Chapter 10.
"Fastest squad up the Gauntlet..." one of the instructors was saying behind them, voice cutting through the buzz of waiting cadets. "Fourth Wing. Tail section. Squad Two. Mairi's time sealed it. You're first through the valley."
Aeliana's stomach dropped.
Garrick's voice rose above the others. "Squad Two — let's go."
A ripple of motion followed. Cadets turned to look. Aeliana squared her shoulders.
They were first.
Of course they were. Liam had been absurdly fast on the course — fast enough to draw cheers, fast enough to earn the Gauntlet patch, and now fast enough to land them at the front of the godsdamned death parade.
"Move it," Garrick said, more sharply this time.
Aeliana fell into step, second in line behind Liam, the rest of the squad filing behind her. Nyra. Thorne. Reece. Just five of them now.
They approached the narrow gap between two stone pillars where the valley floor began. The entrance to the dragon grounds. Aeliana could already feel the pulse of power ahead — the raw, electric stillness of magic thick in the air.
Garrick stood just to the side, arms crossed, a long shadow cast behind him.
He wore his full uniform today — dark with polished patches gleaming along one shoulder.
His rebellion relic was uncovered, bold and unflinching, the black ink catching in the light.
He didn't smile. Just gave them a curt nod.
"You walk the path," he said. "You stay together. Seven feet between you. No crowding. No sudden movements. If a dragon shifts toward you, don't run."
His eyes swept over each of them.
"And above all — don't be stupid."
Liam gave a sharp nod. "Yes, sir."
Aeliana just breathed out slowly, fixing her eyes forward.
A second figure waited beyond Garrick — the quadrant's senior wingleader. Her armor gleamed with ceremonial spikes on the shoulders, gold today instead of silver. Her pale hair was braided tightly along her scalp, and her eyes moved over them with the precision of a blade.
"Fourth Wing, Squad Two, Tail Section," Garrick announced. "All yours."
The senior wingleader nodded. "Single file. No talking until the path. Don't approach the dragons. Don't stop walking for any reason. Understood?"
"Yes, Wing Leader," Liam answered.
Then they stepped forward.
The five of them lined up, the only sound the crunch of gravel underfoot and the slight rustle of wind as it funneled between the canyon walls.
Aeliana inhaled sharply through her nose.
The air here was sharper — thinner, more alive.
She could already see the glint of scales in the distance, shifting like riverstone under sunlight.
Liam took the lead, eyes forward, steps even. Aeliana followed, matching his pace, her arms tense at her sides. Behind her, she could hear Nyra's soft breathing, steady and close. Thorne walked like a shadow — silent, controlled. Reece, the tallest of them, brought up the rear.
As they reached the edge of the canyon's mouth, the ground beneath them changed from packed gravel to fine, sun-warmed dirt.
The path widened slightly, edged with tufts of dry grass and lined by towering ridgelines on either side.
The dragons were barely visible from here, little more than silhouettes in the distance.
But she felt them. Felt the way the valley itself seemed to hold its breath.
The senior wingleader stepped into view again and raised one hand.
"Talk," she said flatly, folding her arms. "to each other. Casual, calm. They're listening."
Aeliana blinked.
Dragons listened?
"Go," the wingleader added, stepping aside.
The wind shifted again, and the path ahead stretched open.
Liam glanced back — just once — meeting Aeliana's eyes.
"You ready?" he asked under his breath, lips twitching faintly.
"No," she replied just as quietly. "But let's go anyway."
He grinned.
Then he stepped forward onto the path, and the parade began.
Aeliana followed.
The path into the canyon stretched like a ribbon through autumn-soaked meadows, flanked on both sides by dragons.
Their hulking bodies sat impossibly still, like stone carved from shadow and fire.
A hundred sets of ancient, unblinking eyes tracked the movement of cadets as they passed. Judging. Waiting.
The second they passed through the narrowing mouth of the canyon, the sounds of the world softened. The wind, the distant chatter, even the crunch of gravel underfoot—all of it faded beneath the weight of dragon stares.
Aeliana's throat tightened.
To her right, a bronze-scaled beast the size of a barn flicked one claw across the dirt. The earth shook. Its slitted eyes tracked her, and as she passed, its head tilted—just slightly, but enough to stir something primal in her chest.
"Are they supposed to do that?" she whispered.
"Dunno," Liam murmured. "But I'm pretending it means they like me."
The dry humor settled her nerves. Slightly.
They kept walking.
Dragons lined both sides of the path in loose, strategic formation. Oranges, reds, greens, and browns. The scent of sulfur clung to the air. Aeliana kept her eyes level, trained just past Liam's shoulders. But even then, she felt it—dragons watching her. Not just watching. Studying.
