Avian (The Dragonrider Chronicles) (28 page)

Of course, Jace was as ruthless as ever. He made us do one-handed and knuckle push-ups. A few times, he even had us run laps with bags full of rocks on our backs. He growled out commands as we ran through our new combat moves over and over. He was always armed with that whip in case we messed up. For some reason, the sound of it cracking in the cool air, only inches from my nose, didn’t scare me anymore. I could hear his words ringing in my head. “
Fear is useless.”
Those words made me push myself even harder.

My confidence always started to fade once we started for the Roost, saddled up our dragons, and strapped on our armor. By the time we took to the air each morning, the sun was finally rising. It turned the horizon pale pink, and like clockwork I could feel my ears start to burn with frustration under my helmet.

Jace always paired us together, and immediately poured on the speed. He went streaking through the sky like a gray comet, and Mavrik and I flailed around while trying to keep up. It was an absolute battle. I couldn’t even match anything he did much less outdo him. All the speed and agility I had felt so confident about was basically useless to me now.

Every day, I landed several minutes behind him. I was so angry I could have spit dragon fire myself. Jace ignored me altogether, like I was invisible because my efforts were so pathetic, and I left morning drills ready to punch the first person that crossed my path.

One day, I couldn’t take it anymore. As soon as Jace was out of sight, I ripped off my helmet and threw it as hard as I could.

“Feel better now, you big baby?” Felix was smirking at me.

“Just shut up. You try competing with that every day. You haven’t had to fly with him even once.” I glared at him and stormed away to get my helmet.

Felix crossed his arm and swaggered after me, like he was enjoying watching me throw a tantrum. “That’s exactly your problem, dummy. Quit trying to compete with him and try learning for a change. Watch what he does, how he moves. That’s the point of all this, you know. He’s obviously grooming you.”

I picked up my helmet and dusted it off. Thankfully it wasn’t scratched. “Grooming me for what? Public humiliation?”

Felix rolled his eyes. “To be his wing end. Don’t you know? When young seasoned lieutenants like him come back from the battlefront to teach, it’s usually because they lost their old wing end or lead in battle. Look, you already know we always fly in pairs. Seasoned lieutenants have a choice if they lose their partner. They can either pair up with another seasoned lieutenant, if there’s one available that they want to work with, or they can pick up a new graduate like one of us to be their wing end. Sile must have told him about your speed. That’s why he always flies with you. It’s common knowledge that out of all the dragonriders, Jace and Ghost are the fastest pair. Jace is auditioning you because you might be the only other pair that can actually keep up with him. He’s waiting to see if you can handle being his wing end or not.”

I felt downright stupid for not realizing that myself. I glared down at my helmet, and thought about throwing it again. How had I not seen it? It was so simple. It had been staring me right in the face the whole time. This had to be the reason Jace was ignoring me. I hadn’t done anything worth acknowledging yet.

But that was going to change. I slammed my helmet down onto my head and turned around to get back on Mavrik’s back.

“What about breakfast?” Felix called after me. “We’ve still got a day full of training, you know. You should be resting.”

I swung my leg over the saddle and started buckling myself in. Mavrik shifted and flexed beneath me, spreading his wings wide. He understood my thoughts; we had work to do.

I gave Felix a thumbs up to let him know I was okay. “I’ll rest when I’m dead.”

Mavrik and I went over the drills again until I had no choice but to put my gear away and go to class. I barely had enough time to put on a clean shirt and sprint to the auditorium before the instructor began. I threw myself into the seat between Felix and Lyon. They both stared at me while I sat there, gasping for breath.

After a few minutes, Felix leaned over to whisper, “You smell horrible.”

I shrugged. “Who cares?”

“I do. I have to sit by you,” he muttered.

We settled in to listen to the lecture. Hours passed, and my stomach started to ache. Skipping breakfast was a bad idea. I couldn’t pay attention, and my belly was growling so loudly I was sure everyone else could hear it.

Then I felt someone nudge my knee. Lyon glanced my way from where he sat on my other side. He bumped my knee again to get my attention. I watched his eyes track down, gesturing under the table. He passed me something wrapped up in a napkin, making sure no one else saw. It was a big square of cornbread leftover from breakfast.

