Today we cover the fabled Squad Battle. Everyone engages in an obstacle course run, a sparring tournament, and a secret third thing.

I’m so tired of the sparing-but-with-knives in this book. It’s like…the only thing that happens. There’s a vague mention of weapon proficiency tests, but we don’t see anything like that, nor do we see them do any training except one-on-one on the mats here. (Well, not training, but you know.) Are they expected to do all of their fighting solo? Is there no training on how to work as a unit? The only thing we know they do with dragons is fly, occasionally in formation, but that isn’t covered well either. It’s just odd to me how individual everything in this school is.

All the better to make sure Violet gets to be special but also never a liability, I guess. We can cry about her shortcomings in abstract, but that’s it.

Fortunately we skip straight to the secret third thing, which is to have all of the squads identify and obtain something ‘advantageous to our enemies regarding the war effort.’ Our kids huddle up and start tossing around ideas, until Violet realizes that the best option is to steal information from her mom’s office. (I like it because someone else said ‘information’ first, and Violet is uniquely knowledgeable in her mom’s office, so it’s not quite as special snowflake as she’s been thus far in the book.)

They make plans off page and we come back to them sneaking through the fortress. Sneaking loudly, because they can’t stop bantering. Sure would be nice if they’d had some classes in squad movements, or mission planning, or literally anything. Fortunately, this college is also as nonsense as the kids are so they don’t get caught. One of the squad members lures the only guard out of the way using an astral projection, they break into the poor lock on the door, and they start searching the office.

They end up stealing a giant map that has the current location and strength of every military unit the nation has, and after a brief skirmish with the guard again, they get back to the judges and win game. Overall a pretty competent chapter.

Of course, their ‘prize’ for winning is a trip to the front lines which is…confusing. If this is something that’s supposed to be useful, then everyone should be getting it. However it’s not a pleasant outing so it’s not a prize in that regard. What’s so prize-ful about this? Feels like the author just wanted the book to go here and there’s the only reason.

They head to a fort called Montserrat, which it turns out is very close to Rhiannan’s home. She and Violet immediately make plans to sneak out. While the squad is touring the place, we find out that one of the riders stationed there is Mira. Oops, sorry, no time for a sisterly reunion here, we immediately skip to two days later.

Violet and Rhiannon are going to sneak out to visit her family, and they get caught by Mira. They hastily convince Mira not to tattle, and then convince her to join them. A whole paragraph later, Rhiannon is happily reunited with her family and meeting her newborn nephew for the first time, and Violet and Mira sit outside and chitchat.

That was a lot of shuffling around for a sisterly chat that could have happened several pages earlier.

The sisterly chat involves…tactical discussions. So loving. Mira relays some of the places she’s seen action, and Violet notices again that there’s a lot of things going on that don’t get covered in battle brief. I’m annoyed that this foreshadowing comes up again, because Mira gives the same excuse we had last time: you’re in school, you don’t need to know every single detail of the tactical situation, some of which is above your clearance level. Because, that’s legit! The way it comes up, the book wants us to think this is something suspicious, but it’s not!

Also, Mira has the book of fables that Violet loves and couldn’t find at the library.

And then, low and behold, Xaden shows up. Turns out that about three days is the max time that bonded dragons will put up with being separated. Xaden takes to chilling in the background while the squad goes about their…uh, ‘prize.’ (It occurs to me that family visits could have been the prize and this all would have played out exactly the same.)

Today they are talking through battle scenarios and the kids are doing my favorite trick of “I’m going to ruin this game by taking everything you say literally.”

“There’s a new fort here on this map and-“
“They built it in a day?”
“Ugh, fine, they took over an existing one and-“
“The locals didn’t notice and warn us?”
“I hate all of you.”

No really, it is my favorite game, lol. Even if it is unhelpful. Mira’s attempts to lead this little thought exercise are even more hindered by Dain sniping at Xaden every chance he gets and Xaden finding that amusing.

Once they finally struggle their way through how to retake the fictional outpost, Mira calls an end to the class so she can chew out Dain in relative privacy. She rightfully points out that he’s being an ass, destroying his squad’s cohesion, and ruining any chance at being a wingleader.

Then she moves on to yelling at Violet and Xaden saying they need to figure out a better fix for this whole ‘can’t be separated’ thing, because next year Xaden will no longer be in school. She intimates that forcing Violet out of her training and preventing her from being successful might be Xaden’s plan of retribution. Can’t believe we’re still on this. It would help if Xaden had literally done anything mean ever.

Mid-fight, they get news that a bunch of gryphons on the way. This book uses the collective noun ‘drift of gryphons’ which I really like. And also ‘riot of dragons.’ Okay, enough linguistics. Violet insists on staying to help, but fortunately for my sanity literally everyone in the book is against that idea. They point out that not only is she untrained, but so are all of her friends and they’d probably die in a real fight. Even given that, she has to be practically dragged out and shoved on to Tairn in order to escape.