“They’re coming,” Tairn tells me, his posture stiff while the others shift their weight or dig their talons into the snow-covered decomposed granite of the mountainside.
Squads from Third and Fourth Wings stand in formation up and down the mountains around us, but both First and Second Wings—half our forces, now that we’re back with the Basgiath cadets—have been sent to the edge of the Vale. while our squad guards the airspace above the hundred yards between the back of main campus and the steep ridgeline we stand on, including the very well-hidden entrance to the ward chamber hundreds of feet below, where Brennan is working. Sloane, Aaric, and the other first-years are with him under the guise of fetching whatever he needs, but Rhi ordered them to Brennan’s side mostly to keep them safe.
“I know.” I glance over my shoulder at where Andarna nips at her harness between Tairn and Sgaeyl. She showed up an hour ago and refused to leave.
“Is this how it felt in Resson?” Rhiannon asks from my right, her hands nervously flitting over her sheaths and scabbard.
“How are you feeling?” I ask.
“So scared I’m pretty sure either my heart’s going to give out or I’m about to shit myself,” Ridoc answers from her other side.
“I was going to say horrifyingly scared, but sure, that works, too.” Rhiannon nods.
“Yes. That’s exactly how it felt.” I do the customary checks again, not that I’d have time to get back to my room if I left anything. Xaden retrieved the dagger I’d put in Jack’s shoulder, which gives me a full twelve, plus two alloy-hilted ones and the handheld crossbow strapped at my right thigh. I’m fully armed.
Thanks to the daggers we brought with us and the forge here at Basgiath, every cadet is armed.
“Does it ever get easier? Going into battle?” Sawyer asks beside Ridoc, peering down at the college. Infantry has been deployed into every courtyard, every hallway, and every entrance, the last line of a very fragile defense.
“No,” Xaden answers from my left. “You just get better at hiding it. Everyone clear on the plan?”
“Riders answer to Rhi, fliers answer to Bragen,” Quinn recites to our squad from down the line to the left. “When they arrive.”
The fliers are still hunting down the boxes. Without the lures, maybe the wyvern would have waited until daylight. Maybe it would have taken them longer to get a feel for where the hatching grounds are. Maybe destroying the lures will deter the next horde that inevitably follows. But a thousand maybes won’t change what we’re facing now.
“We stay in our sector,” Imogen says from Quinn’s side, braiding the longer pink strands of her hair to keep it out of her eyes. “Should a wyvern leave our airspace, we let it become another squad’s responsibility, so that we don’t accidentally leave our sector unguarded. We maintain our airspace at all costs.”
“Rhiannon is on dagger duty,” Ridoc says, rubbing his hands together even though it’s uncharacteristically warm this morning. I can’t even see my breath. “She’ll fetch and distribute should any venin fall from their wyvern and take our dagger with them.”
“Any reason you can’t just drag them all down with all that shadow power?” Sawyer glances Xaden’s way like there’s any possible chance he hasn’t already considered that, the look mirrored by Rhi and Ridoc.
“Other than the reason that I almost burned out holding forty of them back in a narrow space like a valley, and there are what looks to be ten times that amount on an open plain?” Xaden counters, arching his scarred brow.
“Right. That.” Sawyer nods to himself.
“Getting caught up in the wyvern is a mistake,” I warn them as the downslope breeze becomes noticeable wind, but it, too, lacks the icy chill of December. “Yes, they’ll try to kill us, but don’t let them distract you from their creator. Kill the venin who created them, and those wyvern will fall. In our experience, they stick close to their creations during a battle.”
“You know your pairs?” Rhi asks, glancing down the line.
Everyone nods. Our goal is always two against one in our favor.
“Mount up,” Rhiannon orders.
I turn quickly and gather her into a hug, and she grabs for Sawyer and Ridoc, yanking them in, too. “Don’t freeze,” I tell them. “No matter what happens, just keep moving. And stay in the air. They can kill you if they drain the ground you’re standing on. No one dies today.”
“No one dies today,” Ridoc repeats, and Sawyer nods as we break apart.
“Did you see Jesinia?” Rhi asks Sawyer.
My eyebrows rise. “She’s here?”
“Flew in with Maren,” Sawyer says, his head bobbing. “Guess gryphons are a little more easygoing in that department than dragons. She’s in the Archives, comparing Warrick’s journal to Lyra’s to see if she can figure out why the wards in Aretia are faulty. Once you said you were scared the wards would fall here, she started worrying we wouldn’t be able to get them back up without knowing what went wrong in Aretia. Turns out she’s right.”
“She shouldn’t be at Basgiath.” I shake my head, and my heart races to a gallop. “She’s completely defenseless down there.”
“She was worried she’d figure out the difference between the journals and be too far away to help. And if Brennan mends that stone, she’s our only chance at raising the wards here successfully,” Sawyer replies, backing away to follow Ridoc to their dragons.
“She has just as much right to risk her life as we do,” Rhi reminds me over her shoulder, heading toward Feirge. “Now, warm up those wielding hands or do whatever it is you need to do to set this place on fire.”
I turn to Andarna while Xaden finishes talking to Quinn and Imogen. “Promise me you’ll stay hidden.”
“I can hide.” She backs up a step, and I blink… It’s almost as if she’s faded straight into the darkness.
“Benefit of being a black dragon,” Tairn chuffs. “We’re born for the night.”
I follow Andarna and scratch the scales between her nostrils when she lowers her head. “Stay put. Marbh is below you, keeping watch over Brennan. If the tide of the battle turns, he’ll watch after you, but you have to go. Promise me.”
“I will stand. I will keep watch. But I will not leave you this time.” She huffs a breath that scents lightly of sulfur, and my heart sinks. She’s seen too much for someone her age.
“It was easier when you were a juvenile.” I give her one last scratch. Every dragon in our squad knows to take care of her if Tairn and I fall. But only she can make the choice to let go.
“I didn’t listen then, either.”
“Good point.”
“It’s almost time,” Tairn announces, and my heartbeat accelerates as I turn toward the rising sun, a strip of orange illuminating not only the horizon but the massive cloud of wyvern that’s nearly here.
Another gust of warm wind blows, and the stars wink out above us as dark clouds billow from over the mountains, charging the air with an energy that calls to my own.
Xaden meets me between Tairn and Sgaeyl, a scenario that reminds me entirely too much of Resson. He reaches for me, his warm hand cupping the back of my neck. “I love you. The world does not exist for me beyond you.” Leaning down, he rests his forehead against mine. “I couldn’t tell you that the last time we flew into a fight, and I should have.”
“I love you, too.” I grasp his waist and force a smile. “Do me a favor and don’t die. I don’t want to live without you.” There are so many of them and so few of us.
“We don’t die today.”
“If only we all felt that kind of certainty,” I try to joke.
“You keep your focus on the enemy and your life.” He kisses me hard and quick. “Even Malek himself couldn’t keep me from you.”
I pull back at the first splatter on my head.
“Rain?” Xaden looks up. “In December?”
Warmth. Rain. The charge in the air.
“It’s my mother.” A slow smile spreads across my face. “It’s her way of imbuing her favorite weapon.” Me.