"Your tongue is sharp, Little Dragon. But my blade is sharper."
Vesta Melgren x Xaden Riorson
A/N Just a disclaimer, I don't own or take any credit to anything having to do with Fourth Wing. That all belongs to the Original Author Rebecca Yarros. Al...
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The sparring ring is where riders are made or broken. After all, no respectable dragon would choose a rider who cannot defend themselves, and no respectable cadet would allow such a threat to the wing to continue training.
-Major Afendra's Guide To The Riders Quadrant (Unauthorized Edition)
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Despite being well acquainted with the sun, Vesta decided she hated it.
They were all roasting alive decked out in rider black, a single four-pointed star on their collarbone, marking them first-years, along with a Fourth Wing patch on their shoulder for those in her wing. They were issued standard uniforms yesterday, summer-weight tight-fitted tunics, pants, and other accessories after Parapet was over, but not flight leathers. There was no point handing out the thicker, more protective combat uniforms when some of them won't be around come Threshing in October. The armored corset her father had made for her wasn't regulation, but she fit in among the hundreds of modified uniforms around her. Vesta found that Violet's corset, courtesy of Mira, fit in nicely as well.
After the last twenty-four hours and one night in the first-floor barracks, Vesta was starting to realize that this quadrant was a strange mix of we-might-die-tomorrow hedonism and brutal efficiency in the name of the same reason. She quite admired it.
"Jace Sutherland." Captain Fitzgibbons continued to read from the death roll, the scribes next to him shifting their weight. "Dougal Luperco."
Vesta thought they were somewhere in the fifties, but she lost count when he read Dylan's( who she just learned was the boy they all met and witnessed fall off the parapet) name a few minutes ago. This was the only memorial these names would get, the only time they'll be spoken of in the citadel, so she tried to concentrate, to commit each name to memory, but there was just too many.
Vesta worried about the little Sorrengail. She hadn't had a chance to look over whatever Aetos had done to ease the girls pain. She could tell that it was starting to get to her though, the girls skin was flushed, her limbs subtly fidgeting.
There were a hundred and fifty of them in the first floor of the dormitory building, their beds positioned in four neat rows in the open space. Even though Barlowe was put in the third-year dorms, Vesta was not about to let them witness any weakness of Violets', let alone her own. She couldn't trust any of them, not even Rhiannon. Private rooms were like flight leathers - you don't get one until you survive Threshing.
"Simone Casteneda." Captain Fitzgibbons closes the scroll, "We commend their souls to Malek." The god of death.
There was no formal conclusion to the formation, no last moment of silence. The names on the scroll leave the dais with the scribes, and the quiet is broken as the squad leaders all turn and begin to address their squads.
