“Go ahead,” I said, nodding at her.
She snorted as she flicked her head sideways, and I flinched. But she didn’t hit me. When I opened my eyes, she was whirling on another student, pummeling him with her snout and sending him flying. He hit so hard I heard something crack.
“Nice one, Ilmara,” said the dragon’s rider, patting her steed.
Cheers rang out from the faces in the upper-story windows. The red door closed with a bang. Someone had made it inside.
My muscles tensed. This wasn’t just about getting knocked down until the headmaster called off the game. If there was a way around the dragons, I’d find it.
When I raced toward the blue door, determined this time to make it around Ilmara while she was distracted, a strange sensation washed over me, a heat that seemed to rise out of the stones themselves. It passed quickly, but it slowed my steps. I dismissed it as nerves and lunged for the door. Ilmara’s tail connected with my stomach, slapping the air from my lungs and lifting me from the ground. When she set me down, she half-slung me, half-pushed me with her strong tail toward the next door. The red door.
“One minute!” shouted the headmaster. “Anyone not inside in one minute will be sent home!” Cheers erupted from the upperclassmen. Another door slammed.
I turned and took one step forward, but in the same breath, a black dragon snout knocked me behind my knee, pitching me off-balance. As my front leg buckled, I lifted my other foot and hooked the dragon’s neck. He tossed his head and lifted his chin, nearly throwing me off, but I lurched forward and wrapped my arms around him. I slid down his neck, bumping uncomfortably over the ridges along his spine, my grip slipping, until I collided with the dragon’s rider.
“Get off me!” shouted the boy, pushing at my back with strong hands.
I’d never been on a Cevnal before, and the feeling was intoxicating, despite the shoving from behind and the bucking from below. The dragon growled, dancing in a circle, his tail leveling everyone attempting to reach the red door.
“Thirty seconds!!” shouted the headmaster.
I had only a breath to make up my mind.
As the dragon spun, I jabbed my elbow backward, swung my leg over his neck, and dropped to the ground, right in front of the red door.
The voices overhead began to chant the final countdown. “Nine. Eight. Seven.”
I charged forward. “Three. Two.”The red door swung open, and I spilled inside.
“One.”
CHAPTER 8
The foreign girl I’d met in the courtyard leaped through the doorway just after me, knocking me off-balance. I stumbled forward, grabbing for whatever was nearest.
Which happened to be the boy in front of me.
My hands tried to latch onto his shirt to keep from falling, but he reacted by stepping back. I wound up on my knees, clutching the edge of his jacket in my fists.
The ache in my knees was fully eclipsed by the mortification blazing through my entire body as I looked up at him. His blue eyes bore down on me like I’d just splattered mud all over him, which, I supposed, was what my touch was to Rushland Covington.
I released my fists, leaving behind two star-shaped wrinkles in his once pristine shirt. Laughter filled the air as I stood, and I turned to observe the small octagonal room I’d just entered, trying not to think about the look of disgust on the Covington boy’s face.
I’d just sat on a Cevnal. I’dmade itinside. I tried to focus on the positive.
But I’d entered the red door, the only one I’d wanted to avoid.
Footsteps sounded to the right as the students poured down a stairwell from the upper floor. There were eight of us in the small room, and we all turned to face the sound of approaching feet. A single lamp glowed beside an archway in the stone walls. Beyond the archway, a corridor led deeper into the school. An ornate red rug sat beneath our feet, and warm wooden floors peeked out below. A narrow wooden table with a thick leather book on it was the only furniture in the room.
Faces spilled into the room. Each student wore a long black robe over their uniform, and not one of them wore a smile. The students peeled off, one to the right, one to the left, until we were surrounded. When no one else could fit in the small space, a tall boy stepped forward, drawing the hood of his school robe up over his head. He paused under the stone archway, his face half in shadow and half in golden light from the burning lamp.
“Welcome to Cardan Lott. You’ve made it inside, which means you are officially accepted as a student here. However, we have a test of our own here in House Ruby. One of you will not make it through initiation.”
Fury rose in my blood as the boy’s eyes landed on me, as if he could sense the fact that I did not belong. But visions of Myth reminded me why I was here. Tightening my jaw, I held his gaze.
“House Ruby?” he said, voice as solemn as a general’s.
“Here,” said the students along the wall in perfect unison.
