CHAPTER FOUR

ELARA

THAT NIGHT, ELARA SNUCK OUT OF HER HOUSE FOR THE SECOND time in her life.

As she landed hard in her father’s garden, nearly rolling her ankle in the process, she wished she weren’t such a coward. The wind felt too cold on her skin. Her heart was beating too quickly. Somewhere in the neighborhood, a stray dog howled, and it sounded like a warning.

Elara was not this person. She was not the one who rebelled. Rebellion gave her anxiety. Faron had been blessed by the gods, channeled their magic, saved the world. Elara had gotten in trouble for not stopping her, for following her without divine protection of her own, for forcing her parents to confront the fear of losing both daughters at once. While Faron had grown into a defiant teen, Elara stayed apologetically within the lines their parents had drawn. Thrived within them, really.

Given her good reputation, maybe if she crawled back inside now, they might forgive her in five years instead of fifty.

But if she crawled back inside now, she would only ever be a hero inside these walls. The rest of the world would make her a footnote in the books written about her sister, if she were ever mentioned at all. And maybe she shouldn’t care about that, but she did. She wanted to matter, too. Sometimes it felt as if she were drowning so deep in Faron’s shadow, no one could hear her screams.

She turned and had to clap a hand over her mouth to stifle a shriek.

Faron stood beneath the cherry tree, crowned in moonlight. She was still wearing her nightgown, a simple white cotton dress embroidered with her initials. It had been a gift from Miss Johnson, an elderly neighbor from down the road who saw the whole town as her family.

Faron spat a cherry pit into the bed of poinsettias to her left. Her eyebrows lifted.

“Who told you?” Elara demanded. “Was it Reeve?”

“If Reeve Warwick told me it was raining outside, I wouldn’t believe him until I was drenched.” Faron folded her arms. “You told me the second you tried to lie. You aren’t good at it. Where are you going?”

Elara considered her options and immediately gave in. “I’m going to join the Sky Battalion. Enlistment opens tomorrow.”

Faron sucked her teeth. “This? You lie to me for this?”

“I thought—I thought you’d be mad.”

“I am mad. What was your plan here? If Mama and Papa wake up and your bed is empty, they’re not just going to call the local police. They’re going to have Aveline’s whole military looking for you. For Irie’s sake, Aveline would send the military herself!”

“I—”

“No,” said Faron, holding up a hand. “You don’t have to tell me you didn’t think this through. I know you didn’t. I’m the liar, Elara, not you. I know you hoped to be chosen as a drake pilot before anyone came looking, and I’m telling you that’s not what’s going to happen.”

Elara’s body went cold. “You don’t think I’ll be chosen as a drake pilot?”

“Of course you’ll be chosen as a drake pilot.” And the way her sister said that, as though it was such an undeniable fact that it wasn’t worth debating, made some of the tension slide from Elara’s shoulders. “Everybody loves you. Why wouldn’t a drake?”

There was something surreal about this moment, standing with her sister in the starlit garden beneath her bedroom window, trampling her father’s thyme and listening to the gods-chosen Childe Empyrean tell Elara that everyone loved her. If it weren’t for the anxiety pulsing under her skin, she would have thought she was still asleep.

“What I’m saying,” Faron continued, “is that if you leave like this, Mama and Papa and the queen and her guards will drag you home by your braids before you ever get the chance to try. It’ll take you over half a day to make it all the way up to Highfort.”

Her sister stood between her and freedom. And she was right, damn her. Elara led Faron away from the still-open window and back into the shadows of the cherry tree. “What do you suggest, then?”

“I can cover for you, make up a story about you wanting to go to the nearest temple and pray for your friends. Something to buy you some time to sign up.”

“The Summit is being held in Port Sol, and they have a temple,” Elara said dubiously. “Why wouldn’t I just pray there?”

“With the Empyrean in town? You’d never get inside before your friends enlisted.”

“I don’t know…”

“Trust me, would you? I’ve been lying to Mama and Papa since I could speak. I’ll handle it.”

Elara kindly did not point out that this was, in fact, a good reason not to trust Faron. Because while Faron told lies large and small, she didn’t usually lie to Elara. Not about something that mattered. Elara trusted her sister more than anyone in the world, and if Faron said she would handle it, then she would handle it.

