Fourth Wing -

I knew that. Everyone knew that. My bones were too light, my frame too slender for the weight of dragon-scale armor. My eyes, a shade of hazel too soft for the killing fields, had been deemed “insufficient” by the Scribe Quadrant’s entrance exam. Too imaginative. Too prone to lying.

I stepped onto the stone.

“And if you survive the Threshing,” he added, turning his back on me, “try not to die during the War Games. It’s a waste of a good uniform.” Fourth Wing

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.

“It’s cold,” I lied.

A crack spiderwebbed beneath my left foot. The ancient mortar, dissolved by a century of autumn rains, gave way. A chunk the size of my fist tumbled into the abyss. I didn’t hear it land.

I collapsed to my knees, heaving.

Slick, black granite glistened under a bruised sky, each gust of wind from the Dragon’s Spine sending a fine spray of rain across the narrow bridge. Three hundred feet below, the jagged teeth of the ravine waited to pulverize whatever flesh lost its nerve.

Don't look down. Looking down is a confession of fear. I knew that

But I wasn’t lying about this: I would rather fall to my death on the rocks below than live another day as a silent, ink-stained ghost in the Archives.

Xaden crouched down until his face was level with mine. Up close, his eyes weren't black—they were the deep, violent violet of a brewing storm. My eyes, a shade of hazel too soft