Chapter 1
Rule one of surviving Brennan Cole as a wingleader: don't talk before he's had his coffee.
Rule two: don't talk during his coffee.
Rule three, which he'd had to add specifically in the last three weeks: don't wave at him from across the training grounds like you're greeting a neighbor over a fence.
"You're doing it again," he said, without looking up from his roster.
"Good morning to you too, sir." Dara Voss landed her practice swing and turned to face him, not remotely chastened. She had ink on her collar and hay in her braid and was grinning like she'd just discovered the world was a fundamentally good place.
Brennan found it exhausting.
"Your grip is wrong," he said.
"You haven't looked at my grip."
"I don't need to. It's always wrong."
She looked at her sword hand, adjusted three fingers, and held it up. He glanced over. It was correct. He looked back at his roster.
"Happy to get feedback when you're ready," she said cheerfully.
The thing about Dara Voss, Brennan had decided after the first week, was that she was irritating in a very specific way. She wasn't reckless — she took every correction without complaint and drilled until her form was clean. She wasn't soft — she'd taken a training blow to the ribs two weeks ago that would have made most first-years quit for the day, and she'd asked to run the sequence again. She was just... bright. Relentlessly, constitutionally bright, in the way that people were when something in them hadn't been broken yet.
He remembered being like that. It felt like another life.
"Run the sequence," he said.
She ran it. Her footwork was better than yesterday. He marked it down and said nothing.
"Is that a less-aggrieved silence or a more-aggrieved silence?" she asked.
"It's a corrective silence. Your left pivot is still half a beat slow."
"Right." She reset. "Can I ask you something?"
"You're going to regardless."
"Why did you take the extra training rotations? The other wingleaders said you never supervise first-years if you can avoid it."
He set down his roster. "The other wingleaders talk too much."
"That's not an answer."
"No," he agreed.
The real answer was that Vice Commandant Riorson had asked him to, which meant it wasn't optional, which he had no intention of explaining to a first-year. The real answer was also that she'd bonded with a grey-blue that the stable master described as pathologically suspicious of everyone, and she'd gotten the dragon eating from her hand within two days, and Brennan had thought — against his will — that someone who could do that might be worth watching.
"Your dragon," he said instead. "Veth. She's been flying the western wall perimeter alone."
Dara brightened — she always brightened, it was like watching kindling catch — and he kept his expression neutral through sheer practice. "I know. She likes to look at the sea. I think she's a little homesick."
"Dragons don't get homesick."
"Veth does." She said it simply, no argument, just certainty. "She's from the coastal clutch. She misses the sound."
Brennan looked at her for a long moment.
"Hm," he said.
"What does 'hm' mean?"
"It means I'm not arguing with you about dragon psychology before breakfast." He picked up his roster. "Pivot sequence, again. And don't smile at me, it's distracting."
She laughed, short and genuine, and ran the sequence.
This was how the next three weeks went. She corrected her pivot. He corrected her shield angle. She brought him coffee once — black, no ceremony, just set it by his elbow without comment — and he drank it without acknowledging the gesture, though he noticed she'd gotten it exactly right. She started arriving ten minutes early. He stopped noting it on the roster.
On a Thursday in early winter, Veth landed beside them on the training grounds without being called, folded her wings, and put her head on Brennan's shoulder.
Dara's expression went very carefully neutral.
"She likes you," she said.
"Dragons don't—" He stopped. The dragon had closed her eyes. He stood very still. "She's cold."
"She's not cold."
"She's seeking warmth."
"She already flew twice today. She's not cold, she just—" Dara pressed her lips together, clearly trying not to smile. Failing. "She has opinions about people."
Brennan put one hand, briefly, on Veth's neck. The dragon made a sound low in her chest, almost a purr.
He stepped back before Dara could read anything into his expression.
"Pivot sequence," he said. "Fifteen repetitions."
"Sir."
"And Voss."
She turned.
"Your footwork today," he said, and paused, because the word was unfamiliar in this direction. "Was good."
Dara Voss looked at him the way Veth sometimes looked at the sea — like she was seeing something she hadn't expected and wasn't ready to stop looking at.
"Thank you," she said quietly.
He went back to his roster. But for the first time in three weeks, he didn't mind the silence.