In Fourth Wing Chapter 1, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail is forced by her mother, General Sorrengail, to abandon her training as a scribe to join the deadly Riders Quadrant at Basgiath War College on Conscription Day. Despite being physically disadvantaged and untrained for combat, Violet is prepared by her sister, Mira, with armor and survival advice, including staying away from the notorious wingleader, Xaden Riorson.
A dragon without its rider is a tragedy. A rider without their dragon
is dead.
—Article One, Section One
The Dragon Rider’s Codex
CHAPTER
ONE
Conscription Day is always the deadliest. Maybe that’s why the sunrise is
especially beautiful this morning—because I know it might be my last.
I tighten the straps of my heavy canvas rucksack and trudge up the wide
staircase of the stone fortress I call home. My chest heaves with exertion, my
lungs burning by the time I reach the stone corridor leading to General
Sorrengail’s office. This is what six months of intense physical training has given
me—the ability to barely climb six flights of stairs with a thirty-pound pack.
I’m so fucked.
The thousands of twenty-year-olds waiting outside the gate to enter their
chosen quadrant for service are the smartest and strongest in Navarre. Hundreds
of them have been preparing for the Riders Quadrant, the chance to become one
of the elite, since birth. I’ve had exactly six months.
The expressionless guards lining the wide hallway at the top of the landing
avoid my eyes as I pass, but that’s nothing new. Besides, being ignored is the
best possible scenario for me.
Basgiath War College isn’t known for being kind to…well, anyone, even
those of us whose mothers are in command.
Every Navarrian officer, whether they choose to be schooled as healers,
scribes, infantry, or riders, is molded within these cruel walls over three years,
honed into weapons to secure our mountainous borders from the violent
invasion attempts of the kingdom of Poromiel and their gryphon riders. The
weak don’t survive here, especially not in the Riders Quadrant. The dragons
make sure of that.
“You’re sending her to die!” a familiar voice thunders through the general’s
thick wooden door, and I gasp. There’s only one woman on the Continent foolish
enough to raise her voice to the general, but she’s supposed to be on the border
with the Eastern Wing. Mira.
There’s a muffled response from the office, and I reach for the door handle.
“She doesn’t stand a chance,” Mira shouts as I force the heavy door open and
the weight of my pack shifts forward, nearly taking me down. Shit.
The general curses from behind her desk, and I grab onto the back of the
crimson-upholstered couch to catch my balance.
“Damn it, Mom, she can’t even handle her rucksack,” Mira snaps, rushing to
my side.
“I’m fine!” My cheeks heat with mortification, and I force myself upright.
She’s been back for five minutes and is already trying to save me.
Because you
need saving, you fool.
I don’t want this. I don’t want any part of this Riders Quadrant shit. It’s not
like I have a death wish. I would have been better off failing the admission test
to Basgiath and going straight to the army with the majority of conscripts. But I
can handle my rucksack, and I will handle myself.
“Oh, Violet.” Worried brown eyes look down at me as strong hands brace my
shoulders.
“Hi, Mira.” A smile tugs at the corners of my mouth. She might be here to
say her goodbyes, but I’m just glad to see my sister for the first time in years.
Her eyes soften, and her fingers flex on my shoulders like she might pull me
into a hug, but she steps back and turns to stand at my side, facing our mother.
“You can’t do this.”
“It’s already done.” Mom shrugs, the lines of her fitted black uniform rising
and falling with the motion.
I scoff. So much for the hope of a reprieve. Not that I ever should have
expected, or even hoped for, an ounce of mercy from a woman who’s been made
famous for her lack of it.
“Then undo it,” Mira seethes. “She’s spent her whole life training to become
a scribe. She wasn’t raised to be a rider.”
“Well, she certainly isn’t you, is she, Lieutenant Sorrengail?” Mom braces her
hands on the immaculate surface of her desk and leans in slightly as she stands,
looking us over with narrowed, appraising eyes that mirror the dragons’ carved
into the furniture’s massive legs. I don’t need the prohibited power of mind
reading to know exactly what she sees.
At twenty-six years old, Mira’s a younger version of our mother. She’s tall,
with strong, powerful muscles toned from years of sparring and hundreds of
hours spent on the back of her dragon. Her skin practically glows with health,
and her golden-brown hair is sheared short for combat in the same style as
Mom’s. But more than looks, she carries the same arrogance, the unwavering
conviction that she belongs in the sky. She’s a rider through and through.
She’s everything I’m not, and the disapproving shake of Mom’s head says she
agrees. I’m too short. Too frail. What curves I do have should be muscle, and my
traitorous body makes me embarrassingly vulnerable.
Mom walks toward us, her polished black boots gleaming in the mage lights
that flicker from the sconces. She picks up the end of my long braid, scoffs at the
section just above my shoulders where the brown strands start to lose their
warmth of color and slowly fade to a steely, metallic silver by the ends, and then
drops it. “Pale skin, pale eyes, pale hair.” Her gaze siphons every ounce of my
confidence down to the marrow in my bones. “It’s like that fever stole all your
coloring along with your strength.” Grief flashes through her eyes and her brows
furrow. “I told him not to keep you in that library.”
It’s not the first time I’ve heard her curse the sickness that nearly killed her
while she was pregnant with me or the library Dad made my second home once
she’d been stationed here at Basgiath as an instructor and he as a scribe.
“I love that library,” I counter. It’s been more than a year since his heart
finally failed, and the Archives are still the only place that feels like home in this
giant fortress, the only place where I still feel my father’s presence.
“Spoken like the daughter of a scribe,” Mom says quietly, and I see it—the
woman she was while Dad was alive. Softer. Kinder…at least for her family.
“I am the daughter of a scribe.” My back screams at me, so I let my pack slip
from my shoulders, guiding it to the floor, and take my first full breath since
leaving my room.
Mom blinks, and that softer woman is gone, leaving only the general.
“You’re the daughter of a rider, you are twenty years old, and today is
Conscription Day. I let you finish your tutoring, but like I told you last spring, I
will not watch one of
my children enter the Scribe Quadrant, Violet.”
“Because scribes are so far beneath riders?” I grumble, knowing perfectly
well that riders are the top of the social and military hierarchy. It helps that
their bonded dragons roast people for fun.
“Yes!” Her customary composure slips. “And if you dare walk into the tunnel
toward the Scribe Quadrant today, I will rip you out by that ridiculous braid and
put you on the parapet myself.”
My stomach turns over.
“Dad wouldn’t want this!” Mira argues, color flushing up her neck.
“I loved your father, but he’s dead,” Mom says, as if giving the weather
report. “I doubt he wants much these days.”
