Those at the back of our section who acted when I shouted are alive.
Those who didn’t, aren’t.
Solas took out the runners, one of our first-years, and at least half of Third Squad.
Chaos erupts.
“Silver One!” Tairn demands.
“I’m alive!” I shout back at Tairn, but I know he can feel the pain my adrenaline is masking. The smell—gods, the smell of sulfur and the burned flesh of the dead cadets makes bile rise in my throat.
“Vi, your back…” Nadine whispers, reaching for me and withdrawing her hand. “It’s torched.”
“How bad is it?” I tug at the front of my uniform, and it comes off in my hand, the fabric burned clean through at my back. The armor beneath my uniform stays in place at least.
Ridoc runs his hands over the flattened, singed peaks of his hair, and my gaze darts around, checking on everyone else next. I note that Quinn and Imogen are safe behind us, already rushing to help Third Squad.
Sawyer. Rhiannon. Ridoc. Nadine. We all exchange quick looks that ask and answer the same question. We’re all intact.
I let out a long breath, my head dizzy with relief.
“It didn’t…it didn’t burn through your armor,” Nadine says.
“Good.” Thank gods for dragon scales.
“Are you hurt?” I ask Sloane as she stumbles, staring in shock at the carnage of Third Squad as Aaric helps the redhead to her feet. “Sloane! Are you hurt?”
“No.” She isn’t shaking her head as much as she is flat-out trembling.
“Get back into formation!” Panchek’s voice amplifies over the mayhem. “Riders do not balk at fire!”
The fuck we don’t. Whoever didn’t balk is dead.
Dain’s wide eyes meet mine. He’s either as surprised by what happened as I am or a really good actor. All the wingleaders must be, because they look equally stricken.
Looking back at what remains of Third Squad, I see Imogen staring at a pile of cinder. As if she can feel me staring, she slowly drags her numbed gaze to mine.
“Now!” Panchek demands.
She staggers forward and I meet her halfway, grabbing hold of her elbows. “Imogen?”
“Ciaran,” she whispers. “Ciaran’s dead.”
Gravity, logic, whatever it is that keeps me grounded shifts. There’s no way that was…intentional, is there? “Imogen—”
“Don’t say it,” she warns, glancing around us.
We make it back into formation as Major Varrish moves to the front of the dais, appearing completely unfazed that his dragon just took out riders who hadn’t broken formation, some of them bonded.
“It is not only the first-years who earn their leathers at Basgiath!” he shouts, and I swear he’s speaking directly to me. “The wings are only as strong as their weakest rider!”
Rage overwhelms my senses, scalding hot and undeniably not mine.
A girl with blackish-blue hair two rows ahead makes a run for it, running from our squad, and my heart stops when Solas leans forward again despite a snap from Cath on the right, the orange’s mouth opening.
Oh. Gods.
I’m considering tackling her to the ground myself when a set of wingbeats as familiar as my own heartbeat sounds behind me. And the anger consuming my every breath, overruling my emotions, turns to something deadlier—wrath.
Tairn lands on the wall behind us, his wings flaring so wide one nearly touches the dormitory as he takes out the top row of stones next to the parapet. First-years scream, running for their lives.
“Tairn!” I shout with more than a little relief, but there’s no breaking through the absolute fury coursing through him. My attention whips back and forth between Tairn and the dragons behind the dais.
The wingleaders’ dragons all rear back, including Cath, but Solas holds his ground, his tongue curling when Tairn’s chest expands.
“You do not have the right to burn what is mine.” His words consume all my mental pathways as Tairn lets loose an earth-shattering roar in Solas’s direction. Everyone slams their hands over their ears, including me, my entire body vibrating with the sound, hot air blasting the back of my neck.
The wingleaders’ dragons take a step to the side of the wall as the roar ends, away from the Orange Daggertail, but Solas stands firm, his eye narrowing to a golden slit.
“Holy shit,” Nadine whispers.
That about sums it up.
Tairn extends his neck forward, high above our squad, then snaps his teeth together loudly in Solas’s direction in a clear threat.
My heart races so fast it practically hums.
Solas lets loose a short, rasping snarl, then swings his head in a serpentine motion. His claws grip and ungrip the edge of the wall, and I hold my breath until he launches skyward, his wings beating quickly as he retreats.
Tairn lifts his head, watching the flight before he turns his attention to the dais and exhales a sulfur-laced gust of steam, blowing Varrish’s thick black hair.
“I think he got the message,” I say to Tairn.
“If Solas comes near you again, he knows I will devour his human whole and let him rot within me while his heart still beats, and then I’ll take the eye I so graciously left him.”
“That’s…graphic.” I’m not touching the question of their history with waves of anger still rolling off Tairn like a thunderstorm.
“The warning should be effective. For now.” He retracts, drawing back for power before he leaps from the wall, his wingbeats kicking up the gravel around us as he takes off.
Panchek returns to the podium, but his hand isn’t exactly steady as he swipes at the thinning hair on his head, the medals on his chest. “Well then, where were we?”
Varrish glares at me, his hatred a palpable taste in my mouth, and I know that even if he hadn’t been an enemy before, he sure as Dunne is now.
And in the mountains of the Steelridge range, the green dragons of the Uaineloidsig line, known for their keen intellect and rational countenance, offered their ancestral hatching grounds for the good of dragonkind, and the wards of Navarre were woven by the First
Six at what is now Basgiath War College.
—UNITED NAVARRE, A STUDY IN SURVIVAL BY GRATO BURNELL, CURATOR OF THE SCRIBE QUADRANT
CHAPTER NINE
The next morning, I wake in a cold sweat, the sky pale with early light through my east-facing window, my body flooded with adrenaline from the nightmare. Like every morning since Xaden left, I wrap my knees tight and dress quickly, pulling the flexible summer uniform meant for sparring over my armor and plaiting my hair in a single, loose braid as I head out of my room.
My heart still pounds as I jog down the spiral steps, my brain unable to shake the nightmares that come so vividly while I sleep. When I sleep.
I swallow back the bile rising in my throat. One of the venin got away in Resson, red veins spidering away from his malevolent eyes. Who knows how many more there are, making their way toward our border while we rest.
On the ground floor, first-years scurry to their newly assigned chore duties, but the courtyard is blissfully empty, the air thick with humidity yet mercifully cooler than yesterday thanks to the storm rolling in.
I hold the heel of my boot to the back of my thigh, stretching the muscle. Despite copious amounts of Winifred’s ointment, the skin of my back is still tender from yesterday’s burn, but it’s a hundred times better than it was last night.