ELARA AND THE DEN SNUCK OUT FOR THE INCENDIO TEN MINUTESbefore midnight. She kept to the back of the group, watching Signey’s ponytail swing left and right and worrying how badly her Firstrider would take the theories she’d formed with Reeve and Faron. Signey was already uncomfortable with the idea that the commander had been paying her close attention. She refused to accept that her ancestor could be the Gray Saint. Their bond being the key to the commander’s scheme might be the thing that shattered her.
Compared to all that, the incendio seemed like the least of Elara’s problems. But here she was.
It was a full moon, so bright it turned the sand pearlescent. The bay was a trembling black line on the horizon, kissed by silver. The other den was already waiting for them. Like Elara, Marius Lynwood had traded in his uniform for his riding leathers. Like her den, his gang was still in their uniforms. It felt like combat class, but far more serious. Worse, Marius’s arrogance made him seem more threatening under the apathetic stars. Elara took a shaky breath.
“You’ll be fine,” Zephyra reassured her. She was standing with Marius’s dragon, Goldeye, near the path that twisted away from the beach. It led toward the bridge that connected Caledon Island to Margon Island, the next in the archipelago’s chain.“I am confident in your abilities.”
“I’m glad one of us is,” Elara sent.
“Two of us,” Signey added. Elara almost tripped over a twig. Her Firstrider rolled her eyes at her clumsiness, but even that couldn’t erase the warmth her words left behind.“Don’t worry. I haven’t been reading your mind.”
“I know that,” said Elara, her cheeks burning. Better for Signey to think it was surprise that had made her heart skip a beat. It was already hard enough to ignore her attraction to her co-Rider.
Nichol pulled a dragoon from his pocket, the ivory Langlish coin standing out against the night. “Challenger’s choice. Fangs or scales?”
“Fangs,” said Marius.
The coin tumbled through the air and landed with the snarling dragon insignia in the sand and the scale-textured back facing upward.
“Looks like it’s your call, grub. Sky trial or soil trial?”
Though her choice had been settled by an afternoon-long debate with the den, Elara took a moment to reconsider her options. The sky trial was a race between their dragons, as much a test of their bond as it was of her skills. After just a month of Hearthstone classes, her skills were lacking. The soil trial, however, was a straightforward fight, channeling the magic and strength they drew from their dragons. As Marius’s slur dug into her skin, Elara wanted nothing more than to slam her fist into his face.
But she reminded herself that she didn’t know how he fought, and the beach was too dim for her to properly study his movements. She might lose to him then, and she couldn’t stand that.
“Sky trial,” she said. “If you think you can keep up.”
Marius marched over to his dragon. Though Goldeye was a carmine, by nature bright red and enormous, he looked even larger perched next to Zephyra. The largest dragon breed versus the smallest dragon breed should have meant that Elara had a natural advantage in this race, but that was far from guaranteed.
“Sages are aerodynamic, but carmines have superior wingspan, so they cover more ground,” Jesper had said. “Besides, Marius is a seasoned Rider, so he and his dragon can work in tandem much better than you and Zephyra. It’ll be a close race.”
Marius scaled Goldeye’s back and settled in the saddle attached to the middle of Goldeye’s spine. Even though Riders had perfect balance on their mounts as part of the bond, Elara turned away to make sure she was securely strapped into her own saddle, her gloved fingers trembling. As they rose, their dens blended into a single crowd of spectators, the distance making it impossible to tell friend from foe. Elara took a steadying breath as she allowed Zephyra and Signey to ease into her mind. Zephyra flared out her wings behind them, and if she could have smirked at that moment, Elara sensed she would have.
She would win this.Theywould win this. Zephyra hated Goldeye as much as Elara hated Marius, and she was eager for the chance to make a fool of him.
“Remember the most important rules of the incendio,” Signey said to them both, a smile in her voice.“Have fun and make them cry.”
Zephyra roared her version of a laugh. Elara grinned.
A ball of fire shot into the air and exploded overhead.
The sky trial had begun.
Five minutes into the race around the archipelago, Goldeye was a dark speck ahead, every flap of his wings helping him cover three times the distance that they could in that time. Zephyra coasted along the wind currents, conserving her energy and giving Elara plenty of time to think.
And strategize.
The first dragon to return to the island of Caledon would be the victor. Goldeye had started strong, but not the kind of strong that burned through the reserves of energy stored in his bulky form. He flew in a way that was neither fast nor fancy, the dragon equivalent of a brisk walk. Elara didn’t think his mass allowed him to fly any faster than that, and the bull-like horns—a feature unique to Goldeye—that jutted from his triangular head slowed him down further. The horns would be even more of a liability when he had to turn, changing his trajectory and making him easy to overtake if they caught up in time.
In combat class, Professor Rowland spent a lot of time drilling into them the need to study the wind currents in various countries because they affected a dragon’s effectiveness in battle. Thanks to the homework assignments she’d been acing, Elara was intimately familiar with the breezes that Serpentia Bay was famous for. And there was a particularly famous swell around the edge of the archipelago.
“Hold steady,” she told Zephyra.“We’ll catch them at the next island, so there’s no need to waste our energy now.”
Zephyra made an approving sound.“I have raced Goldeye many times before. He tries to put as much distance as he can between us at the start because his weight makes it hard for him to make sharp turns and build speed. The last time we raced, he banked so awkwardly that he went spiraling into a tree.”
Elara snickered, imagining Marius hanging upside down from a branch, his face bright red and his pants tearing open.“Why were you racing?”
“Signey challenged Marius to an incendio for insulting her father. He chose a sky trial, likely because he knew she would love the opportunity to make him eat sand.”
