Wren never expected her life to change the moment she set foot in the Riders Quadrant at Basgiath War College. But everything shifted when she met Liam Mairi. Loving him was effortless, bright, and full of promise. Losing him was shattering.
His dea...
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Basgiath felt like it was holding its breath.
March had arrived without bringing much warmth with it, and the wind coming down from the mountains cut through the courtyard with enough determination to make me reconsider every decision that had led to standing outside before breakfast. Frost still clung stubbornly to the edges of the barracks roofs, glittering beneath the thin morning sunlight, while several hundred cadets shifted in formation and pretended not to be freezing. Every scrape of a boot against stone seemed louder in the cold, carrying between walls that had watched generations of riders stand exactly where we stood now, some of them only weeks away from discovering whether they'd survive their first year.
I was trying very hard not to think about that part.
Squad Battle was close enough now that everyone had started talking about it as though saying the words often enough might somehow make us more prepared, and with every passing week I became increasingly aware that I was approaching something I'd barely allowed myself to imagine when I'd crossed the Parapet. Survival had always seemed too far away to plan for at Basgiath. You survived today, then tomorrow, then the day after that if the gods were feeling particularly generous, and somehow those days had collected into months while I wasn't paying attention.
February had disappeared almost entirely. Violet had disappeared with it, although hers was less concerning considering she generally resurfaced from Riorson's orbit looking suspiciously happy about wherever she'd been. I missed her sometimes, especially the stretches when our schedules seemed determined to keep us apart, but I couldn't begrudge her happiness when there was so little of it available here. Besides, I'd hardly spent the month suffering. Liam had become remarkably easy to steal whenever Violet didn't require guarding, and I had discovered there were significantly worse ways to spend an evening than curled against my boyfriend while he read and I drew.
Boyfriend still did something embarrassingly pleasant to my stomach.
Violet bumped her shoulder against mine, dragging me out of the thought. "I hate this."
I glanced over. "Formation?"
"The cold." She exhaled dramatically, watching her breath cloud white in front of her. "Why does breathing have to be visible? It feels judgmental."
I laughed and tucked my hands farther beneath my arms. "I don't think the weather is personally criticizing you, Vi."
"You don't know that."
"She's right," Sawyer murmured from my other side. "Looks hostile."
I turned toward him and found the smallest smile pulling at his mouth, steady and familiar enough that mine answered automatically. Sawyer had become one of those people I didn't remember deciding to love. Somewhere between surviving classes, flight maneuvers, terrible meals and Ridoc's relentless campaign against everyone's sanity, he'd simply settled into a place beside me and stayed there. Violet was the sister I'd apparently acquired through mutual recklessness, Ridoc was the brother the gods had inflicted upon me as punishment for crimes committed in a previous life, and Sawyer was something quieter. Solid. The person I could sit beside without talking when talking felt like work, and the one whose eyes seemed to find mine whenever the world became a little too heavy.
