I glanced at the map again. The scribbled drawing showed the whole of the Western chapterhouse in messy black lines, but the layout was as familiar to me as the back of my hand. None of the hastily scrawled “buildings” were labeled or numbered, but I knew each of them by heart.

“Snipers will be set up here, here and here,” Tristan answered, pointing to three positions on the map. Chapel tower, headquarters and armory roof. “We won’t be staying in position, though,” he added. “Orders will be your standard ‘shoot and scoot.’ We can take two, maybe three shots at most. But then the risk of discovery becomes too great, and we’ll have to fall back to avoid being swarmed.”

I nodded and gazed up at the chapel as we passed beneath, at the faded white walls and pointed steeple; it wasn’t hard to imagine Tristan up there, aiming his rifle at passing dragons. “We’ll need more guns in the air than just snipers,” I muttered, and he nodded.

“Yeah. Machine gunners will take up position at these four points,” Tristan went on, tapping the map. “So all angles of attack will be covered. Hopefully we can fill the sky with so much lead it’ll be like it’s raining dragons.”

I tried not to wince at that image, visualizing a small red dragon tumbling limply from the sky, landing on the hard ground with a thump. For a moment, my thoughts strayed. I hoped she was all right. I had tried calling her this morning only to remember that all our personal possessions had been taken away when we’d been captured by Talon, phones included, and I had no way of contacting her. I didn’t know if she’d been able to convince Riley and the hatchlings to fight, but I had to assume that we were on our own—that no help would be coming.

Truthfully, part of me hoped she wouldn’t come. After sending away the civilians, the true rookies and the small number of family units, there weren’t very many soldiers left. Surprisingly, few actual soldiers had opted to leave, and the number had been far less than I had expected, but the loss of every dragonslayer still hurt. From what I’d learned of the Night of Fang and Fire, Talon knew the exact number of soldiers stationed here; they would know the numbers needed to take us out. If the Order fell, if I died tonight in a hail of gunshots and dragonfire, I would rather Ember be far away, safe from the madness that was to come.