Read Chapter 3: The Academy Gates

The carriage that Lady Voss had arranged was lavish enough to make Elara’s hands sweat against the velvet seat. She had never sat on anything so soft. Through the window, the Academy swelled into view, not so much a building as a carved mountain of white stone and glass, its towers spearing the morning clouds. Pennants of every noble house snapped in the wind, and the iron gates at its base stood wide enough to swallow a dozen dragons whole.

And there were dragons. So many of them. They circled the high turrets, gliding on great amber wings, or perched along the crenellations like jewelled gargoyles. One, a deep bronze, exhaled a plume of smoke that turned gold in the dawn light. Elara pressed her forehead to the glass, breath catching.

This was where Ignis lived. Where she would live, if she could survive it.

The carriage rattled through the gates, and the grounds opened into a cobbled courtyard bustling with cadets. They moved in their crisp uniforms—deep green, with silver trim and the Academy’s dragon-and-sword crest over their hearts. Elara looked down at her own clothes: the stable tunic, still stained with hay dust, the heavy wool breeches she had worn for her first bonding flight. She hadn’t been issued a uniform. She hadn’t been issued anything.

The door swung open, and the driver gave her a look edged with impatience. She stepped out, boots hitting the stone with a hollow clap. Several cadets at the far end of the courtyard stopped mid-conversation. A girl with pale blonde braids whispered behind her hand, eyes sliding over Elara like she was a stain on the walkway.

“That’s her,” someone said, not quietly. “The stable girl.”

“The one Ignis chose.”

The name still made her stomach turn. Ignis. The great red dragon that had rejected heirs, lords, and once a princess—had lowered his head to a frightened girl with dirt under her nails. Elara still didn’t know why. She half-believed it was a mistake, that any moment Ignis would roar and the Academy would revoke her probation.

“You.”

The voice was sharp as a blade. A boy her age stood before her, taller than the others, his uniform immaculate, his dark hair cropped close. Brass insignia glinted at his collar—House Ashford. Cedric.

He looked at her the way a cat looks at a cornered rat. “They didn’t tell you to clean up?” He let the pause draw out, just long enough for the snickers around them to grow. “Or did you think the stables ended at the gates?”

Elara kept her chin level. She had carried water for draft horses twice her weight, mucked stalls in hailstorms, and mended leather with a needle held between her teeth to spare her fingers. A noble boy with a sharp tongue was not the scariest thing she had faced.

But she said nothing. Angering him now, in front of everyone, would only prove what he wanted proven.

Cedric stepped closer, close enough that she could smell the cinder-scent of his leathers—he had clearly already flown his dragon this morning. “My offer stands,” he said, his voice pitched for her ears alone. “Prove you belong, or walk away with dignity. I’ll even vouch that you tripped on accident.”

Behind her, someone coughed a laugh. Elara’s jaw tightened.

Before she could answer, a hand clamped onto Cedric’s shoulder and shoved him back a step. “Ashford.” The new voice was brisk, female, carrying the weight of habit. “The Headmaster wants you on the North roof. Now.”

Cedric’s mouth thinned, but he didn’t argue. He shot Elara one last look—cold, promising—and strode off, two cadets falling in behind him like shadows.

Elara turned to face her rescuer. The girl was short, barely up to Elara’s shoulder, with a round face and a nest of copper curls tied loosely back. Freckles dusted her nose. Her uniform was properly worn but somehow rumpled, and her name badge read *Fiora Maren*.

“Don’t mind him,” Fiora said, waving a dismissive hand. “Cedric’s only mean because his father told him to be a dragon rider before he could wipe his own nose.” She grinned, revealing a slight gap between her front teeth. “I’m Fiora. You’re the stable girl, right? The one everyone’s talking about?”

“That’s me,” Elara said, wary. “The stable girl.”

“Oh, don’t look at me like that. I’m not a gossip—well, I am. But I’m a *friendly* gossip.” Fiora grabbed Elara’s arm before she could protest and tugged her across the courtyard, past clusters of cadets who parted to let them pass but didn’t hide their stares. “Ignore them. By midterm, they’ll forget you were ever a stable hand. They’ll just think you’re strange and quiet, which is half the noble personality anyway.”

Elara couldn’t help the ghost of a smile. She let herself be hauled up a broad stone staircase, beneath an arch carved with winged figures, and into a long hall lined with portraits. Every face was stern, noble, leathered by age and war. At the end of the hall, a massive stained-glass window depicted a knight and a dragon, both silhouetted in fire, both rising toward a crown of light.

