Page 75 of FoolSilver
We all knew the drill.
My heart pounded. Worry for the heirs, for every soul packed into this fortress, clamped down on my chest.
Around me the room came apart at the seams. Over half of the first-years jumped to their feet at once, chairs scraping, breath going short and shallow. I could read it on every face: the instinct to run, to hide, to be anywhere but a building the enemies were about to come down on. A girl two rows over had gone white to the lips. A boy gripped his desk like it might hold him up. Every one of them wanted to bolt.
“Discipline!” LieutenantVesper shouted, and the whole room flinched. “You’ve been trained for this.”
She ordered them to the underground shelters—every major building had one, for cadets and civilians.
Their training held. No one screamed. No one shoved. The cadets filed out in tight rows and funneled toward the shelter. They weren’t ready for the fight coming. Green cadets in a battle like this one would only get underfoot, and the officers wouldn’t waste a single one of them for nothing.
I skated the other way, hard and fast, away from the shelters. Lieutenant Vesper came after me.
“Cadet Max?—”
I lifted my arm. The Coldiron armguard peeled off my wrist and flew apart into two chakrams, their edges glinting.
Her eyes went wide.
“I’m joining the fight,” I said.
She gave me one short nod and turned back to herd the rest of them underground.
I shot out the doors, and Bryn fell in at my side.
“You need to go with them,” I started.
“Not a chance,” she said. “I go where you go. I’m on the drill roster now, remember?”
One day on the roster, and she was already bragging about it. But I nodded anyway. “Stay sharp.”
“Always,” she said. “And I’ve got your six.”
I skated flat out, and she kept pace. Barely, but she did. All that training she’d ground through while I was deployed had paid off.
It was disciplined chaos.
Soldiers poured into the rear of the fortress, slotting into formation even as they ran. Out past the walls, dark specks raced in from the far sky, swelling by the second, and the sound arrived a beat behind them—the heavy thud of wings, and under it a chorus of shrieks that scraped down the spine.
So many of them. My blood went cold.
I had a sinking certainty they’d come for the academy, the soft belly of the fortress, where the unblooded cadets and the civilians lived. The vampire army held the ground to the east.But it was high noon, and at high noon vampires were at their weakest. Whoever sent this horde had chosen the hour on purpose.
It changed nothing. The vampire warriors were already up on the defense walls, trading their strength against the brutal sun, skin reddening where the light found it, holding the line regardless.
Nikolai led them, the one among them the noon sun couldn’t touch, his voice cutting cold and clear over the rampart. Archers angled their bows at the sky. Volleys nocked and ready.
Shit. I should have forged a quiver of Coldiron arrows, but I’d been hoarding the metal for the Haven. Who’d have guessed the next strike would land this fast? Drakken’s voice cracked through my head, an old drill-yard bark.War waits for no one, cadet.
I cut into the center of the training field. Drakken was already there, barking orders into the melee until his generals and commanders peeled off to run the ground defense.
I set myself ready. Bryn planted herself at my shoulder, her spear angled at the sky. We’d ended up among the Spartans, and no one told me to clear out. They knew me. And because Bryn stood beside me, no one barked at her to leave either.
Jeeps tore back and forth across the field. Elite Fae, shifters, and hybrids poured in from the south and west to thicken the line.
Then Drakken shifted.
It happened between one breath and the next—his body folding outward, bone and shadow stretching long, gold scales pouring over him like spilled coins. The air cracked with heat. Where the man had stood, a dragon rose, black and gold and enormous, wings unfurling wide enough to throw the field into shade. He settled in the heart of the chaos, and his molten gaze swung around and found me.
