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Suddenly, the drake directly to my right; ridden by one of the males from the western provinces; took a massive wave at a dangerous, skewed angle.

The beast’s tail miscalculated the crest, its body twisting violently in mid-air as it launched off the top of the swell. The lateral jerk was catastrophic. The male’s muscles, completely exhausted by twenty-four hours of strain, failed. His grip snapped.

A sharp scream cut through the roar of the ocean storm—a sound instantly swallowed by the wind.

The velocity of the drake acted like a siege engine. The male was launched backward into the air, his body spinning out of control through the sea mist. He flailed against the freezing gale as it carried him directly into the path of the trailing command ship.

CRACK.

The sound of his body colliding with the reinforced hull was a sickening detonation that carried clearly over the thunder in the sky. He hit the bow at terrifying speed, his spine snapping against the sigils before his frame slid down the wet wood and disappeared.

The command ship didn’t slow down. The mages didn’t pause their chanting.

Adrenaline cut through my exhaustion. I twisted my head, my eyes scanning the shifting grid of our formation, my heart hammering against my ribs.

Please let it be Kaelor.

Not Dax.

Not Caspian.

Let it be Kaelor.

I looked toward the left flank, searching for the pale, washed-out eyes of the transfer who had threatened me. My gaze landed on him three drakes over—Kaelor was still locked into his saddle, his face contorted in a tight mask of survival.

The bastard was too sharp to die cleanly.

But as my eyes swept the rest of the V-formation, the disappointment was replaced by relief.

Dax was still there, his teeth bared against the wind as he wrestled his mount through the swell. And at the absolute tip of the vanguard, Caspian remained immovable. The High Captain hadn’t even flinched at the casualty. His broad frame was perfectly aligned with his drake, his sapphire eyes cutting through the driving snow falling from the northern clouds. He led the formation deeper into the dark, completely unyielding.

I locked my knees tighter around the scarred flank of my drake. My frozen fingers gripping the iron handles with renewed strength as the open mouth of the ocean swallowed us whole.

The true open sea lay ahead—a vast, lawless expanse of freezing water separating us from the ancient hunting grounds. The physical toll was reaching its absolute limit, the storm was worsening, and the brand on my shoulder hummed with a cold sting that signaled we were drawing closer to the territory of the dragons.

We had twelve hours left of the crossing.

Twelve hours of isolated survival before our boots touched the black sand of Isath Nalore. And as the next wave loomed out of the dark, one truth remained clear.

That male wouldn’t be the last one to feed the sea before night gave way to dawn.

TWENTY-NINE

The moment my boots met the black sand of Isath Nalore, my knees threatened to give out entirely. Thirty-six hours of clinging for dear life to a sea-drake through freezing, monstrous swells had my muscles screaming in a dozen different languages. Stepping onto solid ground felt like trying to balance on a rolling ship deck that refused to settle.

I sucked in a lungful of air that tasted heavily of wet ash and old sulfur, rolling my shoulders to keep the ice-cold throb of the brand from locking up my right arm. Around us, the surviving candidates dragged themselves out of the surf, looking less like an elite vanguard and more like a soggy pile of half-drowned corpses.

Waiting for us at the threshold of the massive iron gates was the High Priestess. Her skeletal frame was draped in heavy black and silver robes that snapped wildly against the northern gale, her pale, sunken eyes gleaming with terrifying, unblinking judgment.

As we stumbled into a ragged semi-circle before her, she raised a bony hand, her gaze sweeping over our depleted ranks.

“Seventeen,” the Priestess rasped, cutting through the roar of the surf like a dry bone snapping. “Three fed to the deep during the crossing. The mountain accepts their toll. The rest of you... step through the gates.”

Seventeen.

Three bodies swallowed by the black ocean before we’d even drawn a single full breath on the island.

Inside my chest, my heart was hammering against my ribs like a caged bird in a full-blown panic. Every single survival instinct screamed that this trial was a literal death march, but I locked my jaw, squared my shoulders, and pulled my chin up into a mask of stone-cold arrogance. If Kaelor or any of the other high-born vipers were hunting for a crack in my armor, they were going to find a brick wall.