Page 182 - Fourth Wing

Presentation Day is unlike any other. The air is ripe with

possibilities, and possibly the stench of sulfur from a dragon who
has been offended. Never look a red in the eye. Never back down
from a green. If you show trepidation to a brown…well, just don’t.

—COLONEL KAORI’S FIELD GUIDE TO DRAGONKIND

CHAPTER

TWELVE

There are 169 of us by the time the morning is done and, even with my
penalty for the rope, we’ve placed eleventh out of the thirty-six squads for

Presentation—the piss-inducing parade of cadets before this year’s dragons

willing to bond.
Anxiety seizes my legs at the thought of walking so close to dragons

determined to weed out the weak before Threshing, and I suddenly wish
we’d placed last.

The fastest up the Gauntlet was Liam Mairi, of course, earning him the

Gauntlet patch. Pretty sure that guy doesn’t know how to take second place,
but I wasn’t the slowest, and that’s good enough for me.

The box canyon that makes up the training field is spectacular in the
afternoon sun, with miles of autumn-colored meadows and peaks rising on

three sides of us as we wait at the narrowest part, the entrance to the valley.

At the end, I can make out the line of the waterfall that might be just a
trickle of a creek now but will rush at runoff season.

The leaves of the trees are all turning gold, as though someone has

brought in a paintbrush with only one color and streaked it across the
landscape.

And then there are the dragons.