Imogen
Leaves crunch under my boots as I walk into the forest, having been dismissed after Bodhi’s less-than-rousing motivational speech that did nothing to improve my perpetually foul disposition.
I sincerely hope some Navarrian asshole tries to exact revenge on me out here, because I’m in the mood to kill some people.
Fuck this day.
Fuck this kingdom.
Fuck everyone who put us in this godsforsaken torture chamber disguised as a war college.
I flinch. I can’t say that about Riorson. He made the only choice he could to save our lives after Navarre took those of our parents. He’s the only reason we’re still breathing, and I owe him my unflinching loyalty until one of us meets Malek.
Fuck General Sorrengail for making the deal.
Yeah. That’s better.
I stride between trees with zero trepidation, more than ready to meet my fate like my mother and sister did, or at least what I thought would be my fate until Kaori projected a certain Orange Daggertail in the middle of our classroom a few weeks ago.
An Orange Daggertail that should be dead.
“Where the hell are you?” I whisper, knowing damn well she can hear me. She’s hovered close enough to my mind since Presentation that I could even switch to a mental pathway for communication at this point if I didn’t feel like I deserve some answers first. Which I do.
Especially since I went to bed after Presentation with a shimmering new relic of an Orange Daggertail winding around my left hip, a fact I’m keeping to myself.
It’s a claiming mark, the place where magic enters our body once channeled from our dragon, but surely there’s a way to reject it if she turns out to be the giant pain in the ass I think she might be.
How did I not notice her in the line of dragons?
How did she put it there so painlessly? The only other relic I’ve been given hurt like hell.
“Have you always been this disagreeable?” she asks, invading my head with a voice so sweet it borders on sugar. If sugar were poisonous.
Like you’re not? She might be the most ill-tempered, impetuous dragon on the Continent.
“I heard that.”
Stop listening unless you’re ready to show yourself.
She scoffs, the sound tickling my brain, but she’s nowhere to be seen under the canopy of brilliant fall colors.
“Katrina, please watch over Quinn,” I whisper into the ether at my deceased sister.
I need to hurry. Bodhi threw off the plan I made with Quinn to tackle this day together, and I’ll never forgive myself if something happens to the annoyingly perky blonde before I get to the meeting place we hurriedly designated.
“End your friendship with the Navarrian and perhaps I’ll let you fly out of this valley.”
She’s not like the others. And you don’t determine my friends. My stomach tenses.
“We’ll see about that.”
A high-pitched shriek sounds from somewhere to the east, and I wince.
By Dunne, if I have to die, I won’t squeal like a pig when Malek comes for me.
Something flutters down in front of me, and I whip my hand out to catch a deep-magenta leaf with five points. “Look at that. It’s your favorite color, Mom.” I hold it out so she can see it from wherever she’s watching.
My mom and sister may have been executed in Calldyr, but they never feel far from me.
Gods, I’ve missed falls like this. Trees in Tyrrendor are predominantly coniferous; at least they were where I was fostered near Lewellen.
But at home, in Deaconshire Province, we have trees like some of these that drop their leaves when autumn calls.
It doesn’t matter how many years have passed or how much I used to love Aretia, I always think of Hardincourt as home.
“Remind you of the trees at Hardincourt?”
My head snaps up as Garrick Tavis, two swords strapped to his back, steps out from behind a tree and plants his gigantic feet in the middle of the path.
I narrow my eyes and remind my heart to settle the fuck down.
He might look good enough to devour with one bite, but I’m not going there. Not now. Not ever.
There are plenty of other men to have a few flings with at Basgiath.
Everyone who gets close to me winds up dead. Dad. Mom. My sister, Katrina. Elyse—the only friend I made that first year being fostered at Ivyndelle. It doesn’t matter how mad I am at him, I’ll be damned if Garrick winds up on that list.
With his enormous build, agonizingly beautiful face, square chin, and unbeatable skills on the mat, it’s not like he’s having any trouble finding women to warm his bed.
Unfortunately—but good for Garrick—I’m not the only one who gets incredibly turned on by performances of lethal prowess around here.
There’s definitely something wrong with everyone who crosses the parapet.
Ugh. Remembering Sharla Gunter crawling all over him in the dormitory hallway last night makes me want to vomit.
“What are you doing here?” I snap, discarding my pretty magenta leaf.
Fuck. I swore to myself I wasn’t going to say a single word to him for the two years we’d have to cohabitate in this place, and I’ve just blown seventy-eight days of restraint.
