Fire Breather

25.

"SO all we do is wait for something to happen?" Ridoc asked the next afternoon, leaning back in his chair with his boots on the end of the wooden table in the briefing room.

I was currently trying not to think about Imogen around Dain. No one else had noticed she was missing except for Xaden, Liam, and I, thanks to her signet. Everyone else thought she was just throwing up in the infirmary when, in fact, she was on her way back from delivering the drop Xaden brought with him. Sending Imogen south toward the Braevick border was a risk given that my brother hadn't had much time to get a message to Syrena and her drift. But it was a risk needed to be taken.

"Yes," Mira said from the head of the table, then flicked her wrist and sent Ridoc flying backward. "And keep your feet off the table."

"Please do that again," I mused, sitting between Xaden and Axel.

Last night, after I had calmed down in my brother's arms, I asked him what he was doing here and apparently, Sgaely couldn't be away from Tairn for more than three days, which left my brother with having to come here. It also turned out that Axel and my brother knew each other, having met twice.

One of the other Montserrat riders laughed, changing the markers on the large map that consumed the only stone wall.

We had been split into two groups for the day. Rhiannon, Sawyer, Cianna, Nadine, Imogen, and Heaton spent the morning with Devera in this room, studying battles at the outpost and now they were on patrol.

Dain, Ridoc, Liam, Emery, Quinn, Violet, and I spent the morning on a two-hour flight around the surrounding area with my brother tagging along. The fucker scared the shit out of me when I fell asleep on the back of Nim halfway through the flight.

Since this morning, Dain wouldn't stop glaring at my brother, making snide remarks. Mira kept one eye on him at all times as well. And even the one and only Violet seemed to be ogling my brother...for whatever reason. Probably the kiss.

"Consider this your Battle Brief," Mira went on, side-eyeing Ridoc as he scrambled back into his chair. "This morning was about a quarter of the patrol we'd regularly fly, so normally we'd just be getting back about now and reporting our findings to the commander. But for the sake of killing time, since we're in this room as the reaction flight for this afternoon, let's pretend we'd come across a newly fortified enemy outpost crossing our border"—she turned to the map, sticking a pin with a small crimson flag near one of the peaks about two miles from the Cygnisen borderline—"here."

"We're supposed to pretend it just popped up overnight?" Emery asked skeptically.

"For the sake of argument, third-year." Mira narrowed her eyes on him.

"I like this game," another Montserrat rider said from the end of the table, lacing his fingers behind his neck.

"What would our objective be?" Mira glanced around the table, skipping over my brother. Last night, she took one look at his relic and our similarities before walking past without a word. "Aetos?"

Dain startled from glowering across the table at my brother and turned to the map. "What type of fortifications are there? Are we talking a haphazard wooden structure? Or something more substantial?"

"Like they had time to build a fortress overnight," Ridoc muttered. "It has to be wooden, right?"

"Surely it's only half built," I threw in, crossing my arms over my chest. "I don't know about you guys, but to build a fortress overnight would need some miracle."

"You are all so fucking literal." Mira sighed. "Fine, let's say they occupied a keep that's already established. Stone and all."

"But the civilians didn't call for help?" Quinn asked. "Protocol calls for a distress signal this far into the mountains. They should have lit their distress beacon, alerting patrolling riders, at which time the dragons on patrol would have told all available dragons in the area. The very riders in this room would have mounted first as the reaction force and the others would have been woken from their rests, allowing the riders to prevent the loss of the keep in the first place."