#Chapter 6: The Dragon Court

We walked to the Dragon Court at dawn.

The path wound east from the academy through the pines and up a ridge of bare stone. It wasn't far, twenty minutes on foot, but the silence made it feel longer. Nobody spoke above a whisper. Even the students who'd been boasting about Tharion the night before had gone quiet.

The Dragon Court was carved into the base of a cliff face. A vast circle of open stone, ringed by pillars worn smooth by centuries of wind. At the center stood a single monument: a slab of dark granite, tall as a man, etched with a name I couldn't read from where I stood.

The last Dragon King's tomb.

And curled around it, tail wrapped three times around the base of the stone, was Tharion.

He was enormous. Twice the size of Solari, maybe more. His scales were gold, deep and heavy, the color of sunlight trapped in amber. His wings lay folded against his back, each one wide enough to shade half the courtyard. His eyes were closed.

He looked old. Worn, like something that had been waiting for a very long time and had forgotten what it was waiting for. Nothing about him looked weak.

A hundred years. He'd stayed here a hundred years, guarding the grave of his last rider.

The headmaster stepped forward and bowed.

"Tharion." His voice carried across the silent court. "The children of the prophecy year have come of age. Your new master is among these students."

Tharion opened one eye. Gold, slit-pupiled, ancient. He surveyed the rows of first-years at the edge of his court.

He exhaled through his nostrils, a short, dismissive breath that stirred the dust at the headmaster's feet.

The headmaster sighed. "The rules are simple. Mount Tharion. If he does not immediately throw you, you will be considered for the Crown Class. Final selection will factor in your previous test results."

A tall boy stepped forward first. He'd barely crossed the halfway point when Tharion's wing snapped open and sent him tumbling across the stone.

Tharion closed his eye.

Two more tried. Same result. One got close enough to touch Tharion's flank before the tail whipped around and sent her sprawling.

Then Tharion roared.

The sound split the morning, deep and raw and layered, vibrating in my chest, in my teeth, in the soles of my boots. Students flinched. A girl beside me covered her ears.

I didn't flinch.

I'd heard this sound before. Last night, in the dark, rising from the mountains beyond the academy walls. The same cry. The same ragged edge beneath the fury.

Pain.

I stepped back from the crowd and watched.

Tharion wasn't just angry. Every time he beat his left wing, something in his back seized, a sharp, involuntary twitch that ran along his spine. And he kept turning his head, snaking it backward, jaw opening to bite at a spot between his shoulder blades. From the outside, it looked like an attack on the students climbing onto him.

He wasn't. He was trying to reach something he couldn't get to.

More students were thrown. Five. Ten. Then Kael stepped forward.

He moved without hesitation. When Tharion's wing swung, Kael ducked under it. When the tail swept, he vaulted over it. He caught the ridge of Tharion's shoulder and hauled himself up onto the dragon's back in one clean motion.

Tharion bucked. Kael held. The dragon twisted, reared, slammed his wings down hard enough to crack the stone beneath him. Kael's body whipped back and forth, but his hands didn't slip.

Twenty seconds. He lasted twenty seconds before Tharion threw him.

Kael hit the ground and rolled to his feet without a stagger. He brushed the dust off his sleeve and walked back to the edge of the yard, unbothered.

Twenty seconds. No one else had lasted three.

I could have told you how he shifted his weight on the fourth buck, where his left hand went when the wing came down, the exact second his shoulders decided to let go.

I told myself I had been studying the dragon.

I had not been. Not the whole time.

Then I looked at Tharion's back.

His spine contracted every time Kael's weight shifted. He kept twisting his neck back to bite at the same spot between his shoulders, over and over, and never once reached it. Whatever was buried there was hurting him. Badly. And no one could see it but me.

"Tharion is injured." The words came out before I could stop them.

Heads turned. Kyra's voice cut through the murmurs first.

"Frost is making it up." Flat. Contemptuous. "She wants attention. Someone tell the bottom-ten girl to sit down."

I ignored her.

I looked at Tharion, massive, ancient, in pain, and felt my fear shrink beneath something stronger. I'd heard him cry in the dark when no one else was listening.

I ran.

The crowd shouted behind me. Kael grabbed at my arm and missed.

"Liana—"

I didn't run straight at Tharion. I circled wide, using the knot of students still jostling near his left flank as cover. When his head swung toward a boy who'd stumbled too close, I sprinted for his tail.

I grabbed it with both hands. The scales were hot and rough under my palms. His tail swept upward and I held on, letting the momentum carry me, and scrambled up his back — fingers digging into the ridges between scales, knees scraping against bone plates.

Tharion roared. His wings snapped open and he launched into the sky.

The ground fell away. Wind tore at my face, ripped my hair loose, slammed into my chest hard enough to steal my breath. The academy shrank below me. The sky opened above, vast and blue and terrifying.

I flattened myself against his spine. My hands searched blindly along the groove between his shoulder blades, fingers scraping over scale after scale, until I felt it.

Iron. A shaft of black iron driven deep between two scales, buried almost to the base. The skin around it was swollen, hot, crusted with old blood.

Someone had driven a spike into his back, and he couldn't reach it to pull it out.

I wrapped both hands around the shaft. My fingers slipped. Tharion bucked and I nearly lost everything.

I pulled.

It didn't move.

Tharion rolled in the air and the sky switched places with the ground. I screamed, locked my legs tighter, arched my back, and pulled again, harder, with every ounce of the stupid, stubborn persistence my mother had spent twelve years beating into me.

The spike came free.

The force tore me backward off his spine. For one second I hung in open air, the spike clutched in my fist. Then gravity took over.

I fell.

The sky tumbled and the mountains went with it. I closed my eyes and thought: this is it. Eighteen years of my mother's drills, and I was going to die as a girl who tried to help a dragon and fell out of the sky for it.

Something caught me.

It pressed up beneath me, hard and solid and warm, and the falling stopped. I heard the steady beat of wings above me.

I opened my eyes.

Gold scales. A massive claw curled around my body. Tharion descended in a wide spiral until his claws touched stone and the world went still.

He set me down. Gently. The way you'd set down something that mattered.

I stood on the courtyard floor with a black iron spike in my shaking hand and looked up at the golden dragon.

The dragon who had thrown every rider who ever touched him had caught me.

And then he lowered his head.