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“Awkward,” Rhiannon whispers from my side. “He seems kind of pissed at you.” I glance up over Trina’s slim shoulders as the breeze whips at the braid I’ve woven like a crown. It’s working a few of Trina’s ringlet curls loose, too. “He wants something I can’t give him.” Her eyebrows rise. I roll my eyes. “Not like…that.” “I wouldn’t care if it was like that,” she replies under her breath. “He’s hot. He has that whole boy-next-door-who-can-still-kick-your-ass vibe going for him.” I fight a smile because she’s right. He so does.
Dain falls back so he walks between Rhiannon and me. “Change your mind.” It’s barely a whisper. “No.” I sound way more confident than I feel. “Change. Your. Mind.” His hand finds mine, concealed by our tight formation as we descend through the passage. “Please.” “I can’t.” I shake my head. “Any more than you would leave Cath and run to the scribes yourself.” “That’s different.” His hand squeezes mine, and I can feel the tension in his fingers, his arm. “I’m a rider.” “Well, maybe I am, too,” I whisper as light appears ahead. I didn’t believe it before, not when I couldn’t leave because my
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Ick! Can he just shut up already?
“She can’t do that!” someone shouts. “Yeah, well, she just did!”
“Cheating!” I turn toward the voice. It’s Amber Mavis, the strawberry-blond wingleader from Third Wing who was Dain’s close friend last year, and there’s nothing but fury on her face as she charges toward Xaden, who’s only a couple of feet away with the roll, recording times with a stopwatch and looking rather bored with it all.
“The right way isn’t the only way.” I use his own words against him. Xaden holds my gaze. “She has you, Amber.” “On a technicality!” “She still has you.” He turns slightly and delivers a look that I never want directed at me. “You think like a scribe,” she barks at me. It’s intended as an insult, but I just nod. “I know.”
Presentation Day is unlike any other. The air is ripe with possibilities, and possibly the stench of sulfur from a dragon who has been offended. Never look a red in the eye. Never back down from a green. If you show trepidation to a brown…well, just don’t. —Colonel Kaori’s Field Guide to Dragonkind
To approach a green dragon, lower your eyes in supplication and wait for their approval.
“Guess the dragons think she’s insufferable, too,” Ridoc mutters.
Love this. Can't stop laughing.
There is nothing quite as humbling, or as awe-inspiring, as witnessing Threshing… for those who live through it anyway. —Colonel Kaori’s Field Guide to Dragonkind
I will not die today.
“Which one are you going for?” Rhiannon asks quietly. “I don’t know.” I shake my head but can’t ditch the feeling of absolute failure in my chest. At this point, Mira knew she wanted to seek out Teine. “You memorized the cards, right?” she asks, lifting her brows. “So you know what’s out there?” “Yes. I just don’t feel connected to any of them.” Which is better than feeling connected to a dragon another rider has their eye on. I have no desire to fight to the death today. “Dain tried talking me into a brown.” “Dain lost his vote when he tried talking you into leaving,” she counters.
Listen to her. She's a smart girl!
There’s a clearing to the north, and my eyes narrow as a flash, like a mirror, catches the sun. Or like a golden dragon. Guess the little feathertail is still out here appeasing its curiosity.
“It’s not like our dragons are going to bond other riders,” Jack snaps. “They’ll wait for us. This has to be done. That scrawny one is going to get someone killed. We have to take it out.” Nausea swirls in my stomach, and my fingernails bite into my palms. They’re going to try and kill the little golden one. “If we get caught, we’re fucked,” Oren comments. That’s an understatement. I can’t imagine dragons would take kindly to killing one of their own, but they seem to be focused on culling the weak from the herd in our species, so it’s not a stretch to imagine they do the same with their own.
You can get there first and warn it.
“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.
“You can’t,” I say directly to Oren. “It goes against everything we believe in!” He flinches. Jack doesn’t. “Letting something so weak, so incapable of fighting, live is against our beliefs!”
“I would strongly recommend you rethink your actions,” a voice—his voice—demands from across the field to my right. My scalp prickles as each of our heads swivel in his direction. Xaden is leaning against the tree, his arms folded across his chest, and behind him, watching with narrowed golden eyes, her fangs exposed, is Sgaeyl, his terrifying navy-blue daggertail.
