Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)

by Rebecca Yarros

But surely Dain would actually make a move if he really wanted to, right?

sadistic

There are ropes every six feet that run from the top of the sheer cliffside to the bottom,”

So if you start to fall, reach out and grab a rope. It’ll cost you thirty seconds, but death costs you more.”

Feathertail dragons are the breed we know the least about

This is because feathertails reportedly abhor violence and are not suitable for bonding.

Though this scholar cannot be certain, as one has never left the Vale within my lifetime.

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.”

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.

Descending

from the Fhaicorain line—

Am I affecting your schedule, Violence?” There’s a definite smirk on those lips. “I just need to know what my chances are here.” My hands curl into fists. The ass has the nerve to smile. “That’s the oddest way I’ve ever been hit on—” “Not my chances with you, you conceited prick!” Fuck this. Fuck all of this. I move past him, but he catches my wrist, his grip light but his hold firm. His fingertips on my pulse make it skitter. “Chances at what?” he asks, tugging me just close enough that my shoulder brushes his biceps. “Nothing.” He wouldn’t understand. He’s a damned wingleader, which means he’s excelled at everything in the quadrant, even somehow managing to get past his own last name. “Chances at what?” he repeats. “Do not make me ask three times.” His ominous tone is at odds with his gentle grasp, and shit, does he have to smell so good? Like mint and leather and something I can’t quite identify, something that borders between citrus and floral. “At living through all of this! I can’t make it up the damned Gauntlet.” I half-heartedly tug at my wrist, but he doesn’t let go.

“I see.” He’s so infuriatingly calm, and

I can’t even get a grip on one of my emotions. “No, you don’t. You’re probably celebrating because I’ll fall to my death and you won’t have to go to the trouble of killing me.” “Killing you wouldn’t be any trouble, Violence. It’s leaving you alive that seems to cause the majority of my trouble.” My gaze swin...

“Sorry to be a hassle.” Sarcasm drips from my voice. “You know the problem with this place?” I tug my arm back again, but he holds fast. “Besides you touching things that don’t belong to you?” My eyes narrow on him. “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.” My stomach flutters as his thumb brushes my pulse and he releases my wrist. I answer before I can think better of it. “Hope.” “Hope?” He tips his head closer to mine, as if he wasn’t sure he heard me right. “Hope.” I nod. “Someone like you would never get i...

when

General Sorrengail gives an order, you can’t exactly ignore it.” Gods, why am I running off at the mouth to this man? What’s the worst he’ll do? Kill you? “Sure you can.” He shr...

I roll my eyes, and to my utter embarrassment, instead of pulling away now that I’m free, I lean in just a little, like I can siphon off some of his strength. He certainly has enough to spare. “I knew what the odds were, and I came anyway, concentrating on that tiny percentage of a chance that I would live. And then I make it almost two months and I get…” I shake my head, clenching my jaw. “Hopeful.” The word tastes sour. “Ah. And then you lose a squadmate, and you can’t quite get up the chimney, and you give up. I’m starting to see. It’s not a fl...

If he knows…if he tells, Dain is in danger. A wicked smile cu...

lips. “I know everything that goes on here.” Darkness swirls around us. “Shadows, remember? They hear everything, see everything, conceal everything.” The rest of the world disappears. He could do anything to me in here and no one would be the wiser. “My mother would definitely reward you if you told her about Dain’s plan,” I say softly. “She’d definitely reward you for telling her about my little…what did you call...

holds my gaze locked with his. “Here’s the thing, Sorrengail. Hope is a fickle, dangerous thing. It steals your focus and aims it toward the possibilities instead of keeping it where it belongs—on the probabilities.” “So I’m supposed to what? Not hope that I live? Just plan for death?” “You’re supposed to focus on the things that can kill you so you find ways to not die.” He shakes his head. “I can barely count the number of people in this quadrant who want you dead, either as revenge against your mother or because you’re just really good at pissing people off, but you’re still here, defying the odds.” Shadows wrap around me, and I swear I feel a caress along the side of my wounded cheek. “It’s been rather surprising to watch, actually.” “Happy to be your entertainment. I’m going to bed.” Spinning on my heel, I head toward the entrance to the barracks, but he’s right behind me, close enough that the door would slam in his face if he wasn’t so unnaturally fast at catching it. “Maybe if you stopped sulking in your self-pity, you’d see that you have...

