Total pages in book: 247
Estimated words: 235897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1179(@200wpm)___ 944(@250wpm)___ 786(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 235897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1179(@200wpm)___ 944(@250wpm)___ 786(@300wpm)
“Is that all we should discuss?” she asks, her expression uncomfortably close to my mother’s, and I nod.
“Of all the shops in the merchant isle, she made us visit the bookstore,” Cat adds with an exasperated sigh, tapping her pen on her notebook, and I breathe a little easier with the transfer of attention.
“That sounds like our Violet.” Devera flashes a smile. “Since you’re so talkative today, Sorrengail, why don’t you tell us what about the offensive in Vallia is so concerning.” She gestures behind her at the map.
Shit, I really should have been paying attention. I scan the map for the length of two heartbeats, noting that some flags that had once been red are now gray, and the red has retreated from the north of Braevick and on the whole is moving nauseatingly southwest.
“It shows southward movement,” I answer. “Once we raised the wards in Aretia, the venin changed course, leaving conquered territory like Pavis to concentrate on Poromiel’s border with Navarre in what we now know was an offensive meant to strike the Basgiath hatching grounds. Moving southwest shows a change in strategy.” They’re less than a day’s flight from Cordyn by wyvern, but there’s a lot of undrained ground to cover if feeding is their only goal. But if that were the case, the map wouldn’t look quite so premeditated.
“Your best guess on that strategy?”
My stomach turns. “They somehow know about the Aretian wards and they’re moving into position for the inevitability of them falling.”
A murmur ripples through the room.
Devera nods. “That’s what I think, too.”
My blood runs cold. But how?
• • •
The next week passes in a blur. I’ve never had to work harder…or worried about Xaden quite so much.
He should be back by now. The Senarium expects us to leave in a week for Unnbriel, and I’m getting nervous. Eight days should be enough for the circles around his eyes to fade, right?
Unless he’s progressed to asim. I shove that thought as far away as possible.
When I’m not learning in class, pushing burnout in the range, freezing my ass off in flight maneuvers, practicing with the mini crossbow Maren gifted me, working every muscle to its breaking point with Imogen, or listening to Andarna go into exhaustive detail on why Tairn is the worst—period—mentor—period—ever—period, I’m reading my dad’s books with whichever members of my squad can spare their time. It takes Dain and me two evenings to decode the clues Dad left to open the passcode-locked books, and once we do, I can’t even tell my sister, since she’s taken personal leave for the first time in her entire career.
And whenever I’m not doing any of that? I’m in the fighting pit with my squad, either for our own instruction or joining the rest of the quadrant in what’s quickly become our favorite activity—watching the shit get kicked out of one another in hopes of learning something.
This afternoon, every second- and third-year in our squad is seated on the bottom left rows of the amphitheater with a book from Jesinia in their lap while two other squads from Second and Fourth Wing practice in front of us under the guidance of Professor Carr, who’s rotated in to teach today. Garrick and Bodhi look on from just beneath us, leaning against the wall, both shaking their heads every now and then when they, too, look up from their books.
A second-year goes flying in a blast of fire, and every single one of us looks up as the guy lands on his ass, flames still rising from his hair.
“You’re up.” Bodhi jabs Garrick, and he takes off at a sprint onto the mat. A flick of his wrist and the flames snuff out, deprived of oxygen.
“Letting them get a little close, don’t you think?” Garrick asks Professor Carr.
“Oh, this is going to get good.” Ridoc sets the Continent’s most redacted volume on Unnbriel’s warlike customs in his lap, and Sawyer follows suit beside him. Sawyer hasn’t joined us in flight maneuvers, but I’m glad he’s feeling up to sitting in on classes. It bodes well for his return, if and when he’s ready, or even just ready to talk about it.
“Ballsy,” Rhi agrees from my other side, using her thumb to mark her place in a book about weather patterns throughout the isles.
Professor Carr narrows his eyes on Garrick and folds his arms. “A scar would remind him to wield a little faster next time. It’s not like he’s dead.”
“Flame never should have touched him,” Garrick argues.
“Clearly you haven’t taught enough to know the best methodology,” Carr snipes. “Having powerful friends doesn’t make you a good instructor.”
Garrick’s jaw ticks as he steps off the mat with the smoking second-year, and the guy goes back to his squad.
“He’s an asshole,” Bodhi notes, then leans back against the wall and returns to reading his assigned collection of early fables from Braevick. He’s looking for tales of dark wielders cured by love, or good deeds, or dancing naked under a full moon after drinking the venom of a rare snake only found on the farthest isle during a lunar eclipse, or…something.