Blue dragons descend from the extraordinary Gormfaileas line. Known for their formidable size, they are the most ruthless, especially in the case of the rare Blue Daggertail, whose knifelike spikes at the tip of their tail can disembowel an enemy with one flick.

—Colonel Kaori's Field Guide to Dragonkind

If Jack wanted to kill me, he could bloody well get in line.

And, out of the two, I had a feeling Xaden Riorson would beat him to it.

Mira would be pissed and rightfully so. I hadn't been off the parapet for two minutes and already I made two enemies. Although, she couldn't exactly blame it on my temper as they probably wanted to kill Violet too.

I eyed Jack as he scoffed and stomped off like a child in the crowd of celebrating cadets and riders that were gathered in the sizable courtyard of the citadel.

It was still early, probably around nine, but already I saw there weren't as many cadets as there were candidates ahead of me in line. Based on the overwhelming presence of leather, both the second and third years were here as well, taking stock of the new cadets.

I did it. I was alive. I made it.

I turned to Violet, and she was trembling. She took a step and would have collapsed on her left leg if I hadn't caught her.

I shifted her weight so that it appeared as though I was leaning on her. If the other cadets thought I was the weak link, it would be easier for me to fight them and win than her. I would not make her more of a target.

"I think you made an enemy there," the redhead said, casually shifting the lethal crossbow she wore strapped along her shoulder. She glanced at me over the scroll with a shrewd look in her hazel eyes as she looked me up and down. "I'd watch your back with that one if I were you."

I nodded.

The next candidate approached from the parapet as someone gripped my shoulders from behind and spun me, pulling Violet along. My dagger was halfway up before I realized it was Rhiannon.

"We made it!" She grinned, squeezing my shoulders.

"We made it!" I smiled back at her. We made it.

"I can't thank you enough. There were at least three times I would have fallen off if you hadn't helped me." She turned to Violet, "You were right - those soles were slick as shit. Have you seen the people around here? I swear I just saw a second year with pink streaks in her hair, and one guy has dragon scales tattooed up his entire biceps."

"Conformity is for the infantry," Violet chimed as Rhiannon looped her arm through mine and tugged us both along toward the crowd.

"Speaking of which," I said, glancing down at her. "We need to trade boots. There's a bench-"

A tall figure in a pristine black uniform stepped out of the crowd, charging toward us, and though Rhiannon managed to dodge, I stumbled smack into his chest, jerking Violet along with me.

"Isla? Violet?" Strong hands caught my elbows to steady me, and I looked up into a pair of familiar, striking brown eyes, flared wide in obvious shock. Relief swept through me, and I tried to smile, but it probably came out like a distorted grimace.

"What the hell are you doing here?" He barked, the shock in his eyes transforming to rage and a bit of fear as he took Violet in.

He looked the same but he somehow didn't.

"Did you get taller?" I asked at the same time as Violet said, "Dain. It's good to see you."

As if on cue, her knees gave out. I groaned softly, as her body slumped against me.

"Damn it, Violet," Dain murmured, coming to her other side and placing her other arm over his shoulder. Together, we quickly ushered heraway from the group of people whose eyes could turn to us at any moment. Dain guided us away into an alcove in the wall, close to the first defensive turret of the citadel.

It was a shady, hidden spot. A hard wooden bench stood just beneath the break in the wall, polished and carved with the precision of all architecture within the war college. Dain and I eased Violet onto the bench gently, and I slowly helped her take the rucksack off her shoulders to disperse the added weight.

"I'm going to be sick," said woman choked.

Dain ordered in a harsh tone, "Head between your knees." She did so, and he began rubbing idle circles on her lower back. "It's the adrenaline. Give it a minute and it'll pass."

Hearing approaching footsteps on the gravel, I looked up to see a very worried Rhiannon.

"Who the hell are you?" Dain questioned.

I rolled my eyes at him. "This is Rhiannon. Rhiannon, Dain."

"A friend." the woman confirmed firmly, nodding thankfully in my direction.