One, a green with lightning-marked wings, cocked its head sharply as she passed. Another, a hulking red, exhaled a puff of steam that made her hair stir. It felt... personal.
She swallowed hard and forced herself to keep moving.
"You grew up in Dorlan, right?" she asked suddenly, grasping for something—anything—to keep her brain from spinning.
Liam glanced over his shoulder. "Yeah. Small town, middle of nowhere. You?"
"Border province," she answered. "Closer to Poromiel than the capital."
He nodded. "Explains the edge."
She snorted. "Explains the paranoia."
"You're not the only one who grew up looking over their shoulder."
There was something unspoken in his voice. She almost asked, but a brown dragon turned its massive head as they passed. Its nostrils flared, scenting the air. Watching her.
Another followed suit.
Aeliana's spine prickled.
Liam noticed. "That's the third one. They keep looking at you."
She shook her head, trying to downplay it. "I think they do that with everyone."
"Maybe." He slowed just enough that their shoulders nearly aligned. "But they're really looking at you. Like they recognize something."
She opened her mouth to respond—
"They're... a lot bigger up close," Nyra muttered from behind her.
"Don't say that too loud," Reece added, his voice a quiet rumble. "They might think you're challenging them."
"Reece," Thorne said dryly, "if anyone here looks like a chew toy, it's you."
"Appreciate the vote of confidence," Reece deadpanned.
Liam chuckled, keeping his pace steady as the bronze ahead of them shifted its weight, one claw digging a shallow trench in the dirt. "Try not to look them in the eye," he murmured back. "At least not the reds. It's considered rude."
"Good to know," Aeliana said. "And you learned that... where, exactly?"
"Tirvainne. Duke Lindell's house." He kept his voice casual, but the cadence of it changed—just slightly.
"You were fostered there?" she asked, careful to keep her tone light, noninvasive.
Liam nodded once. "After the executions."
The quiet between them sharpened, though no one else commented.
"You were trained before Basgiath," she said after a beat. "You fight like someone who's already survived a war."
"In a way," he replied. "Xaden trained me. Started the day I arrived. Said if I didn't want to die in my first year, I'd have to be better than everyone else."
Aeliana blinked. "Xaden Riorson?"
He nodded.
Nyra let out a low whistle. "Explains a lot."
"Explains why you ran the Gauntlet like it owed you money," Reece added.
Thorne, for once, didn't speak. But Aeliana could feel the weight of his attention.
"What about you?" Liam asked, glancing at her sidelong. "You train before this?"
She shook her head. "Not officially. No House sponsor. No prep tutors. Just... staying alive."
Liam's expression didn't shift, but something flickered in his eyes.
She looked away first.
The path ahead curved slightly, guiding them toward the heart of the canyon where the dragons grew denser, lined tighter. At least twenty more loomed ahead, each one larger, more regal, more terrifying than the last.
"You think they can hear us?" Nyra whispered.
"They're dragons," Thorne said. "They can probably hear us thinking."
"Great," Reece muttered. "Now I'm going to be paranoid about what I think."
"Good," Liam replied. "Maybe you'll finally think before you open your mouth."
Reece snorted, but the tension eased.
Another dragon shifted to their left, this one an orange-mottled brute with scales that shimmered like magma. Its tongue flicked briefly as they passed, tasting the air.
Aeliana resisted the urge to speed up.
"They're definitely looking at her," Nyra murmured, low enough that only Thorne and Reece could hear.
"I noticed too," Thorne said.
Aeliana didn't turn around. "They're looking at all of us."
"No," Reece said. "They're tracking you, Sorynne. Not just glancing."
Another dragon—this one a green with horns curved like scythes—tipped its head as she passed. Aeliana felt the gaze settle like a hand between her shoulder blades.
"Maybe I stepped in something," she said dryly.
"No," Liam replied, more serious now. "They sense something."
She hesitated.
"Maybe," she said.
Maybe they did.
But she didn't know what it could be.
They continued down the path, the earth crunching beneath their boots, the golden light of afternoon spilling across the rocks and illuminating every jagged edge of the dragons' forms.
Then, ahead—movement.
A dragon stood just slightly apart from the rest. Smaller. Sleeker. Its scales weren't red or green or bronze, but gold—luminous and feathered with a soft shimmer that rippled as it shifted its weight.
Aeliana's breath caught.
At the end of the path, half-shadowed beneath a sun-bleached outcropping of stone, stood a dragon unlike any she had seen before.
It was smaller than the others — elegant, almost delicate, but no less dangerous for it.
Gold shimmered across its scales in shifting hues of honey and flame, catching the afternoon sun like liquid light.
Its wings were sleek but dusted with soft, feathery edges, and its long tail curled around its legs in smooth, unbroken motion.
