Sometimes when we find out a secret that has been kept from us for so long, it's not the secrecy that kills us, but what is actually unveiled.
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Xaden Riorson x Oc, Liam Mairi x Oc, Oc x Oc, Ridoc Gamlyn x Oc,
Sawyer Henr...
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Presentation Day is unlike any other. The air is ripe with possibilities, and possibly the stench of sulfur from a dragon who has been offended. Never look a red in the eye. Never back down from a green. If you show trepidation to a brown...well, just don't.
—Colonel Kaori's Field Guide to Dragonkind
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Chapter Twelve
| Wrenley's POV |
There are 170 of us by the time the morning is done and, even with Violet's penalty for the rope, we've placed eleventh out of the thirty-six squads for Presentation—the piss-inducing parade of cadets before this year's dragons willing to bond.
The thought of walking so close to dragons determined to weed out the weak before Threshing is exhilarating. I'm practically buzzing like a bee with my excitement.
The fastest up the Gauntlet was Me, earning me the Gauntlet patch. Pretty sure that I don't know how to take second place, but Liam came in a close second, then Sawyer in third, and that's good enough for me. Really because all I can think about right now is the dragons.
The box canyon that makes up the training field is spectacular in the afternoon sun, with miles of autumn-colored meadows and peaks rising on three sides of us as we wait at the narrowest part, the entrance to the valley. At the end, I can make out the line of the waterfall that might be just a trickle of a creek now but will rush at runoff season.
The leaves of the trees are all turning gold, as though someone has brought in a paintbrush with only one color and streaked it across the landscape. It makes me want to paint it, but I haven't done landscapes since Knox died.
And then there are the dragons. Averaging twenty-five feet tall, they're in a formation of their own, lined up several feet back from the path—close enough to pass judgment on us as we walk by. They're so freaking gorgeous.