When I looked back up to thank him, Lyon was staring diligently toward the instructor like nothing had happened. I didn’t even want to imagine the punishment I would get if I got caught eating in class, but I was too hungry to care. I snuck bites of the cornbread until it was gone.

That was how my new morning routine started. I flew and trained right up until I barely had enough time to race to class. Felix complained about how bad I smelled. Lyon snuck me scraps so I didn’t cave in from hunger. Then at lunch, I wolfed down as much food as possible before it was time for combat training.

The first time Thrane spotted Lyon back in the lineup, I had to fight to keep from smirking. The look on his face was a priceless mixture of shock and total confusion. It didn’t take him two seconds to snap an accusing glare in my direction, though. He suspected me right away. I saw him pull Jace aside and the two men argued in hushed voices. Thrane pointed at Lyon and me. I could read the wild rage in his body language easily. Jace waved a hand at Thrane dismissively. He was playing it off like Lyon’s injury hadn’t been as serious as everyone thought.

Our plan was working. Sure, Thrane suspected something, but no one else did. It helped that he had basically established himself as a barbaric, overly aggressive idiot by breaking Lyon’s arm in the first place. Basically everyone thought he was crazy now, even the other instructors.

Crazy or not, Thrane had a new hatred for me. He made each day at his training station a special slice of agony. His favorite teaching technique was what he called a “drill-down.” He had us all line up in a big circle with one person standing in the center. The student in the middle sparred with everyone standing around him one-by-one. Win or lose, he stayed in the center of that circle until he’d fought all nineteen of the other avians in our group. It sounds easy, but nineteen fights back-to-back like that is nothing short of torture. Each person fights differently, has different strengths and weaknesses, and exhaustion makes you want to be careless and clumsy. That can be deadly when you’re facing a fresh opponent every time.

Of course, I was usually the first one in the middle of the circle, so everyone I fought was
especially
fresh. I lost a lot of fights at first, and Thrane got to call me an assortment of creative racial slurs. But as the weeks passed, I started to get stronger. I didn’t lose as many fights. My reflexes became faster. My body was changing and I was actually starting to gain a few pounds of muscle. Thrane’s special attention was actually doing me more good than bad. I knew it was purely by accident. He was probably hoping I would break under the pressure, but I was beginning to thrive instead.

I lost all track of time as the months ran together. Our schedule intensified, and I was more and more thankful to have the sleeping remedy Felix offered. I took it every night, and I didn’t have any more nightmares. There were no more sleepless nights, no more waking up in cold sweats.

The only reminder of time passing was the change in temperature. As the summer settled in, I was reminded why they called this valley the Devil’s Cup. It was a desert, after all. The heat was so intense during the day that it made the horizon look like bubbling liquid. Fortunately, the bulk of our outdoor work happened before the sun ever rose.

The seasons were the least of my worries as I chased Ghost’s tail through the twilight skies every morning. Felix’s advice was burning in my brain like it had been branded there. I didn’t try to compete with Jace anymore. I watched every move he and Ghost made, and tried to copy it. I made a mental note of very twist and turn, every wing beat, and precisely how he responded to the air around us. I memorized his patterns, and soon, I was able to predict them.

Our flights improved almost immediately. All the extra work was paying off. After a few weeks, I could keep him in my sights. Then after a few months, I could keep my position off his left wingtip like I was supposed to.

The first time I landed right beside him in perfect formation, Jace finally acknowledged me. He glanced me up and down, nodded, and told me that one of my first turns wasn’t tight enough. That was the first recognition I had ever gotten from him, and my heart soared higher than any dragon could fly. I felt unstoppable, and with that new confidence came a willingness to take risks.

One of those risks was writing a letter to my brother. I wasn’t even sure he would ever receive it. I’d heard how rough things were on the battlefronts. I wasn’t even sure he was alive, but I still wanted him to know what was happening. I wished him well, let him know I was staying at the house, and told him he would be welcome whenever he wanted to visit. I hesitated to tell him about the scimitar I had taken from his room. I wasn’t sure if he would appreciate me going through his things like that, but then, he had given me the house along with everything in it. If he wanted it, surely he would have said something. I decided not to bring it up.