"Listen to me, Rhiannon." Dain's words had a bite to them. "Violet is fine. And if anyone asks, you tell them that it's exactly what I said, that it's just the adrenaline working out of her system. Understand?"

I flicked the back of his head with my hand. "Be nice."

"It's no one's business what's going on with Violet," she retorted, her tone just as sharp as his. "So I wouldn't say shit. Especially not when she and Isla are the reasons I made it across the parapet."

"You'd better mean that," he warned.

"That's enough." I glared at him. "Rhiannon has done nothing wrong. So you can either swallow whatever assholery is oozing out of you and help me with Vi, or you can fuck right off."

"I could ask you just who the hell you are," she retorted, looking at him skeptically.

"We're friends. The three of us grew up together." I replied, opening my rucksack to look for Violet's wraps.

"Oh," Rhiannon answered.

"And I'm a second-year rider, cadet," he practically growled.

Gravel crunched and I looked up to see that Rhiannon had backed up a step.

"And apparently a prick too now." I rolled my eyes at him.

Dain finally had the sense to look embarrassed as though he just realized Rhiannon hadn't deserved the way he treated her. He didn't apologize, though, and just turned to Violet. "No one can see you here, Vi, so take your time," He says softly. "Are you hurt?"

"My knee is sore," She admitted in a whisper. I placed my pack on the bench and rummaged through it, pulling out the wraps I had packed.

"That's all? You're sure?" His hands ran down Violet's sides and paused at her ribs. "Are you wearing daggers?"

I nodded for her. "Three at her ribs and one in her boot."

"Huh." He blinked. "Get your boots switched. You two look ridiculous. Do you trust her?"

He was referring to Rhiannon and both he and Violet looked at me. I usually had better instincts for people than either of them and I nodded. I trusted her as much as anyone could trust another first year around here.

Dain turned to me and stepped forward wrapping me in a hug. "Gods, I've missed you both so much."

I grinned and hugged him back.

"Are- you're bleeding, Isla."

I looked down and sure enough, there was a long cut across my palm, presumably from when I fell off the parapet. I pulled the skin a little and groaned. "I need stitches."

I pulled out the little kit from my bag and sat on the bench, stitching my skin up. The others offered to help, but I preferred doing it myself.

"All right." Dain stood and turned toward Rhiannon once I'd wrapped my hand and we'd switched boots. There were sheaths at the sides of his leathers, too, but there were daggers in each of them, where most of mine were still empty. "I'm Dain Aetos, and I'm the leader for Second Squad, Flame Section, Second Wing."

Squad leader? My brows jumped. The highest ranks among the cadets in the quadrant were wingleader and section leader. Both positions were held by elite third years. Second-years could rise to squad leaders, but only if they were exceptional. Everyone else was simply a cadet before Threshing - when the dragons chose who they would bond - and a rider after. People died too often around here to hand out ranks prematurely.

"Parapet should be over in the next couple of hours, depending on how fast the candidates cross or fall. You and Isla should go find the blonde with the roll - she's usually carrying a crossbow - and tell her that I put the three of you into his squad. If she questions you, tell her she owes me for saving her ass at Threshing last year. I'll bring Violet back to the courtyard in a bit."

I nodded and then smirked. "Alright, you two. Don't have too much fun." I wiggled my fingers at them suggestively, and Rhiannon and I walked away.

The massive courtyard, which could easily fit a thousand riders, was just like the map in the Archives. Shaped like an angular teardrop, the rounded end was formed by a giant outer wall at least ten feet thick. Along the sides were stone halls. I knew the four-story building carved into the mountain with the rounded end was for academics, and the one on the right, towering over the cliff, was the dorms. The imposing rotunda linking the two buildings also served as the entrance to the gathering hall, commons, and library behind it.

"There you are!" Rhiannon exclaimed and I turned to see Violet making her way toward us. Her strides were a lot more confident and her legs less shaky. "I was worried. Is everything..." She lifted her eyebrows.

"I'm good to go," Violet nodded.

I introduced her to the woman with us. Tara was from the Morraine province to the north, along the coast of the Emerald Sea. She had that same air of confidence Mira does, and her eyes danced with excitement as we talked about how we'd all obsessed over dragons since childhood.

