Read Chapter 2: First Flight

Dawn came the color of bruises, and Elara stood at the edge of the training yard with her heart trying to crawl out through her ribs.

Ignis waited at the far end, a mountain of burnished copper scales and patient amber eyes. Steam curled from his nostrils in lazy ribbons. The saddle on his back looked like it belonged to a different creature entirely—all polished dark leather and silver buckles, gleaming with the Academy's sun-and-scale crest.

"Don't think about falling," said a dry voice behind her.

Elara turned. A woman stood there, thin as a whip, with a scar that carved a white line through her left eyebrow. She wore the gray leathers of an instructor, but no rank pins—not even a name.

"Excuse me?"

"Thought about it, didn't you." The woman didn't smile. "Everyone does, first flight. The trick is to be so busy thinking about everything else you run out of room for it."

Elara's mouth went dry. "Is there an everything else?"

"Grip. Breathing. Where your hands are. Where you look. What the dragon's telling you." The instructor nodded toward Ignis. "He's been waiting nine years. Don't make him wait longer."

She walked off before Elara could ask anything else—her name, why she was here, whether anyone had ever died on their first flight. The last question hung in the cold air along with the steam from Ignis's nostrils.

Elara crossed the yard. Her boots were still the stable-hand ones, soft and worn, not suited for stirrups. She'd been given a riding jacket, at least—plain gray wool that itched at her neck—but the Academy hadn't had time to outfit her with proper gloves, proper boots, a proper anything.

Ignis lowered his head as she approached. His eye, level with her chest, was a disk of molten gold. Something passed through her—not words, not images, but a warmth like a hand on her shoulder. *You are late,* it seemed to say, though he'd made no sound.

"I know," she whispered. "I'm sorry."

He huffed. Steam fogged her face. She took it for forgiveness.

The mounting block had already been positioned. Climbing it felt like climbing a gallows. She swung her leg over the saddle and immediately felt wrong—too high, too exposed, too much space between her and the ground. Her hands found the pommel and gripped until her knuckles went pale.

"Good," said a voice in her ear. The scarred instructor had materialized at the block's base without a sound. "Now check your saddlebags."

"My what?"

"If you're carrying cargo, you need to know what. Check."

Elara fumbled with the leather strap at the saddle's front. The bag was small, barely larger than a loaf of bread. Inside, her fingers brushed something cold and metallic.

She pulled it out.

A locket, silver and tarnished, small enough to fit in her palm. The chain was delicate, clearly meant for a woman's neck rather than a dragon's saddle. Elara turned it over and her breath caught.

The crest was a rampant dragon, wings spread, claws extended—but not the sun-and-scale of the Academy. This was a dragon crowned, breathing what looked like stars rather than fire. She'd never seen it before in her life.

"Ignis," she breathed. "Where did this come from?"

The dragon shifted beneath her, a tremor that ran through his whole body. The warmth pressed against her mind again, but this time it wasn't comfort. It felt like urgency. Like *hurry.*

"Open it," the instructor said from below. Her voice had changed—flat. Watchful.

Elara's fingers shook as she worked the latch. The locket sprang open. Inside, nestled in faded velvet, was a single scale.

Not copper like Ignis's hide. Not gray like the academy dragons. This scale was pale silver, nearly translucent, catching the weak dawn light and throwing it back in colors that didn't exist.

"Where—" Elara started.

"Put it away," the instructor cut in. "Now."

There was something in her voice that made Elara obey. She snapped the locket shut and shoved it in her jacket pocket. The warmth from Ignis settled, but didn't fully recede.

The instructor stood very still, watching her pocket. "That belonged to your mother."

Elara's world tilted. "I don't—I don't have a mother. I was left at the stables. The head groom found me in a basket, wrapped in—" She stopped. The words had run out of her mouth before she'd thought them. She'd been told this story so many times she'd memorized it, but she'd never had a reason to question it before.

Now, with the locket burning in her pocket and the weight of it pressing against her thigh, she had a reason.

