Empyrean

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general, also known as her tough-as-talons mother, has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda, because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die.

"Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College--Violet included. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy, and the unlucky. Now the real training begins, and Violet's already wondering how she'll get through. It's not just that it's grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it's designed to stretch the riders' capacity for pain beyond endurance....

"Welcome to Threshing Day, the brutal, high-stakes trial where would-be riders at Basgiath War College fight to earn the bond of a dragon or die trying. Amid ruthless competition and dragon fire, these thirteen cadets must survive a battlefield where desperate rivals will do anything to gain an advantage and dragons decide one's ultimate fate--and where a single choice can forge a rider... or destroy them."-- Front book flap. Collects thirteen stories...