It cocked its head slowly, watching them. Watching her.
Aeliana's heart skipped.
A flicker. A flash. Not of now — of then.
Cold dirt. Her fingers digging into loam, slippery with blood. A pounding behind her eyes. The weight of a body — her own — too broken to move. Distant thunder. Voices.
And light.
Not white, not blinding. Gold.
Soft and strange. Too beautiful to be real. Three blurs of golden shimmer moving through the trees. She hadn't known what they were, only that they'd made the shadows flee. The pain hadn't stopped, but she'd stopped feeling afraid.
And then...
Then nothing.
The memory splintered like glass, and Aeliana blinked back into the present.
The Feathertail was still watching her. Tilting its head as if it knew.
Her legs felt suddenly too light. Like she could fall forward and never stop.
"Holy shit," Liam murmured. "That's..."
"A Feathertail," Thorne said, his voice softer than she'd ever heard it.
"No way," Nyra whispered. "They don't bond. Right? I thought they didn't bond."
"They don't," Thorne said. "Not in recorded memory. But that's one."
"Should we...?" Reece's voice came from the back of the line. "We should keep walking, right?"
Aeliana swallowed.
"Yeah," she said faintly. "We should."
Reece gave a soft nudge. "Let's head back."
As they turned, the Feathertail's gaze lingered for a moment longer on Aeliana — and then it blinked. Once. Slow. Almost deliberate.
She didn't look over her shoulder.
Didn't glance back at the Feathertail still watching from the end of the line.
Her boots found the rhythm of the gravel again, step after step, as her body moved on instinct. Her pulse, however, was still skipping, still catching in her throat like it hadn't quite left the memory behind.
The woods. The warmth. The gold.
She gritted her teeth.
"Hey," Liam's voice drifted back to her, low and even. "You okay?"
She blinked. He wasn't looking at her—just keeping his pace, arms loose at his sides—but the question was genuine.
"I'm fine," she answered. Not sharp, but not open either.
He nodded slightly, accepting it. Nothing else was said.
Behind them, Reece's voice broke the silence. "You think that orange was sizing me up or just bored?"
"Bored," Nyra replied immediately.
"I vote sizing up," Thorne added. "You're tall enough to be interesting. Just not smart enough to be worth eating."
Reece scoffed. "That's rich coming from the guy who almost tripped over his own feet when that red blinked at him."
"I was adjusting my stride," Thorne said with exaggerated dignity. "And that red was clearly testing dominance."
"Against you?"
Nyra chuckled under her breath.
Their voices blurred behind Aeliana. Not too loud. Not disruptive. Just enough to fill the air with normalcy. Something to cling to.
She focused on Liam's back in front of her. The subtle way his shoulders shifted with every step. The quiet ease with which he carried himself, even under the weight of a hundred dragons' scrutiny.
Steady. Grounded.
Like nothing rattled him.
But she knew better. She'd seen that tightness in his jaw when Garrick gave the marching orders. Knew what that Gauntlet patch on his arm meant—what he'd had to survive to earn it.
The canyon opened wider as they neared the mouth again, sunlight cutting through the edge of the ridgeline. The cold bite of dragon-laced air gave way to the warmer winds of the meadow.
Cadets waited on either side of the return path, murmuring in small groups, eyeing the formation coming through.
Their squad stepped out in perfect order.
Liam.
Aeliana.
Nyra.
Thorne.
Reece.
As the squad filed back into the holding line of cadets, Aeliana peeled slightly to the side with the others, finding a patch of ground near their designated post. Her fingers worked loose the tension still locked in her knuckles.
The light up here was softer, filtered through the rising mist of dragonfire drift and the high ridges.
Garrick stood a few feet away, arms still crossed over his chest, watching.
She didn't meet his eyes this time. Just breathed out and took a seat beside Nyra, who offered a short nod but didn't press.
Liam lingered.
He glanced at the others, then walked a few steps toward Garrick.
They spoke in low voices, barely above a whisper. Close enough that Aeliana could hear the rhythm of Liam's words, but not the meaning.
Until—
"Feathertail," Liam said, just clearly enough for the syllables to carry.
Garrick's posture didn't shift, but something behind his eyes sharpened. "At the end of the line?"
Liam nodded once. "Small. Gold."
There was a long pause.
"Anyone approach?" Garrick asked.
"No," Liam replied. "But it was watching. Closely."
Garrick's gaze flicked sideways—briefly, toward Aeliana.
Then he gave a short nod, murmured something else under his breath, and clapped Liam on the shoulder once before stepping back into his post.
Liam rejoined the others like nothing had happened, sliding back into place beside Reece with a quiet sigh.
No one said a word about it.
But Aeliana felt it.
The tension behind Garrick's eyes.
The weight of that single word.