An hour passed, then another, according to the Basgiath bells, which we could hear from here. Then the last of the cadets walked into the courtyard, followed by the three riders from the other turret.

Xaden was among them. It was not just his height that made him stand out in this crowd but the way the other riders all seemed to move around him, like he was a shark and they were all fish giving him a wide berth. For a second, I couldn't help but wonder what his signet was, the unique power from the bond with his dragon, and if that was why even the third-years seemed to scurry out of his way as he strode up to the dais with lethal grace.

I groaned, leaning into Violet's ear. "I'm so bloody attracted to him."

She elbowed me in the ribs. "Mira would kill you." She turned to the dias. "I think we're about to start."

Sure enough, the speeches started. "Three hundred and one of you have survived the parapet to become cadets today," Commandant Panchek started with a politician's smile, gesturing to us. He had invited the General and I to his house for dinner last week which was where I found out just how much he loved talking with his hands. "Good job. Sixty-seven did not."

Sixty-seven people died trying to get here. I was pretty sure that's more than average.

"I've heard this position is just a stepping stone for him," Tara whispered. "He wants Sorrengail's job, then General Melgren's."

"He'll never get it," I said quietly as the commandant welcomed us to the Riders Quadrant. "Codagh, his dragon, gives him the signet ability to see a battle's outcome before it happens. There's no beating that, and you can't be assassinated if you know it's coming."

"As the Codex says, now you begin the true crucible!" Panchek shouted, his voice carrying over the five hundred or so of us that I estimate were in this courtyard.

"You will be tested by your superiors, hunted by your peers, and guided by your instincts. If you survive to Threshing, and if you are chosen, you will be riders. Then we'll see how many of you make it to graduation."

According to Violet, statistics said about a quarter of us will live to graduate, give or take a few on any year, and yet the Riders Quadrant was never short of volunteers. Every cadet in this courtyard thought they had what it took to be one of the elite, the very best Navarre had to offer - a dragon rider.

"Your instructors will teach you," Panchek promised, his hand sweeping to the line of professors standing at the doors to the academic wing. "It's up to you how well you learn." He swung his pointer finger at us. "Discipline falls to your units, and your wingleader is the last word. If I have to get involved..." A slow, sinister smile spread across his face. "You don't want me involved."

I turned to Rhiannon, rolled my eyes, and lowered my voice to a whisper. "He's pretty much harmless. All talk but no substance."

"With that said, I'll leave you to your wingleaders. My best advice? Don't die." He walked off the dais with the executive commandant, leaving only the riders on the stone stage.

A brunette woman with wide shoulders and a scarred sneer stalked forward, the silver spikes on the shoulders of her uniform flashing in the sunlight. "I'm Nyra, the senior wingleader of the quadrant and the head of the First Wing. Section leaders and squad leaders, take your positions now."

My shoulder was jostled as someone walked by, pushing between Rhiannon and me. Others followed suit until there were about fifty people in front of us, spaced out in formation.

"Sections and squads," I whispered to Rhiannon because I knew she didn't grow up in a military family. "Three squads in each section and three sections in each of the four wings."

"Thank you," She answered. Dain stood in the section for Second Wing, facing but pointedly not looking at us.

"First Squad! Claw Section! First Wing!" Nyra called out. A man closer to the dais raised his hand. "Cadets, when your name is called, take up formation behind your squad leader."

The redhead with the crossbow and roll stepped forward and began calling names. One by one, cadets moved from the crowd to the formation, and I kept count, making snap judgments on each one based on clothing and arrogance.

It looked like each squad would have about fifteen or sixteen people in it.

Jack was called into the Flame Section of First Wing. Tara was called into the Tail Section, and soon they started on Second Wing.

Rhiannon, Violet, and I were both called to Second Squad, Flame Section, Second Wing.

Outraged whispers erupted at the fact that two Generals' daughters were in the same squad - everyone expected us to be the best of the best and us in the same squad would give an unfair advantage. But the protests went unanswered.

