"Oh—yes!" I said quickly, carefully taking the bowl from her. “But…I don’t have a dragon yet,” I added.
“That’s all right—you will soon enough. You’re a Lysandra—you won’t bond less than a Gold or Silver-wing, I wager,” she said confidently.
"Well…thank you,” I said, nodding.
She smiled.
"Eat every bite, young Lysandra. You’ll need your strength when it’s your turn in the Hatching Grounds."
"I will," I promised.
But I couldn't help thinking…
If they knew who I really was…would they still offer it to me?
I knew they wouldn’t—a woman attending the Academy was laughable at best, sacrilege at worse. And I still hadn’t determined how in the world I was going to navigate the communal bathing situation.
But for now, I just wanted to sit down and eat—to fill my belly completely for the first time in years. So I nodded politely, took the tin cup of apple cider the last woman offered me, and moved away from the line.
For once I was going to eat until I was full.
10
AURORA
“The First-years all sit together for the first half of the semester before we get dragons and we’re divided into Wings,” Jorn-o explained, as we left the serving line. “Then, once you get a dragon and you’re assigned to a Wing, you sit with your year and Wing. Like over there—all the Second-year North Wings,” he said, motioning to one of the long tables.
I looked…and saw Ryse Skoren sitting at the head of a table that held around twenty-five Second-year cadets. His strange eyes met mine for a moment and lingered…then looked away.
I wished again that I could see him up close. What was it about those eyes? And what were the jewel-like markings I saw around his temples and cheekbones? They looked purple in one light and gold when he turned his head, and the angle changed. Maybe I would find out if I tested out of the First-year classes and was placed in his Wing…
Then I saw who else was at his table—seated at the far end of the North Wing Second-year table was Chud Larson. Luckily, he hadn’t seen me. He had his head down and was eating with a single-minded purpose that completely ignored table manners. I shivered as I saw him wipe gravy off his chin with the back of his hand and then lick it off with his tongue. Disgusting.
I noticed that Ryse and two other cadets at his table were the only ones with the valuable golden Dragon Custard. Jorn-o had said it was reserved for the riders who had bonded to a Gold, Silver, or Bronze-wing dragon. Were Noble-wings that rare that only three of the twenty-five cadets were bonded to one?
I supposed I would find out if I ever visited the Dragon Caverns located on a much higher level of the Academy but for now, since I couldn’t see the dragons, I looked at the riders.
It was hard to believe that the upperclassmen at Ryse Skoren’s table were only a year older than me and Jorn-o. They all looked so much bigger than us. But, to be fair, everyone in the whole Mess Hall was bigger than me.
I remembered the pitying eyes of the women serving food in the line. I must look terribly scrawny and malnourished to them. They thought they could give me enough food to make me shoot up a foot and grow broad shoulders like Auren had, but I was never going to get much taller than I was. I might fill out some, though—which would be a good thing, I thought. It wasn’t right to be so skinny I could count my own ribs in the mirror.
Just hope no one else is going to be counting them later at bathing time, I thought and had to swallow down a lump of fear. But no, I wasn’t going to worry about that now. One thing at a time. Right now, I wanted to eat.
Jorn-o found us a seat at the First-year table with some of the other boys whose fathers worked in and around the Academy.
“This is Jakes but we call him Toady—because of his mouth, you know,” he said, nodding at a boy with wide, rubbery lips and flat eyes who did, indeed, look a little like a toad. “And this is Tomas but he goes by Bugs,” he went on, pointing to a cadet with thick glasses. The lenses magnified his large green eyes, which did make him look kind of bug-eyed.
“Nice to meet you,” I said, nodding at both of them. They nodded back and Jorn-o went on with the introductions.
“This is Clay but we call him ‘Leaper’,” he said, nodding at a boy with carroty hair and bright blue eyes.
“Leaper?” I raised my eyebrows.
“Oh, it’s an old nickname,” the boy said, looking embarrassed.
“His father is the Flight Instructor for the First-years,” Jorn-o explained. “But he wouldn’t let Leaper play on the Dragon Flight Simulator when he was little without supervision.”
I stopped with a spoonful of stew halfway to my mouth.
