Page 214 - Fourth Wing

Just because you survive Threshing doesn’t mean you’ll survive

the ride to the flight field. Being chosen isn’t the only test, and if
you can’t hold your seat, then you’ll fly straight into the
ground.

—PAGE FIFTY, THE BOOK OF BRENNAN

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

Terror clogs my throat and stutters my heart. Air rushes past me as I
plummet toward the mountainous terrain beneath, and the sun catches the

scales of the golden one far beneath me.

I’m going to die. That’s the only possible outcome.
Vises clamp around my ribs and over my shoulders, stopping my descent,

and my body jerks with whiplash as I’m yanked upward again.
“You’re making us look bad. Stop it.”

I’m clasped in Tairn’s claws. He’s actually…caught me instead of finding

me unworthy and letting me fall to my death. “It’s not like it’s easy to stay
on your back when you’re doing acrobatics!” I shout up.

He glances down at me, and I swear the ridge above his eye arches.

“Simple flight is hardly acrobatics.”
“There is absolutely nothing simple about you!” I wrap my arms around

the knuckles of his claws, noting that his sharp talons are draped harmlessly

around the sides of my body. He’s huge, but he’s also careful as he flies us
along the mountain.

He’s one of the deadliest dragons in Navarre. Professor Kaori’s lesson.
What else had he said? The only unbonded black dragon hadn’t agreed to

bond this year. He hadn’t even been seen in the last five years. His rider