penwalla

ch. 26
the prize for winning the squad battle is shadowing an active squad on the war front, so the our heroine sets off, complaining about how painful it is to fly six hours straight.
rhiannon is emotional because they're at an outpost very close to her home village. violet promises her they will "figure it out", presumably what she means is they'll illegally sneak out to see rhiannon's family.
in the last chapter it outright said that once they graduated to second year they would have letter writing privileges. so i hope rhiannon has a good reason for not wanting to wait.
they're getting a tour of the outpost and it turns out one of the riders stationed here is mira, violet's older sister. naturally violet immediately throws herself into her arms. hey, remember when violet wouldn't allow her injuries to be treated properly in case she looked weak?
next scene. we fastfoward two days. i would have loved to actually see the reunion between violet and mira, but okay. rhiannon and violet are sneaking out and mira immediately catches them. nope there's no pressing reason to break the rules and visit, rhiannon just wants to see her nibling. mira reluctantly agrees to escort them since it's not safe for them to be wandering around alone.
scene break. we're at rhiannon's family home and violet and mira are talking shop. mira reassures violet that it's normal for them to not be getting all the info in battle brief class--even mira doesn't get everything, because info is on a need to know basis.
mira has violet's book of fables from her father.
look, it's obvious at this point that the fables are all true and that her dad was into some secret shit that the powers that be don't want public or need more info about or whatever. the foreshadowing has been extremely ham-handed and we've had sufficient clumsy infodumpy dialogue to know this. i wish yarros would get to the point already.
they sneak back home and xylon is waiting for them, walking in just as violet asks mira how long a mated pair of dragons can be separated.
ch. 27
the squad is hanging out with the outpost riders, having been split into two groups.
since not much is happening, mira and the other riders start pimping violet and co. on a theoretical attack.
a few of the third years say they've been called into service early, and dain objects, saying that never happens. everyone laughs at him. violet was mentioning the early calls to service way earlier in the book like it was common knowledge, so why doesn't dain know this? like set aside yarros giving him the personality trait of "too rigid about rules", there's no reason for dain to not know this happens.
some of violet's squad are complaining because they haven't been taught battle strategy yet. this book rarely shows us classes, despite being set at a school, so yeah. they do learn nothing.
oh and apparently it's common for riders in training to die during the upcoming War Games, too. why the fuck do so many training exercises kill the participants? aren't you guys understaffed???
xylon is flirting telepathically with violet during this exercise. of course he is. meanwhile he and dain are arguing, which doesn't make either of them look good. xylon demonstrates how OP his shadow powers are and everyone is impressed.
afterward, mira pulls dain, violet, and xylon aside so she can yell at dain about being a dumbass. then she lays into xylon, insisting that he deliberately had Big T bond violet to cripple her, since having to travel with xylon will interfere with her training.
mira, you just said out loud that dragons do what they want irrespective of humans to dain. were you lying? how would xylon have convinced Big T to do that?
i cannot stress this enough: it is legal and acceptable to kill your fellow cadets at the war college, and xylon is in a position of power, is powerful, and has a ton of underlings who are loyal to him. also he's saved violet's life repeatedly. if he wanted violet dead or disgraced, HE WOULD HAVE DONE IT ALREADY.
also mira is having this argument with violet in front of xylon, which seems idiotic, but whatever.
violet admits to not being able to keep her seat on her dragon, and mira is horrified.
of course at this moment a drift of gryphons attack. mira insists xylon take violet away so she won't be in danger. but violet wants to help. not sure that it's really up to either of them--presumably there's someone in charge of the outpost who gets to decide. xylon has to physically carry violet some of the way, and they start fleeing. violet tries to enlist dain to her side, but dain is like, violet we have a whole squad of untrained first years with us, maybe they also want to not die.
violet says she understands but then immediately goes back to begging xylon to let her stay and fight. he kisses her to distract her and then throws her to Big T, who whisks her away.
i love that in so many situations in this book violet has no agency.