And so the next day Yenni sat her exams, sweating and struggling through every answer and demonstration. But she gave each test her best effort, using all the time allotted.

Two days later, with her heart in her throat, Yenni stepped up to the front of the lecture building. In the foyer, professors’ aides were still spelling the grades into slabs of marble, and though the sun had just risen, there was already a big crowd of students gathered.

Her chest constricted when she spotted her name chiseled into the stone. As she skimmed, and read, and reread her results, a cold sweat broke out on her forehead, and her hands went clammy wet.

She had failed every magical exam except Basics of Runelore.

13

Weysh flopped on his bed, sighing in relief. For the past moonturn he had thrown everything into his classes, determined to achieve top marks, and when he checked the grade tablets that afternoon, his chest had swelled with satisfaction. His battle stats were the highest they had ever been, and he was even doing well in his one remaining magic class: Advanced Offensive Spells for Combat. Truth be told, the constant drilling helped distract him from the Given bond tugging relentlessly at him, demanding he claim Yenni Ajani as his. Her scent was everywhere: he could tell which halls she’d passed through, where she’d sat in the library or the dining hall—day in and day out small reminders of her tormented him. But after their disastrous last meeting, he was at a loss as to how to approach her, how to win her over. And so he’d studied, but now he had no more exams, no more distractions, and far too much time to think.

What reason would I have to marry you? Yenni Ajani had asked him. Weysh shoved his hands behind his head on his pillow and growled his frustration at the ceiling. Being dragonkind had always been enough before, but now, with his Given of all women, it wasn’t. Very well, he would show her. As a top-ranking officer in the Imperial Army he would be able to provide for her every want and comfort, and she would forget all about this other man she was supposed to marry, whomever he was.

Certainly her lifestyle with Weysh would be more luxurious than on the Islands. If she lived anything like his cousins did, she might reside in a modest house built on stilts, open to the air. She might have a room of her own perhaps, if her father was a successful merchant or owned a business, like his uncle. Her family must have some reasonable bank if they could afford to send her to Prevan Academy. Maybe she . . .