We got into formation quickly, lining up in a square.

A quick glance told me that we had a squad leader, Dain, a female executive squad leader, four riders who looked like they might be second or third-years, and nine first-years. One of the riders with two stars on her uniform and half-shaved, half-pink hair had a rebellion relic that wound around her forearm, from her wrist to above her elbow, where it disappeared under her uniform, and I looked away so she wouldn't catch me staring.

We were silent as the rest of the wings were called. The sun was out in full now, beating into my leathers and scorching my skin.

When the order sounded, we all turned to face the dais. I tried to keep my gaze on the roll-keeper, but my eyes jerked right, just like the traitors they were, and my pulse leaped.

Xaden watched me with a cold, calculating look that felt like he was plotting my death from where he stood as the wingleader of Fourth Wing.

I raised an eyebrow and he cocked his scarred one in return.

Then he said something to Second Wing's wingleader, and then every wingleader joined in on what was obviously a heated discussion.

"What do you think they're talking about?" Rhiannon whispered.

"Quiet," Dain hissed. I rolled my eyes, not giving him any of the deference he was owed with his position. Dain may have been my squad leader but he was also the boy who threw up in my shoe when he was six.

Finally, the wingleaders turned around to face us, and the slight tilt to Xaden's lips made me instantly queasy.

"Dain Aetos, you and your squad will switch with Aura Beinhaven's," Nyra ordered.

Dain nodded, then turned to us. "Follow me." He said it once, then strode through formation, leaving us to scurry after him. We passed another squad on the way.

The very breath froze in my lungs.

We were moving to Fourth Wing.

Xaden's wing.

It took a minute, maybe two, and we took our place in the new formation.

There was a fucking smirk on Xaden's arrogant face. I wanted to stab him.

"Some part of me thinks he doesn't want to jump my bones," I whispered to Rhiannon and Violet. The joke did nothing to hide my unease.

Violet and I were now entirely at his mercy, subordinated in his chain of command. He could punish us however he likes for the slightest infraction, even imaginary ones.

Nyra looked at Xaden as she finished assignments, and he nodded, stepping forward and finally breaking our staring contest.

"You're all cadets now." Xaden's voice carried out over the courtyard, stronger than the others. "Take a look at your squad. These are the only people guaranteed by Codex not to kill you. But just because they can't end your life doesn't mean others won't. You want a dragon? Earn one."

Most of the others cheered, but I kept my mouth shut. Sixty-seven people died today. I couldn't bring myself to cheer for that loss.

Xaden's eyes found mine, and my stomach clenched before he looked away.

"And I bet you feel pretty badass right now, don't you, first-years?" More cheers. Violet stayed silent too.

"You feel invincible after the parapet, don't you?" Xaden shouted. "You think you're untouchable! You're on the way to becoming the elite! The few! The chosen!" Another round of cheers went up with each declaration, louder and louder. His words sounded like bait - to prove a point.

No. That was not just cheering, it was the sound of wings beating the air into submission.

The crescendo.

"Oh gods, they're beautiful," Rhiannon whispered at my side as they came into view - a riot of dragons.

They really were. My fingers itched with the desire to replicate their beauty on paper and I cursed the fact that I left my good paints at home. I loved any form of art but I was biased to painting and had a long way to go before my sculptures took any discernable shape.

I had spent my life around dragons, but mainly from a distance. Codagh was the only one I had seen up close and the encounters with him weren't ones I intended to repeat.

Dragons didn't tolerate humans they hadn't chosen. But these eight? They were flying straight for us - at speed.

Just when I thought they were about to fly overhead, they pitched vertically, whipped the air with their huge semitranslucent wings, and stopped, the gusts of wing-made wind so powerful that I braced my feet as they landed on the outer semicircular wall. Their chest scales rippled with movement, and their razor-sharp talons dug into the edge of the wall on either side.

Now I understood why the walls were ten feet thick. It was not a barrier.

The edge of the fortress was a damned perch.

My mouth dropped open in wonder. Beautiful.

A few cadets screamed.

