Her eyes flare wide.
“Don’t be an asshole.” I elbow him in the arm. “Depends on the color, but a good rule of thumb is to lower your eyes and back away,” I tell the infantry cadet. “But we can usually hear them coming.”
“Then prepare to be digested,” Cohen adds.
“Oh gods,” the brunette whispers.
“You are now my favorite year-mate.” Ridoc throws an arm over his shoulder.
“Can I see your map?” Brisa asks from the rear of the formation.
“Don’t you have your own?” Calvin retorts.
Rhi’s head whips toward him. “Give it to her or I cut it out of your hands.”
He glares at Rhi but passes it back so we can get it to Brisa.
Gods, this grass is high. It’s nearly up to my waist in the places where the trees don’t shade the ground. I step onto an uneven knob, and my ankle rolls. Ridoc grabs ahold of me before I can fall, then steadies me without a word as we continue the climb. “Thank you,” I say softly.
“Are your knees wrapped?” Ridoc asks, concern lining his forehead.
I nod. “Yep. Didn’t do the ankles, though, since I wasn’t exactly expecting a hike.”
“I have cloth if you need to wrap something,” Dyre calls out from behind us.
“I’ll keep that in mind, thank you,” I answer.
A guy behind me asks, “Are all scribes this quiet?”
“It’s my job to record, not participate,” she answers.
“Not participating will still get you eaten by a dragon,” he argues.
I assure her, my eyes never leaving his, “I’d never let a scribe get eaten by a dragon.”
Rhiannon’s voice rises as the argument ahead of us heats. “Because there’s no way in hell they hauled us out of our rooms and brought us that far away in four hours.”
“Because your dragons can’t fly that quickly?” Calvin is about an inch shorter than Rhi and has no problem glaring up at her.
“Because our dragons wouldn’t carry you, dumbass,” Ridoc responds.
Aoife snorts and Mirabel laughs, flanked by the rest of the infantry squad behind us.
Calvin turns and levels a look at Ridoc. “Have some respect for the rank.” He taps his shoulder, where there’s an open triangle embroidered beneath two oak leaves.
“Your rank means exactly jack and shit to me.”
“What, like you’re so above us infantry?” Calvin counters.
“I mean technically, when we’re flying we’re above everyone,” Ridoc argues. “But if you’re asking if I’m better than you, then the answer is obviously yes.”
I sigh and watch Calvin’s hands just in case he decides to go for the shortsword sheathed at his side. It’s not a bad weapon, but they all carry them. There’s no variation for height or specialization. It’s all so…uniform.
Then again, we were pulled straight out of the hallway, so it’s not like Ridoc is carrying his preferred bow. Sawyer and Rhiannon are missing their favorite swords, too.
“Stop pissing him off on purpose,” Rhiannon says, glancing back at Ridoc as we start trudging up another hill. Maybe this one will give us a better vantage point than the last. “We’re going to need fresh water, or this is going to get ugly fast.”
Ridoc grins. “But it’s so much fun!”
She arches a brow.
“Fine.” He puts his hands up. “I’ll let him maintain his delusion of grandeur.”
“Oh, so you’ll listen to her—”
“She’s my squad leader. You’re not.”
“So, you only respect rider squad leaders,” Calvin prods.
Aoife furiously writes in her notebook.
“Shut it, Calvin,” a cadet from behind me says with more than a little exasperation.
“You want my respect? Earn it.” Ridoc shrugs. “Cross the parapet, climb the Gauntlet, survive Threshing, and then we’ll be on equal footing.”
“What, like we don’t go through some shit in the Infantry Quadrant?” someone behind us challenges.
“See her?” Sawyer says, and I swear I can feel him pointing at me. “She bonded not only one of the biggest fucking dragons on the Continent, but a second dragon, and then went into combat against the gryphons a couple of months ago and came out alive. You go through that kind of shit in your quadrant?”
The cadets around us fall silent. Even Aoife’s pencil remains poised above her notebook as she stares at me.
Awkward. And wrong. No one in our little group knows what we’re really against out there. And my silence? It’s starting to feel a lot less like self-preservation and more like I’m complicit.
“You’re a Sorrengail, aren’t you?” Mirabel asks. “The commanding general’s daughter?” She winces. “The hair kind of gives you away.”
“Yes.” There’s no use denying it.
“Your mother is terrifying,” she whispers.
The scribe glances between us before putting pencil to parchment again.
I nod. “That’s one of her more prominent qualities.”
“Hey, guys?” Brisa raises her voice behind us. “I think I know why it feels like we’re getting nowhere.”
“Why is that?” Rhiannon asks over her shoulder.
“Calvin’s right, but so are you. They gave us two different maps,” she says as the first of us crest the hill…and freeze.
Even my heartbeat comes to a standstill as Rhiannon throws up her hand to stop the rest of the group.
An Orange Club—nope, that’s a Scorpiontail—growls at us low in her throat from where she’s been lying in wait on the other side of the hill. Our heads tilt to follow the movement as she rises to her full height, dominating the skyline, her tail whipping behind her.
Baide. Jack Barlowe’s dragon. Or at least she was.
“Amari help us,” Calvin whispers, his panic palpable.
I drop my eyes in deference just like Kaori taught us as my pulse leaps and my brain fights the urge to panic. “Oranges are the most unpredictable. Eyes down. Do not run,” I whisper. “She’ll kill you if you run. Try not to show any fear.” Shit, this is what we should have been talking about instead of arguing about which quadrant is superior and which forest we’re in.
My chest tightens when my immediate instinct—to reach for Tairn—is denied. With any other dragon, I would bet against risking the anger of our dragons by torching us, but the cadets behind us are a whole other story. And since I killed Jack last year? All bets are off.
She has nothing to lose, and given the hot blast of steam that levels the grass and makes my face sticky, she remembers exactly who I am.
“Riders!” Rhiannon calls out. “Take the front!” She’s obviously thinking the same way. “Infantry, guard the healers and scribe!” She glances at me sideways, careful not to raise her eyes. “Violet, maybe you should—”
Keeping my head down, I push past Calvin to stand in the front, catching movement in my peripheral vision. “I’m not hiding.”
“What are you doing? It’s going to eat you,” one of the cadets behind us hisses.