Page 34 of Flameborne: Chosen (Emberquell Academy #1)

~ brEN ~

Three days after that hellish, but awe-inspiring flight with the squad I stumbled away from the flight fields, my body trembling with weariness, and frustration threatening to split my skin.

This new life was incredible. Fascinating. And painful.

Also exasperating in the extreme.

My squad, full of grown men who were fully-fledged Furyknights, bonded to their dragons for years, and taking near-daily patrols, had been forced to spend hours every day teaching me how to strap my dragon, climb to her back, clip in as if for flight, then release the straps high on her withers before climbing back down and unstrapping her from the harness.

Three days.

Three days.

I had been harnessing horses since I was five years old.

I understood the process and mechanisms the first time it was shown to me.

But we were three days in, and the only thing I had managed to do completely alone was clean her harness when it had already been hung in the tack room for me by my brothers—and even then, the stablehand, Benji, had appeared to help me, though I hadn’t asked him to.

Three days, and I still hadn’t managed to throw her harness over her back, or climb up to my seat unaided, which meant I hadn’t managed to unharness her alone either.

Literally the simplest function and skill of a Furyknight and I was already failing.

That first morning after my acknowledgement, when the dragons lined up in the field, I’d been thrilled. They looked magnificent in the morning sun, and my squad brothers were in high spirits, teasing each other and speaking to their dragons like old friends.

They’d carried Akhane’s hurriedly constructed harness for me. Ronen had explained how the straps worked, the unique and specific function of each one, how they worked together and then my entire squad had demonstrated how a dragon could be harnessed and mounted in seconds.

Hold the harness properly.

Toss it up and over the dragon’s withers that were the same height as the thatched roof of a cottage.

Catch the straps dangling around the legs and pull them into a balanced position.

Walk under your dragon’s belly to buckle the straps around the girth and legs, then the connecting straps that ran between the front legs to connect the chest plate and girth.

In less than a minute, each dragon stood proudly, strapped safely with one, long, loose leather strap dangling from the base of their neck to just a few feet off the ground.

When Ronan gave the order to mount, every one of my brothers grasped that strap and raced up their dragon’s side, hand over hand on the thick leather strap, their feet running up their dragon’s scaled leg, then shoulder until they reached high enough to pull themselves up to straddle the base of the neck and slide back to sit with their knees hooked over the wing ridges.

A few seconds later, each had located the safety strap that connected them to their dragon’s harness and would stop them plunging to their death if they fell.

They looked amazing, so high, their dragons huffing and puffing, fluttering wings, all of them impatient for flight.

Then they’d demonstrated releasing the key strap at the top of the neck so that the entire harness could drop off the dragon’s back when it was unbuckled beneath.

Each of them shimmied back down the dragons—Ronen cautioning me that a jump to the ground was not proper dismount because it came with too much risk of injury.

Then they unstrapped the dragons so that the harness dropped to the ground.

“…Always re-buckle that top strap before you do anything else with the harness. It’s the first thing you should do, and the last thing you should check every time you remove the harness, take it apart for cleaning, or before you mount,” Ronen told me firmly.

“If that strap isn’t correctly buckled the entire harness can give while you’re mounting—or worse, while you’re on board.

The last thing we need is your harness dragging you off your dragon and throwing you back to earth. ”

The men chuckled, but my arms prickled with goosebumps as I was suddenly gripped in the memory of falling from the cliffs before I landed on Akhane’s back .

I shook my head, pushing away the thought and turning my focus back to my first attempt at harnessing Akhane…

What a mortifying disaster that had been.

By the end of the first day, they’d all accepted that I simply wasn’t strong enough yet to throw the harness high enough to get it over Akhane’s back.

By the end of the second day, my hands were blistered and cracked, even though I hadn’t managed to climb halfway up her side without falling.

And now, at the end of the third, even my very patient, very positive squad brothers were growing short and frustrated.

I couldn’t blame them. But I felt so small.

‘Sometimes a trial cannot be easily overcome,’ Akhane sent me sweetly as I walked back to the dining hall with my brothers.

I dragged behind them, and they either hadn’t noticed, or preferred not to have me in their midst. Ronen had told us to go ahead.

He had a task to complete before he could go to the meal.