“Observing like a good squad leader.”
He grins and, fuck me, that dimple pops in his left cheek. Navarrians might be the bane of my existence, but that dimple is going to end me.
“So you do know how to speak to me. I was starting to wonder.”
I blatantly ignore his comment. “You’re not my squad leader, so fuck off to wherever else you can watch over a first-year who might appreciate your presence.” I give him a good glare. “I’m just fine on my own.”
“Being nicer to the object of your desire might give you a better outcome.”
Fuck all the way off or show up. I double down on my glare and tug a strand of pink hair out of my eyes when it gets in the way.
“You appreciate my presence,” he says, completely unfazed as usual. Then he picks up the magenta leaf and twirls it by the stem as he walks beside me. Hard to believe the man handles giant swords with the same hands, that he could handle me—
Nope. That’s a thought I’m not indulging.
I have never let Garrick Tavis put his hands on me, and I’m not about to start.
“And this reminds you of home. Admit it.” He looks my way, and I studiously avoid his gaze. He knows me with frightening depth, and I don’t have the energy for him today.
I glance sideways at the leaf, then shrug a single shoulder. “Maybe.” It’s easier to admit to one of his statements than the other.
“It’s all right to miss it.”
“Thank you for your permission.” I pick up the pace, and he easily keeps up with those long legs of his.
He laughs. “Swear to the gods, you have the patience of a saint for every marked one but me. Why is that, Imogen?”
The sound of my name on his lips threatens to turn my stomach gooey, so I shut that down immediately. “Because I don’t like you.”
“Now, now. There’s no reason to lie.” He grins, and that dimple pops again.
“Is it that hard to believe a woman is immune to your charms?” I keep my gaze forward, scanning the forest around us for the fire-breathing dragons that are supposed to be wandering about.
“You think I’m charming?” His grin widens, and I roll my eyes. He’s had a masochistic tolerance for my unreasonable level of bullshit since the day I clocked him in the face when I was eight, which I’ve yet to understand.
Katrina tried her damnedest to force me to apologize.
I never did—because fuck him, trying to tell me which of my own horses I should ride when he was a guest at my house. Little did we know our parents’ friendship would draw my family into a rebellion seven years later.
“I didn’t say that.” I spot the sprawling oak Mom described about a hundred yards away and send up a prayer to Dunne that Quinn found it. It’s the only one in the forest that was split in half by a lightning strike ages ago, back when we’d had an actual lightning wielder in our ranks.
“You haven’t said anything to me since you crossed the parapet.” His smile fades as he tucks the leaf into his uniform pocket.
“Yes, why haven’t you spoken to him? Such a nice Tyrrish boy.”
I mentally push at the pumpkin-orange threads of a bond forming at the edge of my mind, hoping the gossamer filaments will disperse. You don’t get to bond me until you explain some things.
“I will do as I please,” she snaps. “I am a proven slayer, with a kill count in the thousands—”
Blah. Blah. I push at the bond again, trying to picture a mental wall going up. Gods, Mom and Katrina spent so much time trying to teach me, to prepare me, and I’d only listened to a fraction of what they were saying, certain that I wasn’t going to volunteer for the quadrant.
“Imogen.” Garrick knows better than to touch me, so he pivots, putting himself directly in my path, forcing me to stop. “Why aren’t you talking to me?”
“What do you call this?” I gesture between us, then step left.
He matches the move. “I call this begging Riorson—”
I step right, and he’s already there.
“—to assign me to you so I have an excuse to talk to you.”
He’s involved Riorson? Fucking great. That’s not embarrassing or anything. I go left again, and he does the same.
“Look, if you want to dance with me, just ask.” He smiles, and I make the mistake of looking up into his eyes. I have to arch my neck with how much he’s grown, but the second I do, I’m wholly, completely fucked.
Garrick has too many outstanding qualities to list, but his eyes?
Those are in a category all of their own.
The hazel depths stare down at me, holding me prisoner without setting a single finger to my skin.
The black of his uniform and hair somehow accentuate the copper that rings his pupils, but the rest of his irises vary between green and blue in a pattern I’ve never been able to decipher.
And worse, I know from experience that they change with whatever he wears, constantly drawing my attention to see what they might look like on any given day.
If they’d stay the same, I’d have a prayer of conquering the addiction.
“Would you like me to fly over and slice that sexual tension for you?”