Most of all, she knew that Elara could do this, and she was willing to help her. Even after Elara’s lies.

“I love you,” Elara finally said. “You know that, right?”

“I love you,” Faron said without hesitation. “And I’ll always be on your side. Okay?” If Elara hugged her more tightly than usual, Faron didn’t comment. Instead, her sister glanced up at the star-flecked sky and added, “You should go. Mama gets up around three in the morning to use the bathroom, and she’ll check our beds if I don’t distract her.”

Elara stared at her. “What in the… How often are you still sneaking in and out of the house at night?”

Faron winked.

Night faded into dawn, dawn into late afternoon, in the time it took Elara to arrive in Highfort and complete registration. Whether she was chosen as a pilot or not, she needed to be physically and mentally competent to enter the Iryan Military Forces. She’d always known that. But the forms and routine physical gave her too much time to think. To worry. To doubt.

By the time she was following the other hopeful cadets, the sun a white-hot globe in the clear blue sky, she had to clench her fists at her sides to keep them from shaking.

It had been five years since Elara had been this close to a drake. Five years, and her first sight of Valor in the center of the Highfort military base was enough to take her breath away. She was mere yards from a drake that had yet to pick its pilots—from a drake that could choose her. All her dreaming, all her praying, all her hard work: It had brought her here. She hoped that Valor could sense her yearning.

That, somehow, the machine yearned for her, too.

She didn’t think she’d ever stop being awed by drakes. At this point, the Sky Battalion had five of them that Elara could name off the top of her head: Liberty, Justice, Mercy, Nobility, and, of course, Valor. The newest commissioned drake had been assigned a butter-yellow color that glittered in the afternoon light. Prominently displayed in the center of its flank was a white sun crowned by a sword that was pointing toward the sky, the symbol of the Renard Castell royal family. Though they had yet to let her and the other potential pilots inside the drake, she’d spent enough time in Nobility to know the layout of the interior by heart.

There was an open room inside every drake’s torso, with an oval cockpit in the middle for one pilot. On either side of the cockpit were stairs, one set that led down to a cargo hold and one set that led up to suites and another cockpit for the second pilot. Though she couldn’t see them from the outside, she knew that there were hidden windows lining the eastern and western sides of the flank for passengers to look through. Finally, north doors fed into the head, which contained a cockpit for the final pilot.

From here, drakes simply looked like a midsize scalestone dragon, with eyes that lit up like spotlights and a mouth that could open to blast magic flame. But they represented San Irie’s long history of taking the pain they’d been dealt and crafting it into victory. Drake pilots were treated the same as the gods and the Childe Empyrean: revered and celebrated. If Valor chose Elara as a pilot, she and Faron would finally be equals.

She was clenching her fists so hard that half-moon divots marked her palms. Elara loosened her hands. Took a breath. Please, Irie, please.

“You’re being quiet back here,” said Wayne, slowing down to keep pace with her.

“I just can’t believe this is happening,” Elara whispered. “I’ve dreamed about this for years and now…”

“It’s here, and it’s terrifying.” Wayne touched her shoulder comfortingly. “But you’re going to be chosen. You know, half the time, you’re just this quiet girl who lives down the street from me. And then you spend time with us, and you turn into this… incredible summoner. I’d say you have an advantage since you’ve already fought in a war, but my father’s certainly not doing better from having made it back alive.” His hand fell to his side, and a shadow passed over his face. “I think we’re the lucky ones, enlisting in peacetime.”

Elara discarded three potential responses to that before they gathered in front of a stone-faced sergeant. Silently, she nudged Wayne’s arm, and he gave her a small smile in return. Then she took a deep breath, smoothed back her braids, and tried to calm the rapid-fire beating of her heart.

The sergeant was a tall, balding man with honey skin, close-cropped hair, and a tag on his right breast that read OWENS. “Hello, potential cadets. We’re very excited to have the next generation of soldiers in front of us here today. As I’m sure you all know, the queen commissioned a new drake for the Sky Battalion, and that drake, Valor, is in need of pilots. Before we prep you for basic, we need to evaluate if you are a match. Any pilots found will require additional training.”