In the six centuries of recorded history of dragon and rider, there have been hundreds of known cases where a dragon simply cannot emotionally recover from the loss of their bonded rider. This happens when the bond is particularly strong and, in three documented cases, has even caused the untimely death of the dragon. —Navarre, an Unedited History by Colonel Lewis Markham
Xaden. For the first time, the sight of him fills my chest with hope. He won’t let this happen. He might hate me, but he’s a wingleader. He can’t just watch them kill a dragon. But I know the rules probably better than anyone else in this quadrant. He has to. Bile rises in my throat, and I tilt my chin to quell the burning. What Xaden wants, which is always debatable, doesn’t matter here. He can only observe, not interfere.
“There’s nothing you can do, right? Wingleader?” Jack bellows. Guess he knows the rules, too. “It’s not me you should worry about today,” Xaden responds and Sgaeyl tilts her head, nothing but menace in her eyes when I glance over.
“So I guess that’s a no on the flying?” I toss over my shoulder again, and the golden dragon chuffs low in its throat in response. “Great. Well, if you can back me up with those claws, I’d really appreciate it.” It chuffs twice, and I spare a glance down at its claws. Or should I say…paws. “Oh, fucking hell. You don’t have any claws?”
I want a Gold Dragon!
“She’s destroyed my shoulder!” Jack cries, stumbling to his feet and distracting the others. “I can’t move it!” He clutches the joint, and I grin. “That’s the thing about having weak joints,” I say, palming another blade. “You know exactly where to strike.” “Kill her!” Jack orders, still clutching his shoulder as he backs away a few steps, then turns and runs in the opposite direction, disappearing into the tree line in no time. Fucking coward.
What a weenie!
“You can’t interfere!” Tynan shouts at Xaden, but I don’t dare look away from my opponent long enough to see how the wingleader reacts. “No, but I can narrate,” Xaden retorts.
I understand why people like Xaden.
“Your arm is shot, Sorrengail,” Tynan hisses, his face pale and sweaty. “I’m used to functioning in pain, asshole. Are you?” I raise the dagger in my right hand just to prove that I can despite the blood that runs down my arm and drips from the tip of my blade, saturating the wrap across my palm. My gaze drops meaningfully to his side. “I know exactly where I sliced into you. If you don’t get to a healer soon, you’ll bleed out internally.”
My arm is shot. My leg is shot. But at least I made Jack Barlowe run away before I died.
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 reaching its ankle.
Fear ripples through every cell in my body as its hot breath blows over me. “Step aside, Silver One,” a deep, gruff, definitely male voice orders. I blink. Wait. What? Did he just speak to me? “Yes. You. Move.”
He spoke to her! This has to be her dragon!
The black dragon’s eyes narrow to glare at Tynan and he opens his mouth wide a second before fire shoots across the field, blasting heat against the side of my face and incinerating everything in its path…including Tynan.
About damn time!
“You should end the enemy at your feet.”
Am I seriously arguing with a dragon?
Yes, yes you are!
“It will do.” He tilts his head at me. “Your hands are bound, too. Do you bleed often?”
I already love him....
“Let’s go, Violet Sorrengail.” He lifts his head, and the golden dragon peeks out from under his wing. “How do you know my name?” I gawk up at him. “And to think, I’d almost forgotten just how loquacious humans are.” He sighs, the gust of his breath rattling the trees. “Get on my back.” Oh. Shit. He’s choosing…me. “Get on your back?” I repeat like a fucking parrot. “Have you seen you? Do you have any idea how huge you are?” I’d need a damned ladder to get up there. The look he gives me can only be described as annoyance. “One does not live a century without being well aware of the space one
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Yes Sir!
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.
Of course, it can!
“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?
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 love him!
“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.”
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
“You’re making us look bad. Stop it.”
He glances down at me, and I swear the ridge above his eye arches. “Simple flight is hardly acrobatics.”
He’s one of the deadliest dragons in Navarre.
“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
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She shouldn't yell but he can..
Was everyone’s dragon a curmudgeon? Or just mine?
Love this
“I’m just…not as strong as other riders.” “I know exactly who and what you are, Violet Sorrengail.”
What's that supposed to mean?
“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.”
Aww
“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.
“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.”
“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.”
Tairn has sass!
“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.”
“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. “You defended the smallest with ferocity. And strength of courage is more important than physical strength. Since you apparently need to know before we land.”
Oh. Shit. I hadn’t spoken those words. I’d thought them. He can read my thoughts. “See? Smartest of your year.” So much for privacy. “You’ll never be alone again.” “That sounds more like a threat than a comfort,”