Feathertail.
~
The rooftop was quiet.
Just far enough above the barracks to mute the chaos below, but not high enough to catch the full bite of the mountain wind.
Aeliana sat near the edge, one leg pulled up, the other dangling over the ledge, her arms wrapped around her knee.
The last traces of twilight bled orange across the horizon, and the lights of Basgiath flickered in the valley like restless fireflies.
Behind her, boots scuffed against stone — not rushed. Not stealthy.
Familiar.
"You always climb onto things when you can't sleep?" Liam's voice was low, warm with exhaustion and something gentler underneath.
She didn't look back. "Only when the ground feels like it's about to give out."
He settled beside her with a quiet grunt, folding his legs and bracing his arms behind him. "Fair enough."
They sat in silence for a while, the night folding in around them. Somewhere off to the east, a dragon's distant call echoed through the darkness.
"Tomorrow's Threshing," he said eventually.
Aeliana exhaled through her nose. "Yeah."
He nudged her lightly with his shoulder. "You thinking about the Feathertail?"
"I don't know. Maybe." Her gaze stayed fixed on the distant lights. "Mostly wondering why I didn't feel anything. Everyone talks about signs, pulls... instinct. I walked through a field of dragons and felt nothing."
"Not even curiosity?"
"Plenty of that," she admitted. "But nothing like what people keep describing."
Liam leaned back, staring up at the stars. "You're not alone. Not everyone gets a sign. Not the real kind, anyway."
"You did."
He nodded slowly. "There was a Red Daggertail. Massive. Didn't move a muscle. But when I passed... I swear I felt heat. Like it was waiting for me."
She glanced sideways. "You think that's the one?"
"I don't know." His voice dropped. "But I haven't stopped thinking about it since."
Aeliana was quiet for a beat. Then, softly: "What was it like? Growing up after... everything changed?"
His jaw flexed, just once. "You mean after they executed my parents?"
She winced. "I didn't mean to—"
"It's all right." His voice was steady. "It doesn't hurt more to say it. I was fourteen. Watched them burn." He turned one hand over in his lap, staring at the scarred skin along his wrist. "Held the rune my mom gave me while it happened. Felt it flare. Like I was on fire, too."
Her throat tightened.
"They came for my father at our house later that day. He died protecting the door. They gave our home to a noble from the capital — someone who never knew our names."
He shifted, resting his forearms on his knees. "Sloane — my little sister — was sent somewhere else. I haven't seen her since."
Aeliana didn't say anything.
"I got dumped in Tirvainne," Liam went on. "Fostered by Duke Lindell. Same as Xaden. He's the one who taught me to fight. Said I had to be ready — for everything. He wasn't wrong."
"You didn't have a choice."
"None of us did." His voice held no anger, only fact. "We survive, or we don't."
Aeliana sat back, arms wrapped tighter around her knee. "I wasn't fostered," she said eventually, voice quiet. "But I didn't end up here by accident either."
Liam glanced over, careful not to push — just listening.
"I was taken in by a family in Rathmere," she said. "Found me half-dead, and instead of asking questions, they gave me a place. A forge, a bed, some space to breathe."
"They sound like good people."
"They are." She hesitated. "Didn't speak much at first. But the youngest girl used to sneak me sweets. Their son decided I was his sister within a week."
Liam smiled faintly. "That'll do it."
"The mother ran the house like a war camp," she added, her tone softening with memory. "The father was a blacksmith. Taught me how to use a hammer before he taught me how to speak again."
"And now you're here."
She nodded. "Eventually, a soldier in town figured out I'd have to go to Basgiath. They started training me. Balance drills, strength work. There was a rooftop beam between two towers — they made me walk it in the wind. Said it would prepare me for the Parapet."
Liam gave a low whistle. "That's brutal."
"It worked."
"I'm glad you made it," he said.
She looked at him, surprised by the sincerity in his voice.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out something small — a smooth, carved charm. A sigil. "My mother gave this to me before she died," he said. "Told me it was the only thing that ever protected her."
He set it gently on the stone between them.
"I don't believe in luck," he added. "But I believe in remembering where we came from."
Aeliana's eyes dropped to the charm, then lifted to his face. "What do you think she'd say if she saw you now?"
He didn't hesitate. "That I've made it this far for a reason."
They sat in silence again, wind curling around them.
After a long moment, he said, "You'll be all right tomorrow. No matter what happens."
Her voice came quieter this time. "You said that already."
"I meant it both times."
She didn't look away. "You think grit is enough?"
"I think you're more than grit, Aeliana."
She didn't know what to say to that. So she didn't say anything at all.
Just leaned her shoulder gently into his and watched the stars wheel above them — and for the first time in a long while, didn't feel like the ground might give out after all.