Read Chapter 10: The First Turn

The saddle leather hung in strips from my worktable, each one sliced thin and pinned flat. I'd been at it since midnight, testing the mineral deposits with vinegar and oil, watching for the telltale reaction. The book had been right. Every strap from the Academy's own tack room left a faint green residue when treated, a mineral called mordant iron that turned harmless unless heated and pressed against living flesh for hours at a time.

And dragons wore their saddles for every lesson, every flight, every moment of their captivity.

I left the leather where it lay and walked the corridor to Lady Voss's study without knocking. The hour was early enough that only servants stirred, but I didn't care anymore. Let them see. Let them whisper. Let Cedric mock me from whatever gallery he haunted.

Voss looked up from her ledger when I pushed through her door unannounced. She looked unsurprised, which was worse than anger.

"Elara. You've been busy."

"You knew." I slammed the leather strip onto her desk. "The saddles. Mordant iron. It's been poisoning every dragon in this Academy for months, and you knew."

She set down her pen and folded her hands. "Silver-spun leather. The finest in the realm, treated to resist weather and wear. The mordant protects the leather across decades of use. It's only when—"

"Only when it's worn for hours against a dragon's hide," I cut in. "Only when exercise heats the metal and a dragon's own body temperature does the rest. It's a slow, quiet poison. And you ordered the largest mounts evacuated to keep them alive, didn't you? You didn't want to lose your best war dragons to your own equipment."

"Do you know how long I've served this Academy, Elara?"

"I don't care—"

"Twenty-three years." Voss rose from her chair, and the softness dropped from her voice. "Twenty-three years of watching dragon numbers fall. At first it was simple—wild territory shrinking, fewer eggs each season. Then the blight began. We lost eleven dragons in five years, and we couldn't explain why. Their riders grew sick too. Fatigue. Weakness. A bond slowly fraying until the dragon couldn't hold to its rider anymore."

She picked up the leather strip and turned it over in her hands. "The saddles are a comfort to the dragons, here. They're trained to feel protected by them. But I suppose you've already learned that Ignis refuses most saddles. A dragon who never agreed to carry leather is a dragon who never agreed to obey."

My stomach dropped. "Ignis—"

"Has been spared the worst of it." Voss set the strip down with finality. "I've watched you, Elara. A girl from the stables who reads forbidden books and pries into affairs that do not concern her. I knew you would find this eventually. I'd hoped it would be later."

"It's poisoning them. Every dragon in your Academy. It's killing them and you're just letting it—"

"It keeps them manageable." Voss's voice sharpened to a blade's edge. "For a century, we've used silver-spun leather to ground the dragons, to temper their wildness, to make them trainable. Without it, the bonds between rider and dragon are less certain. More feral. Did you notice how the largest mounts went first? The oldest, the strongest, the ones most likely to challenge their riders' authority. I could control them no other way."

I stared at her. "You made your dragons sick on purpose."

"I made my dragons *controllable*. The wild ones nearly tore this Academy apart at founding. The riders needed an advantage—"

"An advantage that's killing them!"

"Dragons who cannot be controlled are a greater danger than dragons who are slowly unwell!" Voss slammed her hand on the desk. "The evacuation is nearly complete. The strongest pairs leave this week. The blight will be blamed on the northern rot, as it was before. This Academy will recover, with fewer but more loyal dragons, and we'll breed the remainder under new containment."

"No." The word came out before I could stop it. "I won't let you. I'll tell the other students—"

"You'll tell no one." Voss rounded the desk toward me. "You're a commoner with a stolen place and a dragon that should have chosen a noble line. No family. No patron. No letters of passage from any house of standing. If I expel you for conducting unauthorized research and tampering with Academy equipment, you'll lose your place, your dragon, and your life. The best you can hope for is a quiet dismissal. The worst—" She let the threat hang.

"Threaten me all you like." I felt my hands trembling but kept my voice level. "Ignis chose me. I'll fight for him whatever it costs."

"Then you'll fight from your quarters." Voss strode to the door and flung it open. Several knights already waited in the hall—I hadn't heard them, hadn't noticed the shadows. "Confine Elara to her chambers until further notice. Take the dragon to quarantine."

"No." I pulled back from the guards as they stepped toward me. "Ignis. Where is Ignis?"

"Where he will be safe," Voss said, "from further influence. You've had your chance at the life my Academy grants. I gave you the degree of trust your origins earned you, and you've repaid it by tearing at the foundation of what we've built. Consider your confinement a kindness."

They took my arms, and I let them pull me from the study, watching the leather strip still lying across Voss's desk like a confession unpenned. She caught my eye before the door closed.

"Every dragon who lives to serve is worth the cost of control, Elara," she said, quiet now, almost kind. "You'll understand someday, when you've seen what the wild ones do when left to their own will. They don't love their riders. They endure them."

Then the door closed, and the knights marched me down the corridor I'd walked freely only an hour before, past etched windows depicting dragon knights of old, their saddles gleaming silver in the morning light. I'd memorized those images as a stable girl, dreaming of becoming one of them.

I hadn't known the silver in the pictures was a leash.

They locked me in my quarters. Six doors down from the room where an anonymous book sat hidden beneath my mattress, its warning finally understood. And somewhere beyond these walls, my dragon was being led away to quarantine—a place I'd never seen, whose existence I'd only learned tonight in Voss's own ledger, marked with a single symbol that matched the medical wing's most distant cells.