Chapter 1: Born for Greatness

My mother once told me I was born for greatness.

I was eighteen now, facedown in the training yard dirt, lip split, blood pooling against my teeth, wrist screaming with every heartbeat. My sword lay three feet away where it had skidded from my grip.

And my mother stood over me.

"Stand up." Her voice didn't waver. "Or you are not my daughter."

I dug my fingers into the mud and pushed. My knees buckled once before they locked, and I grabbed the sword handle with both hands because one wasn't steady enough.

Blood ran down my chin. I didn't wipe it. I raised the blade until I could see her face above its edge.

My mother looked at my trembling hands. Her expression did not change.

She said nothing.

Behind her, on the roof of the training hall, a red shape shifted against the tiles. Solari. My mother's dragon, awake and watching.

That silence was the worst thing about her. I had lived inside it for twelve years, since I was six and she first wrapped my fingers around a sword hilt.

She had a reason.

My mother was Vesper Frost. The Red Sword. One of the most celebrated dragon riders in Eldoria's history.

On the night I was born, the royal seer stood in front of the council and said the next Dragon King would be born that year. My mother decided it was me.

She was wrong.

I was Liana Frost. Her only daughter. And I had inherited nothing.

Her talent had stopped with her. Twelve years of training, and I still fought like someone who had to think about it.

Five hours of sleep a night. Drills at dawn, exams after noon, sparring until my body couldn't hold itself upright. And in all of it, my mother had never once called me mediocre.

She didn't have to. I heard it every time she picked up my exam papers and set them down without a word.

Mediocre. The word she never said. It sat between us anyway.

But I could stand up. Every time she knocked me down, I got back on my feet and gripped my sword and came at her again.

Talent was the part I'd been shorted. Stubbornness came in double.

I planted my back foot and raised my guard. My mother shifted her weight. I read the angle of her shoulder, saw the strike coming—

A blur of red dropped between us.

Solari hit the ground with a thud that rattled my teeth, wings flaring wide, and shoved her massive head into my chest. She was enormous, her scales the color of molten iron. She huffed hot breath against my collarbone, rumbling low and steady in her throat, one wing spread in front of me like a wall.

My mother stared at the dragon for a long moment.

"That's enough for today." Flat. Final. She turned without meeting my eyes. "Pack your things tonight, Liana. You report to Dracoryn Academy in the morning."

"Yes," I said.

I stood there, bruised and dirt-caked, and listened to her footsteps cross the stone yard. They didn't slow or pause or come back.

They never did.

I was used to it. Her coldness had taught me a long time ago not to expect anything else.

Between the two of them, Solari had always been the warmer one: the dragon who curled around me on cold nights when my mother had already gone to bed without a word, who growled at anyone who came too close. Only Vesper and I could get near her without losing a hand.

Sometimes I thought the dragon understood me better than my mother ever had.

In Eldoria, nobody tames a dragon. The dragon chooses you, or you spend your life on the ground.

That was what Dracoryn Academy was for. The most prestigious dragon rider academy in the kingdom, where students came to be chosen. Even being admitted was considered an honor.

And above every dragon in the kingdom was Tharion. The golden dragon had chosen no one for a hundred years, and that was why Eldoria's throne sat empty. Whoever Tharion finally accepted would be the next Dragon King.

All of this — the bruises, the silence — had been aimed at getting me through those gates.

But my mother hadn't said it like it was an achievement.

She had trained me herself. Every bruise I owned had come from her hand. She had never once let another instructor near me.

Now she was handing me to strangers.

There was no pride in her voice. Only relief that a duty was finished.

She had given up on me. Twelve years, and she had finally given up.

My eyes burned. I shoved my palm against them and swallowed until my throat stopped shaking. Solari nudged my ribs, gently, then harder, until I dropped the sword and wrapped both arms around her neck.

Her scales were warm under my cheek. The one thing in my life that had never pulled away from me.

"I'll do it," I whispered against the ridge of her jaw. My voice cracked. "I'll make it through that academy, and I'll find my own dragon, and I'll come back a rider. A real one. I swear it."

Solari rumbled. The vibration traveled through my chest and lodged somewhere behind my sternum.

I held on a little longer. Then I let go.

The next morning I pulled on my cleanest jacket. The cuffs were still frayed. It was the best of the four I owned.

I dragged my trunk through the gates of Dracoryn Academy.

One small mercy, at least. Nobody here had watched me lose to my own mother, over and over, for twelve years.

The academy was carved into the face of a mountain. Dark stone towers with slit windows, bridges spanning between buildings across open drops, and far above, the silhouettes of dragons circling the peaks.

The flagstone courtyard was worn smooth by centuries of boots. The air carried the smell of pine, cold rock, and something sharp underneath: sulfur, maybe. Dragon-fire baked into the walls over a thousand years.

Students moved in clusters around me, laughing, calling to each other. A few glanced at my frayed jacket and looked away. A blonde girl near the gate held the look half a second longer than the others, and there was nothing idle in it.

She was already deciding something.

I found the dormitory hall and counted doors until I reached mine. My trunk scraped against the stone floor and my wrist still ached from yesterday. I shifted my bag higher on my shoulder.

I was reaching for the handle when the door beside mine swung open without warning. Something hit my shoulder hard enough to turn me, and I put out a hand and found what felt like a wall of iron.

"You still don't watch where you're going, Frost."

The voice was cold. Arrogant. And so painfully familiar that my stomach dropped before my brain caught up.

I looked up.

No.

Not him. Anyone but him.