“With the Empyrean in town? You’d never get inside before your friends enlisted.”
“I don’t know…”
“Trust me, would you? I’ve been lying to Mama and Papa since I could speak. I’ll handle it.”
Elara kindly did not point out that this was, in fact, a good reason not to trust Faron. Because while Faron told lies large and small, she didn’t usually lie to Elara. Not about something that mattered. Elara trusted her sister more than anyone in the world, and if Faron said she would handle it, then she would handle it.
Most of all, she knew that Elara could do this, and she was willing to help her. Even after Elara’s lies.
“I love you,” Elara finally said. “You know that, right?”
“I loveyou,” Faron said without hesitation. “And I’ll always be on your side. Okay?” If Elara hugged her more tightly than usual, Faron didn’t comment. Instead, her sister glanced up at the star-flecked sky and added, “You should go. Mama gets up around three in the morning to use the bathroom, and she’ll check our beds if I don’t distract her.”
Elara stared at her. “What in the… How often are you still sneaking in and out of the house at night?”
Faron winked.
Night faded into dawn, dawn into late afternoon, in the time it took Elara to arrive in Highfort and complete registration. Whether she was chosen as a pilot or not, she needed to be physically and mentally competent to enter the Iryan Military Forces. She’d always known that. But the forms and routine physical gave her too much time to think. To worry. To doubt.
By the time she was following the other hopeful cadets, the suna white-hot globe in the clear blue sky, she had to clench her fists at her sides to keep them from shaking.
It had been five years since Elara had been this close to a drake. Five years, and her first sight of Valor in the center of the Highfort military base was enough to take her breath away. She was mere yards from a drake that had yet to pick its pilots—from a drake that could chooseher. All her dreaming, all her praying, all her hard work: It had brought her here. She hoped that Valor could sense her yearning.
That, somehow, the machine yearned for her, too.
She didn’t think she’d ever stop being awed by drakes. At this point, the Sky Battalion had five of them that Elara could name off the top of her head: Liberty, Justice, Mercy, Nobility, and, of course, Valor. The newest commissioned drake had been assigned a butter-yellow color that glittered in the afternoon light. Prominently displayed in the center of its flank was a white sun crowned by a sword that was pointing toward the sky, the symbol of the Renard Castell royal family. Though they had yet to let her and the other potential pilots inside the drake, she’d spent enough time in Nobility to know the layout of the interior by heart.
There was an open room inside every drake’s torso, with an oval cockpit in the middle for one pilot. On either side of the cockpit were stairs, one set that led down to a cargo hold and one set that led up to suites and another cockpit for the second pilot. Though she couldn’t see them from the outside, she knew that there were hidden windows lining the eastern and western sides of the flank for passengers to look through. Finally, north doors fed into the head, which contained a cockpit for the final pilot.
From here, drakes simply looked like a midsize scalestonedragon, with eyes that lit up like spotlights and a mouth that could open to blast magic flame. But they represented San Irie’s long history of taking the pain they’d been dealt and crafting it into victory. Drake pilots were treated the same as the gods and the Childe Empyrean: revered and celebrated. If Valor chose Elara as a pilot, she and Faron would finally be equals.
She was clenching her fists so hard that half-moon divots marked her palms. Elara loosened her hands. Took a breath.Please, Irie, please.
“You’re being quiet back here,” said Wayne, slowing down to keep pace with her.
“I just can’t believe this is happening,” Elara whispered. “I’ve dreamed about this for years and now…”
“It’s here, and it’s terrifying.” Wayne touched her shoulder comfortingly. “But you’regoingto be chosen. You know, half the time, you’re just this quiet girl who lives down the street from me. And then you spend time with us, and you turn into this…incrediblesummoner. I’d say you have an advantage since you’ve already fought in a war, but my father’s certainly not doingbetterfrom having made it back alive.” His hand fell to his side, and a shadow passed over his face. “I thinkwe’rethe lucky ones, enlisting in peacetime.”
Elara discarded three potential responses to that before they gathered in front of a stone-faced sergeant. Silently, she nudged Wayne’s arm, and he gave her a small smile in return. Then she took a deep breath, smoothed back her braids, and tried to calm the rapid-fire beating of her heart.
The sergeant was a tall, balding man with honey skin, close-cropped hair, and a tag on his right breast that readOWENS. “Hello,potential cadets. We’re very excited to have the next generation of soldiers in front of us here today. As I’m sure you all know, the queen commissioned a new drake for the Sky Battalion, and that drake, Valor, is in need of pilots. Before we prep you for basic, we need to evaluate if you are a match. Any pilots found will require additional training.”
Elara could barely hear him over her rising panic. This was the part that was impossible to prepare for, because no article or book had ever revealed the military secret ofhowdrake pilots were chosen. But Wayne was on her left. Aisha was on her right. Cherry was somewhere behind her. She was not alone in her hope. That made it a little easier to breathe.
“One by one, you’ll enter Valor and sit in the flank cockpit,” said Owens. The fabric of his uniform rippled in the wind as Valor’s stomach door lowered onto the ramp that led up into the main chamber. “No matter what happens in there, don’t be discouraged. There are many ways to serve queen and country in the Iryan Military Forces. That said,” he continued as his dark eyes scanned them, “who wants to go first?”
Elara’s hand shot up, but the sergeant called on a girl with her hair braided back into thick cornrows. She watched the girl disappear into that circle of darkness and waited for… what? That still wasn’t clear. But seconds ticked by in an uneasy silence, occasionally broken by the sound of foot soldiers running drills or drake mechanics carrying tools.Twenty-five seconds. Thirty seconds. Forty-five…
One minute passed.
Sergeant Owens escorted the devastated girl out of the drake, handing her off to another military official. There were still threespots left open, which was good, but the odds that even one pilot was among them had just gone down, which was bad.
Gods, she prayed again,please, please, please.
Aisha was called next. Elara’s fingers curled and loosened at her sides, again and again, for lack of anything to do but wait forwhat—
That.