Elara could barely hear him over her rising panic. This was the part that was impossible to prepare for, because no article or book had ever revealed the military secret of how drake pilots were chosen. But Wayne was on her left. Aisha was on her right. Cherry was somewhere behind her. She was not alone in her hope. That made it a little easier to breathe.

“One by one, you’ll enter Valor and sit in the flank cockpit,” said Owens. The fabric of his uniform rippled in the wind as Valor’s stomach door lowered onto the ramp that led up into the main chamber. “No matter what happens in there, don’t be discouraged. There are many ways to serve queen and country in the Iryan Military Forces. That said,” he continued as his dark eyes scanned them, “who wants to go first?”

Elara’s hand shot up, but the sergeant called on a girl with her hair braided back into thick cornrows. She watched the girl disappear into that circle of darkness and waited for… what? That still wasn’t clear. But seconds ticked by in an uneasy silence, occasionally broken by the sound of foot soldiers running drills or drake mechanics carrying tools. Twenty-five seconds. Thirty seconds. Forty-five…

One minute passed.

Sergeant Owens escorted the devastated girl out of the drake, handing her off to another military official. There were still three spots left open, which was good, but the odds that even one pilot was among them had just gone down, which was bad.

Gods, she prayed again, please, please, please.

Aisha was called next. Elara’s fingers curled and loosened at her sides, again and again, for lack of anything to do but wait for what—

That.

The dark hole into which Aisha had marched was no longer dark. A golden glow raced halfway down the ramp, blinding in its sudden beauty, as if Valor were lit from the inside out. And it disappeared slowly, like the lingering details of a dream in the light of morning.

“There we go,” Sergeant Owens said, impressed. “I honestly didn’t think we’d find a pilot this early in the week.”

Aisha stumbled out of the drake a moment later. Owens hurried to help her, but she waved him away. The glow lived within her now, making her look different. Stronger. She reached the end of the ramp and ran her fingers over the line of it, a fond expression on her face. Valor seemed to sparkle in response.

Two spots left open.

Unlikely that Valor would choose another pilot from Deadegg.

Unlikely but not impossible.

Elara hoped her smile held steady as Aisha walked past her. She wasn’t sure that she was properly in control of her body anymore. Two spots was flashing behind her eyelids every time she blinked.

And then she was called.

Her blood rushed in her ears.

Her feet clanked on the ramp.

The darkness swallowed her whole.

Elara’s eyes adjusted quickly. She was in the large inner room, surrounded by the metal that made up the drake’s flank. It looked exactly like the one in Nobility, but this one was so large that it made her feel insignificant.

The door to the flank cockpit was open, beckoning her closer. She stepped inside, trying to keep her breathing steady. There was a cushioned chair in front of a flat panel with a dark screen. There were no buttons, no levers, nothing but a double-strap seat belt looping over the chair and a neck pillow built into the headrest. This was technological advancement beyond anything she’d ever seen in Deadegg, where mule-drawn carts rolled in place of stagecoaches and electrical lighting had yet to be installed in half the homes. But she refused to let that make her feel inadequate. This was where she belonged.

Elara sat down. She placed her hands on the panel.

Nothing happened.

Her palms flattened on the screen. She searched for the drake’s heartbeat, even though it was made of scalestone and residual magic and had no heart to speak of. Valor? Valor, I’m here. Please choose me. I’m choosing you, so choose me back.

And nothing happened.

Elara was about to try channeling an astral through the machinery when Sergeant Owens appeared in the doorway.

“It’s been a minute,” he said. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you to your—”

“No, wait.” The words burst out of Elara before she had even made the decision to speak, high-pitched and childish. “Just. Just let me try summoning. I didn’t get to—”

“You don’t need to do that for Valor to indicate you’re a pilot—”

“But I didn’t even—”

“Cadet Vincent.” Irie help her, his voice was so gentle that it was humiliating. As if he had seen the core of her and found her weak. “There are plenty of other roles in the military. If serving your country is what you truly came here to do, don’t let this discourage you.”

A dream. Maybe this was all just a bad dream.

Elara stared down at the still-dark panel, wishing with every blink that she would wake up at home in Deadegg. “Yes, sir.”