Unedited Sneak Peek
Chapter 1
The Choosing
The morning mist clung to the village of Merrithorn like it had decided to settle there forever. It wasn’t a gentle mist. It was a damp, heavy blanket that pressed itself along the cobbled streets and softened every sound until even the crows were quiet. Kiera stepped out of her family’s modest stone house and felt the cold air bite her cheeks. The sharp sting pulled that familiar ache in her chest awake, the one she’d carried for as long as she could remember. Breathing, at this time of the morning, always felt like dragging air past rusty nails.
She gripped the official summons in her hand. The paper felt stiff, crisp, and far too clean for a girl like her. The Regent’s seal looked wrong against the rough crust of bread her mother had shoved at her in a flurry of useless, worried motions. Kiera still felt the imprint of her father’s last look. He’d only nodded once, but that one nod held everything he didn’t have the words for. Be strong. Be wiser than fear. Come back if you can.
The Riders’ Academy wasn’t just a place. It lived in every whispered story that moved through Merrithorn’s market on slow afternoons. It flickered in the shadows that swept over the grain fields when dragons patrolled the skies. The Academy was legend and threat and hope all wrapped into one, its name carried with the same reverence people used for the gods. When someone was chosen, the whole village felt the weight of it.
Service was mandatory on a person’s seventeenth year. Only a few from each village were called but when the Realm called your name that was that. If you had magic, even a spark, you went to the Riders’ Academy to try for a dragon bond. If you didn’t, you went straight into training for the infantry. There was no arguing with the Regent’s decree. It didn’t matter if your lungs hurt and you coughed up blood every day, or your hands shook, or you’d never shown so much as a flicker of anything magical in your life.
Kiera never expected her name to be called. She was the sick girl, the quiet one, the one who got lost in crowds even when she stood still in the middle of them. People didn’t really look at her as much as they looked through her. Her illness made hiding impossible, but it also made her forgettable. Why the Regent’s list had included her was a mystery she still couldn’t wrap her head around. But here she was. Summoned like she mattered.
The weight of that reality settled in the pit of her stomach as she walked toward the lane’s end. Her breath fogged in the cold air. Her fingers trembled around the summons. This wasn’t a short term decision. This was the rest of her life being crammed into a single sheet of parchment with an official seal on it.
A wooden cart waited at the end of the lane. Two guards stood beside it, their cloaks were the pale gray of the winter skies, their faces were set in stone. Their expressions didn’t shift when they saw her. She wasn’t special to them. She was just another recruit caught in the gears of the Realm’s machinery.
Inside the cart, a handful of youths clutched their own summonses. Their faces were pale and rigid. No one dared speak. Every unsaid fear hung thick in the air like the fog itself. Their futures were no longer theirs. They belonged to the Realm now.
Kiera climbed into the cart and folded herself into a corner. The wood was cold beneath her, the boards rough. She wanted to disappear into the shadow there, to pretend for a breath or two that she wasn’t visible, that she wasn’t being carried away from everything she’d ever known. The cart lurched forward, jolting so hard her teeth clicked. Merrithorn dissolved behind them, swallowed by the mist as if it had never been real.
Five of the recruits sat within arm’s reach. They were silent, cocooned in their own dread. Kiera studied them because studying people was second nature to her. When you were the quiet one, the unnoticed one, you learned a lot by watching.
Luke Dravaris was the first she recognized. He lived across the square in Merrithorn, and he’d always had too much energy bottled up inside of him. He never sat still. He couldn’t now. He was tall and wiry with copper hair that stuck out like it argued with his comb every morning. A faint scowl sharpened his features, and his fingers twitched near his belt like he was itching to grab something he wasn’t allowed to bring.
Across from him sat Jerod Holt, a boy from Clearwater. His shoulders looked carved from river rock, broad and unyielding. His mud caked boots were planted like he meant to root himself to the cart floor. His expression was unreadable, with his eyes steady and calm. If he was afraid, nothing showed on the surface. Kiera doubted anything rattled him easily.
Next to Jerod sat Morgan Caivryn. Kiera knew her face from the Merrithorn market where Morgan’s mother sold trinkets. Morgan was slim, her hair a pale gold that was striking with the storm cloud gray of her eyes. She traced invisible shapes on her knee with one finger. The movements were fluid, rhythmic, like she felt the wind even here inside this cramped cart. Rumor said she had Skyborne Clan blood, and the quiet certainty in her posture made Kiera believe it.
Then there was the girl with soft auburn hair who sat near Kiera. She offered a small smile, tentative and kind. “Ally Strafton,” she said gently. “South Dunsvale.” Her deep, calm voice fit her the way the marshes fit her home, slow and steady. There was vulnerability in her eyes, but also a quiet honesty that made Kiera nod back without thinking. Three other girls sat quietly, lost in their own thoughts.
There was another boy with silver hair so striking that it almost glowed in the dim morning light. “Corin Bellens.” He stated as he leaned against the cart frame with deliberate stillness, with his hands tucked into his sleeves. His eyes flicked between them all, evaluating, measuring. When he spoke, it was soft. “I think I might belong with Aquaeris.” He didn’t have to say it. The calm around him already gave it away.
Luke snorted. The sharp, cynical sound cracked through the quiet. “Don’t get too cozy. Half of us won’t make it past the testing.” A couple of other boys scooted a little further away from him, increasing their distance as much as possible.
Morgan muttered, “How reassuring,” without looking up.
Ally glanced at Kiera. She hesitated but pushed through the nerves sitting in her throat. “What about you?” she asked softly. “Do you feel called to any clan?”
Kiera cleared her throat, surprised at how unused she was to speaking in groups. “None,” she said quietly. “I don’t have fire or wind or water or stone. I have… nothing. I’m only here because the Regent doesn’t take no for an answer.”
Luke’s expression twisted into something sharp. “So you’re clanless.”
Kiera met his stare and didn’t look away. It surprised even her. “Apparently, that’s a crime now,” she said calmly. She felt something settle inside her. Not strength exactly, but a refusal to shrink from his judgment. If she was going to be thrown into a life that she didn’t choose, she wasn’t going to apologize for existing. The cart jolted again, and the mist swallowed the road ahead. The Choosing had begun.