“That’s the founding of the Academy,” Fiora said, slowing as they passed. “Two hundred years ago, when dragons were thick as crows. They chose riders, and the riders chose to protect the realm.”

“Were they really that common?”

Fiora’s face flickered, something less bright passing through her eyes. “Yes.” She lowered her voice. “That’s the thing, you see. Everyone likes to pretend it’s fine. But my mother works in the records office—she’s a clerk, not noble, same as you—and she says the hatching numbers have been falling for a decade.” She glanced around, then leaned closer. “Last year, only two eggs hatched. This year? None.”

Elara remembered the instructor’s warning in the yard, the heaviness in his voice. *The dragons are dying out.* She had thought it meant old ones, sick ones. She hadn’t known it meant no eggs at all.

Fiora rattled on, steering her into a narrower stairwell. “The Academy’s desperate, is what it comes down to. They’d take a chimney sweep if a dragon chose one. So you showing up isn’t a scandal—it’s a miracle.” She paused, tapping her chin. “Or a threat, depending on who you ask. The old families can’t stand that their bloodlines might not matter anymore.”

Elara’s fingers brushed the collar of her tunic, where beneath the rough wool, against the hollow of her throat, hung the silver locket. She hadn’t taken it off since she found it in Ignis’s saddle. The scale inside had warmed twice during their flight, and the crest embossed on the lid—a serpent eating its own tail—was not one she could place. She had no idea who had left it there, or why, or what it meant. She only knew it felt critical. Like something would break if she lost it.

She pressed the shape of it through the cloth, making sure it was still there. Fiora, mercifully, didn’t notice.

“Here we are,” Fiora announced, pushing open a sturdy oak door. “Room 47. I requested the two-person dormitory. No, I requested it *for* you—I had single, but I wanted a roommate. Is that weird? I don’t care if it’s weird.”

The room was small but warm, with two narrow beds, two wooden desks, and a diamond-paned window that looked out over the dragon yard. Far below, a young rider was running leather straps along the flank of a patient grey dragon. Elara stared for a moment longer than she meant to.

“The big red one is yours, right?” Fiora dropped onto the bed nearest the window, which bounced with a creak. “I’ve seen Ignis from the ground. He’s magnificent. Also terrifying. Does he like you? Does he do tricks?”

“I wouldn’t call them tricks,” Elara said. She sat on her bed, running her palm over the blanket. It was finer than the fleece in the stables, softer than anything she’d owned. “He mostly just. Watches me. And disapproves when I’m clumsy.”

Fiora laughed. “That’s better than most. My dragon, Slate, fell asleep mid-bonding ceremony. Lady Voss had to wake him with a bucket of fish.”

Elara laughed despite herself. The knot in her chest loosened, just a fraction.

But as she leaned back on her elbows, the locket shifted against her skin, cold and insistent. The crest burned there like a secret with teeth. She had no proof it mattered. No proof it meant anything at all. But the cadets in the courtyard, Cedric’s barely concealed hatred, Lady Voss’s measuring gaze—something was happening, larger than a girl from the stables. Larger than her probation. She could feel it coming together like a storm she couldn’t name yet.

“Fiora,” she said, slowly. “The dragons that are dying out. Is anyone asking why?”

The other girl’s grin faded. She twisted a curl around her finger, studying Elara with sudden seriousness. “People ask,” she said. “Just not twice.”

“What do you mean?”

“The only ones who ever pushed for answers were the old masters, the ones who’d ridden for forty years. And one by one, they all stopped. Retired early. Moved to the coast.” Fiora’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Or vanished. There was a rider three years back, a woman from the Vex Hollows. She said she found something in the deep nesting caves, under the mountain. She said she was going to show the council.” Fiora shrugged, but there was nothing light in it. “She never came back.”

The locket was cold. Elara touched it again, beneath her shirt, hidden from everyone but herself.

She didn’t know when she decided. Maybe it was in the courtyard, under Cedric’s sneer. Maybe it was standing at the window, watching the grey dragon and its rider work together in easy harmony. Maybe it was the fear in Fiora’s voice, and the warning she felt rising from the silver at her throat.

But as Elara sat there, on a finer bed than she’d ever known, in a room that smelled of linen and cedar, she understood what she had to do.

She would pass her probation. She would master Ignis, and the Academy, and every test they threw at her. And she would find out what the rider from Vex Hollows had found—before the same silence swallowed her whole.