Fourth Wing -

Then another voice—louder, raw, and utterly insane—answered: No. This is where you start.

As he walked away, the rain began to fall harder. I looked down at my hands. The knuckles were split open. The skin was raw.

Down. Down into the maw where broken bodies of failed cadets lay like offerings to the dragons nesting in the cliffs above. I saw a glint of bone. A scrap of maroon cloak.

“Welcome to the Quadrant, Rookie,” he said, loud enough for the crowd to hear. “The dragons won’t care that you’re fragile. They’ll smell your desperation. They’ll taste your lies.” Fourth Wing

I was standing in it.

“Next!” the Wingleader barked. His name was Xaden Riorson, and the shadows beneath his eyes looked sharp enough to cut glass. A scar bisected his left brow—a gift from a rebellion he’d led at seventeen. He didn’t look at me like he looked at the others. He looked at me like I was a sentence already carried out.

I pulled.

My body betrayed me. I looked.

I threw myself forward.

I stepped onto the stone.

Because for the first time in my life, I wasn’t reading about the storm.

I placed my palm against the cold stone of the Riders’ Quadrant gate. The bas-relief of a wyvern, wings pinned in eternal agony, seemed to sneer at me.

My fingers caught the far lip of the next stone segment. The wet granite tried to reject my grip, but I held. My shoulders screamed. The muscles in my arms, built only from carrying books and sweeping infirmary floors, tore against my skeleton. I looked down at my hands