So having left the dragons in the hands of grooms to return them back to their stables, we were walking the cobbled path to the Academy buildings.

But I wasn’t hungry. At all.

I was embarrassed, and frustrated, and quickly losing any hope that I would become a true Furyknight.

Ronen had been very patient today even when the others were short. “Bren, don’t give up,” he’d said kindly. “Every new Flameborne is like a blind puppy. We all fell a lot, lost a lot, and failed every day in those first weeks. The true spirit of a Furyknight perseveres.”

It wasn’t the need for perseverance that frustrated me. It was the constant failure.

Today, teeth gritted and near tears, I had finally managed to pull myself up to within reach of Akhane’s withers.

Then lacked the strength to pull myself up those final inches and fell back to earth, dropping on my ass in front of all of them, sitting down on my tailbone so hard that a fresh wave of tears pressed to the surface.

I looked ahead of me on the path to look at my “brothers,” examining their bodies—their height and strength, their tanned skins and vibrant health.

Ronen had assured me that the longer I was bonded, the stronger and healthier I’d become. That the dragons shared some of themselves with us, which helped us thrive.

But, I was so weary my hands and knees trembled, my hands bled and oozed, my ass hurt, and my pride whimpered.

Ahead of me, Harle turned to look and saw how far behind I’d fallen. He turned back to his brothers and muttered something, then they all turned—none of them smiling—to wait for me.

“It’s okay,” I muttered. “You don’t need to wait. I’m just sore. ”

“We sit together, we eat together. We fail together, we win together,” Gil said simply. The Wing Lieutenant’s eyes were the kindest of the group, but he was a quiet man I didn’t know how to read.

Einar, the one with stark white hair and narrow eyes, stared at me like he was furious.

I shivered when our eyes met and quickly looked away—only to run into the bright, intense gaze of Voski.

Everything about him was as dark as Einar was light.

I’d thought he was funny the first day when he kept teasing Harle about shitting himself, but now I seeing the sharpness in him, and wondered if it wasn’t humor at all.

But a genuine mean-streak. I dreaded the moment he turned that on me.

My heart quavered. I looked down at my feet as they parted slightly to let me walk into the group.

“I don’t think I’ll eat at the dining hall today,” I muttered. “I need to bathe and wrap my hands and—”

“Bren, you need to eat,” Gil said softly, but firmly.

“I will. I just—”

“Come with us to get a plate. Take it with you.” It was an order, so even though my anger and frustration bubbled—I just wanted to be somewhere no one was staring and thinking about how I failed!—I nodded. “Yes, Sir,” I muttered.

“Look at that—at least one of you knows how to show respect when you’re angry.”

The others grumbled and protested, but Gil rested a hand on my shoulder and stared at them until they all swallowed the words back and turned back to their conversation as we walked.

Strangely, Gil didn’t take his hand from my shoulder when their attention drifted away.

Like he’d make sure I kept pace with them.

“I hope Beatty is on the cook line tonight,” Harle said at one point, rubbing his hands together. “She smiled at me yesterday.”

The men all guffawed.

“Beatty smiles at everyone,” Oros laughed.

“Not like that,” Harle replied with a wicked grin.

“She likes you, huh?” Jhoare said, subtly nudging Einar in the side where Harle couldn’t see.

“Yeah…” Einar added, with a glance at his friend. “Harle, you go first so we can all see how Beatty smiles at you.”

A couple of the others snorted, but Harle was still smiling. “You laugh until I ask her for a walk and while you’re all laying on your bunks playing cards, I’m out in the moonlight getting a handful of—”

Gil cursed, his hand tightening on my shoulder.

Jhoare elbowed Harle sharply who blinked and frowned, looking back and forth as if he was confused. “What?”

Voski rolled his eyes, then tipped his head towards me—at which point Harle’s eyes bulged. “Oh, right. Sorry, Bren.”

“It’s fine,” I said tightly .

Voski snorted derisively. I wanted to glare. I wanted to tell him to shut the hell up, but I kept my eyes fixed forward and kept walking.

Gil squeezed my shoulder again. “If you’ve got something to say, Bren. You should speak up. We’re a team. A team only works is if we voice our problems and solve them together.”