Ridoc Gamlyn wasn’t exactly known for discipline, at least not outside of the sparring ring. Studying? Sure, he could do it. If pressed. If there was a blade to his throat. Or maybe if his dragon demanded it—which, thank the gods, she never had. Right now, though, he sat cross-legged on the floor of Faith’s dorm, a half-open textbook lying abandoned on the rug, and a deck of cards fanned out between his fingers like he actually had a plan for them. He didn’t.

Faith’s bed was cluttered with parchment and open notebooks, the kind of chaos that was, somehow, organized to her. She didn’t say much—she rarely did when her thoughts spun tight as bowstrings—but he’d learned to read the tilt of her shoulders, the flex of her jaw. Most people didn’t notice. Most people didn’t care. Ridoc did.

Not that he’d ever admit it aloud.

He tossed a card in the air and caught it, watching her from the corner of his eye. Blonde hair spilling in messy waves around her face, green eyes pinned to some phrase in her mother’s old songbook she’d never let anyone else touch. She looked soft in moments like this, but he knew better. He knew the secrets that gnawed at her, the one that could get her killed faster than a wyvern in the open skies.

Charmspeak. Her signet.

He’d overheard a few of the older riders spit that word like it was poison, like an intrinsic was nothing but a snake in their midst. Dangerous. Unnatural. Disposable. Ridoc’s hands tightened around the cards. Faith wasn’t any of those things. She was the bravest rider he knew, with a dragon so rare she gleamed like starlight. She was just… human, underneath it all. A human with more weight on her shoulders than anyone deserved.

“Y’know,” he muttered, flicking the queen of spades onto the pile between them, “if we die tomorrow, it’s not gonna be ‘cause we didn’t memorize the twenty-third maneuver of aerial formations. It’s gonna be because you drive yourself mad trying.”

Her lips twitched—barely—but he caught it. A victory.

He leaned back against her desk, balancing the next card on his knuckle, pretending like he wasn’t watching her chest rise and fall in the deliberate, measured way she always breathed when she fought her own mind. He knew that fight, even if he couldn’t join it. Gods help him, he wished he could.

But all he could do was be here, cracking jokes, keeping her secrets, and pretending the whole world didn’t want to burn her alive if they knew who she really was.

Ridoc wasn’t sure if that made him loyal or just stupid. Maybe both.

And for Faith, he’d take both.