Guess everyone wanted to be a dragon rider until they were actually twenty feet away from one.

Steam blasted my face as the navy-blue one directly in front of me exhaled through its wide nostrils. Its glistening blue horns rose above its head in an elegant, lethal sweep, and its wings flared momentarily before tucking in, the tip of their top joint crowned by a single fierce talon.

Dragon tails were just as fatal, but I couldn't see them at this angle or even tell which breed of dragon each was without that clue.

All were deadly.

"We're going to have to bring the masons in again," Dain muttered as chunks of rock crumbled under the dragons' grips, crashing to the courtyard in boulders the size of my torso.

There were three dragons in various shades of red, two shades of green - like Teine, Mira's dragon - one brown - like General Sorrengail's - one orange, and the enormous navy one ahead of me.

They were all massive, overshadowing the structure of the citadel as they narrowed their golden eyes at us in absolute judgment.

If they didn't need us puny humans to develop signet abilities from bonding and weave the protective wards they power around Navarre, I was pretty sure they'd eat us all and be done. But they liked protecting the Vale - the valley behind Basgiath the dragons called home - from merciless gryphons and we liked living, so here we were in the most unlikely of partnerships.

My heart raced. This was what I had been waiting for.

A cadet bolted out of Third Wing, screaming as he made a run for the stone keep behind us.

We all turned to look as he sprinted for the giant arched door at the center. I could almost see the words carved into the arch from here, but I already knew them by heart.

A dragon without its rider is a tragedy. A rider without their dragon is dead.

Once bonded, riders couldn't live without their dragons, but most dragons could live just fine after us. It's why they chose carefully, so they were not humiliated by picking a coward, not that a dragon would ever admit to making a mistake.

The red dragon on the left opened its vast mouth, revealing teeth as big as I was - a jaw that could crush me like a grape if it wanted. Fire erupted along its tongue, then shot outward in a macabre blaze toward the fleeing cadet. He was a pile of ash on the gravel before he could even make it to the shadow of the keep.

Sixty-eight dead.

Heat from the flames blasted the side of my face. I didn't flinch but Violet did.

"Eyes forward," I instructed her. She wasn't exactly prepared for this. "Focus on something in the distance."

If anyone else died, I didn't want to see it. I had had enough of death for today.

More screaming sounds around me, and I clenched my jaw hard, and there was a soft grinding sound. There were two more gusts of heat, one to my left and then another to my right.

That made seventy.

The navy dragon seemed to tilt its head at me, as if its narrowed golden eyes could see straight through me to the fear fisting my stomach and the doubt curling insidiously around my heart.

It looked at the wrap around my hand. I didn't know if it could see past that, at the bruises on my body, or the burns on my back.

Maybe that was what would make it deem me unworthy. No one knew exactly what dragons look for in a Rider, so I had no idea what scale it was judging me against.

I forced my shoulders back and lifted my chin, looking it straight in the eye. The dragon blinked, which could have been a sign of approval or boredom, and looked away.

"Anyone else feel like changing their mind?" Xaden shouted, scanning the remaining rows of cadets with the same shrewd gaze of the navy-blue dragon behind him. It seemed in tune with his actions. As though he was its rider. Just my luck. "No? Excellent. Roughly half of you will be dead by this time next summer."

The formation was silent except for a few untimely sobs from my left.

"A third of you again the year after that, and the same your last year. No one cares who your mommy or daddy is here. Even King Tauri's second son died during his Threshing. So tell me again: Do you feel invincible now that you've made it into the Rider's Quadrant? Untouchable? Elite?"

No one cheered. Bait. I was right. Another blast of heat rushed - this time directly at my face. But it was not flames, just steam, and it blew back Rhiannon's braids as the dragons finished their simultaneous exhale.

The breeches on the first-year ahead of me darkened, the color spreading down his legs.

They wanted us scared. Well, it almost worked.

"Because you're not untouchable or special to them." Xaden pointed toward the navy dragon and leaned forward slightly, like he was letting us in on a secret as we locked eyes. "To them, you're just the prey."