There is only one way to describe Diana Riorson's story; complicated. Her family is a wreck. Her father- dead. Her brother-disappeared. But if there's one thing she's learned in her many years at Basgiath Orphanage, it's that to survive she needs to...
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It takes me a few minutes to find Rhiannon in the growing crowd, talking to another girl whose jet-black hair is cut just as short as Dain's.
"There you are!" Rhiannon's smile is genuine and full of relief. "I was worried. Is everything..." She lifts her eyebrows. Violet appears next to her.
"I'm good to go." I nod and turn toward the other woman as Rhiannon introduces us. Her name is Tara, and she's from the Morraine province to the north, along the coast of the Emerald Sea. She an air of confidence and her eyes dance with excitement as she and Rhiannon talk about how they've both obsessed over dragons since childhood. I pay attention but only enough to recall details if we need to form an alliance.
An hour passes, then another, according to the Basgiath bells, which we can hear from here. Then the last of the cadets walks into the courtyard, followed by the three riders from the other turret.
Xaden is among them. It's not just his height that makes him stand out in this crowd but the way the other riders all seem to move around him, like he's a shark and they're all fish giving him a wide berth. I roll my eyes. Even at the orphanage people treated him like that; in complete awe of him, or wishing for his death. I don't know which one I hate more.
For a second, I can't help but wonder what Xaden's signet is, the unique power from the bond with his dragon, and if that's why even the third-years seem to scurry out of his way as he strides up to the dais with lethal grace. There are ten of them in total up there now, and from the way Commandant Panchek moves to the front, facing us—
"I think we're about to start," Violet says to Rhiannon and Tara, and they both turn to face the dais. Everyone does.
I look in the crowd to see Elizabeth already chatting it up with a blond-haired boy a the front who is decidedly not Liam.
"Three hundred and one of you have survived the parapet to become cadets today," Commandant Panchek starts with a politician's smile, gesturing to us. The guy has always talked with his hands. "Good job. Sixty-seven did not."
Almost twenty percent. Was it the rain? The wind? That's more than average. Sixty seven people died trying to get here.
"I've heard this position is just a stepping stone for him," Tara whispers. "He wants Sorrengail's job, then General Melgren's."
The commanding general of all Navarre's forces. The one who decided to doom all children of the rebellion. There's no love lost between us.
"General Melgren's?" Rhiannon whispers from my other side.
"He'll never get it," I say quietly as the commandant welcomes us to the Riders Quadrant. "Melgren's 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."
Otherwise, I would've tried.
"As the Codex says, now you begin the true crucible!" Panchek shouts, his voice carrying over the five hundred of us that I estimate are 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."
