Page 63 - Fourth Wing

straight for us—at speed.

Just when I think they’re about to fly overhead, they pitch vertically,
whip the air with their huge semitranslucent wings, and stop, the gusts of

wing-made wind so powerful that I nearly stagger backward as they land on

the outer semicircular wall. Their chest scales ripple with movement, and
their razor-sharp talons dig into the edge of the wall on either side. Now I

understand why the walls are ten feet thick. It’s not a barrier. The edge of

the fortress is a damned perch.
My mouth drops open. In my five years of living here, I’ve never seen

this, but then again, I’ve never been allowed to watch what happens on

Conscription Day.
A few cadets scream.

Guess everyone wants to be a dragon rider until they’re actually twenty
feet away from one.

Steam blasts my face as the navy-blue one directly in front of me exhales

through its wide nostrils. Its glistening blue horns rise above its head in an
elegant, lethal sweep, and its wings flare momentarily before tucking in, the

tip of their top joint crowned by a single fierce talon. Their tails are just as
fatal, but I can’t see them at this angle or even tell which breed of dragon

each is without that clue.

All are deadly.
“We’re going to have to bring the masons in again,” Dain mutters as

chunks of rock crumble under the dragons’ grips, crashing to the courtyard

in boulders the size of my torso.
There are three dragons in various shades of red, two shades of green—

like Teine, Mira’s dragon—one brown like Mom’s, one orange, and the

enormous navy one ahead of me. They’re all massive, overshadowing the
structure of the citadel as they narrow their golden eyes at us in absolute

judgment.
If they didn’t need us puny humans to develop signet abilities from