fourth wing xadens pov

chapter 3

Chapter 3: Welcome

Liam makes it. Of course, he does.

Sixty-seven candidates aren't as lucky.

I wear their deaths like a weight on my shoulders as I walk into the courtyard, trying to remember their faces, their names. I met each of them, should be able to remember. But there's too many of them and I can't give them the respect in death that they deserve.

I hate how this place sucks the humanity out of you, makes it so that death is so constant that it seems insignificant. My face is set in grim lines as I cross the courtyard to the dais, ascending to stand in a line-up alongside the rest of leadership. Like I condone any of this.

I stare out at the gathered cadets, searching for her despite myself as Commandant Panchek begins to address the crowd. Violet is stood next to the same girl as earlier. Good, I'm glad she made it too. Glad Violet didn't risk trading a boot with her for nothing.

Barlowe stands about twenty people away, staring murder in her direction. I'm amazed at how quickly she's made such an enemy. Surely, she knows that her name in here is already a target on her back. There's no special treatment for the kids of Command. Here, anyone can kill anyone. And it's best to do it before blatant nepotism can take hold outside the gates.

I look out over the rest of the crowd, assessing quietly. There are fifteen new rebellion kids, all standing upright, shoulders back like the rest of us drilled into them. You are not afraid. You are not ashamed. But they are all on high alert, eyes carefully clocking their surroundings, trying to work out who to trust.

No one would be a pretty good start.

Nyra, the Wingleader for First Wing, steps forward to call Section and Squad Leaders to the front to begin roll call.

This part of the proceedings matters a great deal. Command pretends it's random, but it's rare for any marked ones to everwind up in the same squad. We're spread out, as if it will make us a smaller threat, easier to take out one by one.

In reality, it means we have more access into every Squad, every Wing. We can build relationships that matter, form bonds that overcome the sprawling rebellion relics across our bodies that mere strangers might judge us by. And we have more chance of knowing the signets that each rider channels from their dragons, the unique abilities that Command would rather keep hidden when it suits them.

Five of them end up in First Wing, spread amongst the nine squads. They call Barlowe too and I feel like I'm holding my breath waiting for Violet's name until they finish the roll call.

Instead, Violet and her new friend, Rhiannon, are called into the same squad in Second Wing. It seems too unlikely to be a coincidence. The squads are broadly built in an alternating sequence from the order they cross the parapet. If they've ended up in the same squad, it means someone has intervened. Someone with access and power.

My gaze snags on Aetos, standing at the front of their squad. He's Colonel Aetos's son and obsessed with having an iota of power in this place, like any of it matters in the real world. He's also a simpering weasel of a second-year who I can't stand, somehow making the rules bend and mould to his will however he needs them to. Like when he conveniently forgot the implied instruction in the Codex and slept with his commanding officer, now Wingleader, Amber Mavis, last year. Or when he was allowed to live, despite the same essence of ability that signs the death warrant of every other inntinnsic in this place.

On the parapet, I was about to risk my life to keep Violet from falling. And now it's becoming crystal clear that there's something else at play here. Something I will have close to zero access to if they're sitting in Septon Izar's Wing.