"It belonged," the instructor said slowly, "to a rider who flew with Ignis a long time ago. Before the Academy knew what they had. Before everyone forgot." She looked at Ignis, and something old and tired moved across her face. "He's been waiting for you to be old enough to carry it."

"How do you know her?" Elara's voice cracked. "Who was she?"

The instructor opened her mouth, then closed it. Her scarred eyebrow twitched. "Not now. Questions later. You don't ask a dragon to wait, and you've already kept him waiting once."

She stepped back from the mounting block. "Boots in stirrups. Heels down. Grip with your thighs, not your hands. Look where you want to go, not where you're afraid of going."

"I don't know—"

"You don't have to know. He does." The instructor's voice softened, barely. "Trust that."

Elara forced her boots into the stirrups. Her heels came up automatically; she pressed them down. Her hands were white on the pommel. Ignis's scales were hot through her thin wool trousers. Everything smelled like smoke and copper and possibility.

Then Ignis moved.

It wasn't like anything she'd imagined. It wasn't like a horse's gallop or a bird's takeoff. It was a gathering, a coiling, a deep breath in the chest of the world—and then the ground fell away.

Elara screamed. She couldn't help it. The scream tore out of her throat as the Academy shrank beneath them, as the rooftops became a patchwork quilt, as the wind hit her face with a force she'd never felt before. Her grip on the pommel was the only thing keeping her alive. She was certain of that.

*Breathe,* came a sense that wasn't a voice but felt like one. Ignis's presence pressed warm against the base of her skull. *Look up. Not down.*

She looked up.

The sky opened. Clouds swam beneath them—no, above them, below them, all around them, and for one terrible, glorious moment Elara had no sense of up or down, only of being held aloft by something ancient and alive and *hers.*

Her grip loosened, just slightly. Her heels dropped without her thinking about it. The rhythm of her breathing fell into the rhythm of Ignis's wingbeats without her choosing it.

"Hello," she whispered against the wind.

Ignis banked. The warmth in her skull expanded until it felt like laughter.

Below, the Academy had become a toy. The training yard a speck. And all of it was hers—not because she'd earned it, not because she deserved it, but because an old dragon had looked at her and decided she was worth waiting for.

When they landed, Elara's legs had turned to water. She slid off the mounting block—no, off the dragon, she'd never need the mounting block again, she realized with a dizzy thrill—and nearly collapsed. The scarred instructor was waiting with folded arms.

"Better than I expected," the woman said. "You didn't throw up."

"Who was she?" Elara demanded. The locket pressed against her ribs, a challenge. "My mother. The rider. Who was she?"

The instructor was quiet for a long moment. "Her name was Maelis. She was the best rider this Academy ever produced, and she died before she could teach them anything." The scarred eyebrow rose. "She rode Ignis. She carried that locket. And she had a daughter who was left at the stables thirteen years ago with no name and no family and no one to claim her."

Elara's throat closed.

Maelis. She had a mother's name now. She had a locket, a scale, a crest she'd never seen. She had more questions than she'd had at dawn.

"Ignis chose you," the instructor said, "because you're hers. And that means the Academy isn't the only thing watching you." She glanced up at the sky, at the pale morning light. "Dragons are dying out. Have been for years—riddles dwindling, hatchlings failing, eggs going cold. The Academy's desperate, and desperate people make desperate choices."

"Who's watching me?" Elara asked.

The instructor looked at her. In the same flat voice, she said, "Anyone who wants to know why the last free dragon picked a stable hand just as the species is dying. You didn't just join a school, girl. You became a mystery." She turned to walk away.

"Wait," Elara called. "I don't even know your name."

The instructor paused, half-turning. "Sariah. And if you want answers about your mother, you'll find them in the Academy's archives. Seal of the crown, third shelf, war records from the last dragon war." She walked off.

Elara stood in the yard as the sun rose, the locket growing warm against her chest, and understood that her first flight had ended and a far longer one had just begun.