Gryphon Rider Academy

There’s never been a female gryphon rider until the day I bonded with Ari. I only wanted to save a blinded gryphon’s life, but the act of bonding with him sets off a chain of events no one could anticipate. We must first prove ourselves at the highly competitive Gryphon Rider Academy, where we train with the nation’s finest young men. If we don’t succeed, our failure is all the proof the Crown needs to take Ari from me. If that’s not enough, our story becomes a piece on a political game board that leads our great nation of Altare into a new war without finishing an old one.

I just wanted to ease the suffering of Arimus, a gryphon blinded in combat. He’d lost his first rider, and his will to live. But when he forges a new psychic link with me to be his replacement rider, it brands me as “an affront to the gods” for daring to ride an avatar of the god of man.

Arimus and I face the toughest challenge yet at Gryphon Rider Academy, the infamous Trial by Fire. If either of us fail, it will be the proof the Crown needs to take Ari from me. Passing the most grueling classes yet is just the beginning of the danger. There’s someone here who’s trying to make sure I am both the first, and last, female gryphon rider. I fear they’re working off the king’s orders.

To support a war on two fronts, the military is relying on drafted soldiers and half-trained gryphon rider cadets like me. From the second we arrive, Ari and I are selected to join a dangerous strike force and tasked to carry an unstable mage into combat, who is likely to set us all ablaze by accident.

The new, fragile alliance we have with the wild gryphons will be challenged from all sides, as the concept of Wild Flight changes what we believed about the gryphons and who they Link with. While Ari is busy tending to his family, both wild and tame, I help train the newest cadets at the Gryphon Rider Academy. I see hope for a future where only the most compassionate men and women earn the opportunity to Link with a gryphon. For the first time, the yearlings will select their riders.