It’s the nature of what happens here. What makes you a rider is what you do after people die. You want to know why you’re still alive? Because you’re the scale I currently judge myself against every night. Every day I let you live, I get to convince myself that there’s still a part of ...

temptation and fucking quit. But if you want to do something, then do it.” “I’m too short to span the distance!” I hiss, ...

“The right way isn’t the only way. Fi...

Then he turns and walks away....

It’s Presentation Day, and in order to get to the flight field, we’ll have to climb the Gauntlet first. Everything about the Riders Quadrant is designed to weed out the weak, and today is no exception.

Now that you mention it, the whole

Treaty of Arif might just be the death of me.” She grins.

“Ahh, the agreement between Navarre and Krovla for mutually shared airspace for both dragons and gryphons over a narrow strip of the Esben Mountains, between...

feathertail?”

“Professor Kaori never told us there would be a feathertail,” Sawyer says. “I know because I memorized every single dragon he showed us. All hundred of them.”

Aimsir,

Standing at the end of the line is a small golden dragon.

Sunlight reflects off its scales and horns as it stands to its full height, flicking a feathered tail around the side of its body. The feathertail.

We could be walking past

a line of wyvern, right?” “Oh please, Violet, do give us one of your nervous-babble story times,” Luca says sarcastically. “Let me guess. Wyvern are some elite squad of gryphon riders created because of something we did at a battle only you can manage to remember with your scribe brain.” “You don’t know what a wyvern is?” Rhi asks, then begins walking again. “Didn’t your parents tell you bedtime stories, Luca?” “Do enlighten me,” Luca drawls. I roll my eyes, continuing along the path. “They’re folklore,” I say over my shoulder. “Kind of like dragons but bigger, with two feet instead of four, a mane of razor-sharp feathers streaking down their necks, and a taste for humans. Unlike dragons, who think we’re a little gamey.”

To approach a green dragon, lower your eyes in supplication and wait for their approval.

Greens are the most reasonable.

October first is always Threshing. Monday, Wednesday, or Sunday, it doesn’t matter where it falls on any given year. On the first of October, the first-year cadets of the Riders Quadrant enter the bowl-shaped forested valley to the southwest of the citadel and pray they come out alive.

Or like a golden dragon.

“You have to get out of here!” I hiss from the cover of the trees, knowing it should be able to hear me. “They’re going to kill you if you don’t leave!” Its head pivots toward me, then tilts at an angle that makes my own neck hurt. “Yes!” I whisper loudly. “You! Goldie!” It blinks its golden eyes and swishes its tail. You have to be fucking kidding me. “Go! Run! Fly!” I shoo at it, then remember it’s a godsdamned dragon, capable of shredding me with its claws alone, and drop my hands. This is not going well. It’s going the opposite of well. The trees rustle from the south, and Jack steps into the clearing, his sword swaying in his right hand. A step later, he’s flanked by Oren and Tynan, both their weapons drawn.

watching with narrowed golden eyes, her fangs exposed, is Sgaeyl, his terrifying navy-blue daggertail.

“Oh, fucking hell. You don’t have any

claws?”

I barely have a moment to register

surprise that Xaden would ever save

me, for any reason, when a gust of wind slams into my back, and I stumble forward onto my destroyed ankle, flinging my arms out to keep my bal...

Tynan’s mouth hangs open and he staggers backward, his head tilting so far back it’s nearly perpendicular to his torso. Shade envelops us both as he continues to back away. Chest heaving, my lungs desperate for air, I chance a look over my shoulder to see why Tynan’s retreating. And my heart lurches into my throat. Standing with the golden one tucked under an enormous, scarred black wing is the biggest dragon I’ve ever seen in my life—the unbonded black dragon Professor Kaori showed us in class. I don’t even come close to...