her wound.

The rest of my weapons are stored near the door. Shit. Shit. Shit.

“No more throwing things. Keep ahold of that weapon!”

For someone who can’t help, Tairn has no problem dishing out opinions.

“You have to go for her throat!” Oren shouts. “I’ll do it myself!”

I move my blade to my right hand and fend off one attack from the left, slicing her down her forearm, and then another to the right, stabbing into a man’s thigh. I kick out with my heel and catch another in the gut as he attacks, sending him careening back onto my bed, his sword tumbling after him.

But now I’m cornered between my desk and the armoire.

There are too many of them.

And they all rush at the same damn time.

My dagger is kicked out of my hand with appalling ease, and my heart seizes as Oren grips my throat, yanking me toward him. I sweep out for his knees, but my bare feet make no impact as he lifts me off the ground, cutting off my air supply as I kick for purchase.

No. No. No.

I dig my hands into his arm, my fingernails puncturing his skin as I claw, drawing blood. He might bear my scars after this, but his grip doesn’t ease as he crushes my throat.

Air. There’s no air.

“He’s almost there!” Tairn promises, panic lacing his tone.

He who? I can’t breathe. Can’t think.

“Finish her!” one of the men yells. “He’ll only respect us if we finish her!”

They’re after Tairn.

Tairn’s roar of rage fills my head as Oren lowers my body, flipping me around as he curls his arm so my back is against his chest. At least my feet are on the ground, but the edge of my vision goes dark, my lungs fighting for oxygen that isn’t there.

The greedy eyes of a bleeding first-year stare back into mine. “Do it!” she demands.

“Your dragon is mine,” Oren hisses in my ear, and his hand falls away, replaced by a blade.

Air rushes into my lungs as cold metal caresses my throat, the oxygen flooding my blood and clearing my head enough to realize this is it. I am going to die. From one heartbeat to what will probably be my last, an overwhelming sorrow seizes my chest, and I can’t help but wonder if I would have made it. Would I have been strong enough to graduate? Would I have become worthy of Tairn and Andarna? Would I have finally made my mother proud?

The knife tip touches my skin.

My bedroom door flies open, the wood splintering as it slams against the stone wall, but I don’t have a chance to turn to see who is standing there before a shriek pierces my vision.

“Mine!” Andarna screams. Skin-prickling energy zings down my spine, then rushes to my fingertips and toes, and the next breath I take is in total, complete silence.

“Go!” Andarna demands.

I blink and realize the first-year in front of me doesn’t. She isn’t breathing. Isn’t moving.

No one is.

Everyone in this room is frozen in place…except me.

In response to the Great War, dragons claimed the western lands and gryphons the central ones, abandoning the Barrens and the memory of General Daramor, who nearly destroyed the Continent with his army. Our allies sailed home and we began a period of peace and prosperity as the provinces of Navarre united for the first time behind the safety of our wards, under the protection of the first bonded riders.

—Navarre, an Unedited History

by Colonel Lewis Markham

CHAPTER

NINETEEN

What. The. Hell.

It’s as if everyone in my room has turned to stone, but I know that can’t be true. Oren’s body is warm behind me, his skin malleable under my fingers as I shift my grip and shove his bloody forearm, forcing the blade away from my neck.