I wrote another letter. This one was to Beckah. It took me a lot longer to come up with things to say to her that didn’t sound stupid. I told her a little about training… but mostly I admitted how much I missed her and how I wished I was back at the beach in Saltmarsh with her. I crammed the rest of Sile’s leftover money into the envelope, too.

I tried to keep the letter to Beckah a secret from Felix. Apparently he could smell my embarrassment like a bloodhound. He waited until the worst possible moment to tease me about it, though. While we were sitting down at lunch with the rest of our group from combat training class, he cleared his throat and glanced up at me with that scheming twinkle in his eyes. My blood ran cold.

“So, were you asking her to the officer’s ball?” Felix asked casually.

The mention of a girl got the attention of everyone at the table. All eyes immediately turned to me, and I glared at him. “No.”

“Oh?” I saw that sadistic glint of pleasure in his smile. “So you don’t mind if I ask her, then?”

I gripped my fork so tightly it turned my knuckles white. I debated lunging over the table to throttle him. The thought of him asking Beckah to the ball, even out of spite, made me furious.

“Who?” Lyon asked, glancing between us curiously.

Felix was still grinning as he leaned back in his chair, making a big show of this so that it would be as embarrassing as possible for me. “Believe it or not, Jae is in love with an instructor’s daughter.”

A chorus of excited noises went up from the crowd sitting around us. I wanted to crawl under the table. My face was so hot it made my eyelids tingle.

“You aim high.” Lyon snorted and went back to his mashed potatoes. He clearly still had no faith in my ability to have a romantic relationship with anyone.

“Oh it gets better,” Felix went on. “She gave him a love token before training. Isn’t that right, Jae?”

I didn’t answer, and I didn’t dare to move. The last thing I wanted was to betray the fact that I was actually carrying it around with me. Felix would have pinned me down to take it from me just so he could parade it around in front of everyone.

“Maybe this will be the year he finally kisses a girl and becomes a man.” Felix batted his eyes at me sarcastically and pretended to wipe away a tear. “Kids—they grow up so fast.”

Another avian sitting behind me clapped a hand on my shoulder and laughed. “We’ll be rooting for you. But is her dad really an instructor? Better not let him catch you.”

“Better make sure you make your move fast. If she’s good looking, you know those infantrymen will be all over her,” Lyon murmured with a mouthful of food.

“He’s right. She’s pretty cute.” Felix pointed his fork at me. “You might have some competition.”

My stomach started to churn and suddenly I lost my appetite. I hadn’t considered that someone else might try to compete with me for her. My eyes wandered around at the crowd of older, much more eligible avians sitting around me. They would all be looking for a girl at the ball, too.

“Just make sure you’re the first person to ask her to dance.” Another avian chuckled and jostled me as he walked by. “That way you have her attention right away.”

I shuddered at the thought of dancing. Beckah had tried to teach me some last year, but that was so long ago I barely remembered any of it. Well, except for stepping on her toes several times. “I’m not a very good dancer.”

“You can’t be as bad at that as you are at sparring,” Felix teased.

Everyone else laughed.

I didn’t.

“Seriously? You don’t know how to dance?” Felix’s smile faded. He was starting to look genuinely concerned.

I shook my head. “Who would have taught me something like that?” No way was I going to tell him Beckah had tried. The last thing I wanted to do was give him anything else to tease me about.

“The ball is still a few months away. You’ve got time to learn.” Lyon shrugged like it was nothing.

“When do I have time for that? I’m already training nonstop from the moment my eyes open every morning,” I grumbled. The idea of losing Beckah over something stupid like not knowing how to dance made me frustrated and angry.

“Calm down. It isn’t the end of the world.” Felix was still grinning at me, sitting kicked back in his chair with his arms crossed. He was the picture of confidence, as usual. “You’ve made a lot of progress with Jace lately, right? You can afford to back off the extra flight training a few times a week. Lyon and I will work on teaching you to dance.”