Rosaria Munda

Before the Revolution, the dragons of Stormscourge House—of my family—were known for terrorizing the countryside; but in even older days, they were our island’s greatest defense against aerial invasion.
“They told us to fire low,” says Cor.
“Not that low. It’s risky for the audience.”
Our dragons are immature, barely horse-size, and can’t yet breathe fire. But the smoke they produce can still burn.
Crissa and her skyfish, long, slender, and pale enough blue to blend with the morning sky, circle above us. “You want to impress the people,” she calls down to Cor. “Not roast them.”
Cor waves a hand. “All right, all right . . .”
The fleet is still in training, dragons and riders both. Known now as Guardians, the new regime’s dragonriders are lowborn, commoners, even former serfs. No longer the sons of dragonlords.
Except for me, though I’m the only one who knows that.
Because in the wake of the Revolution, to be dragonborn is to be wanted for dead. I was born Leo, son of Leon, dragonlord of Stormscourge House and Drakarch of the Far Highlands—but, since the orphanage, I’ve been Lee. Not even the First Protector, who saved my life and then welcomed me, without recognition, into his Guardian program two years after that, knows the truth.
That a Stormscourge tested into the meritocratic dragon-riding program designed to replace everything his family stood for.
Even though I know I’m lucky to be here—lucky to be alive, lucky to have escaped the orphanage—memories of the old life have a way of intruding and twisting. Especially today, as Pallor and I circle above the Palace arena, open to the public for the first time since the Revolution. The old regime had tournaments here, too. Tournaments I watched my father compete in, dreaming of the day it would be my turn.
I lean forward and rest a gloved hand on Pallor’s silver-scaled neck as his wings, translucent in the morning light, tighten in a dive. Pallor is an aurelian, a smaller breed known for being careful and maneuverable, and the aurelian formation for today’s ceremony is the only one complex enough to require coleaders. I can rehearse alone, but to do the thing properly, I need—
Annie. There she is.
Another aurelian, this one amber-toned, has emerged from the cave mouth at the base of the arena, and on her back rides my sparring partner, Annie. She and I have trained together for as long as we’ve been in the Guardian program, and we’ve known each other since the orphanage before that.
It’s a past life’s worth of memories that we’re both pretty good at not talking about.
“Annie!” Crissa calls with a cheerful wave. “There you are.”
“Lee’s been flying like an idiot out here without you,” Cor says.
Pallor and I fire ash downward. Cor dodges the stream with a bark of laughter.

He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her forward, past all the great, beautiful stormscourges that he’d always dreamed of flying. Barely looking at them, because all he could focus on was the feeling of the girl’s shoulders shaking as he led her on. “They won’t hurt you, come on . . .”
And then it was over: He hadn’t been Chosen, but it didn’t matter, suddenly it didn’t matter at all—
“See, we’re done, it’s done—”
He turned to her, desperate to see the look of despair gone from her face, ignoring the plummeting feeling of his own. He was surprised to see something else. Instead of staring at her feet, the girl was looking up. Past him.
He followed her gaze and saw that she was looking at an aurelian, and that the aurelian was looking back at her.
He’d heard it said before that a kind of magic came with a dragon Choosing you—that the dragon bound you to it, that you formed a connection that was deep and full of an old magic. His father had always told him this was simply a myth, that it was a matter of imprinting and that there was nothing mystical about it.
But he couldn’t help thinking, as he watched the girl’s face transform, that he was seeing something unearthly. The girl who, a moment ago, had been cowering against him now released his hand as if she had forgotten it. She took one step toward the dragon, then another, never taking her eyes off the dragon’s face. When they stood nose to nose, she stretched out a hand and laid it between the dragon’s eyes.
The boy was so entranced that he didn’t stop to wonder what was nudging him until he turned to acknowledge it. Then he looked up, into a pair of great, liquid black eyes, and everything around him stood still.