“I didn’t,” Yehan said. Tarquin would have thought he was attempting a bad joke, except for how obviously he meant it. “I volunteered to be on the front lines. I’d just become a shield, and I was eager to fight.” He smiled, but it twisted into something ugly. “I thought the haldur couldn’t harm me, because…well, because I’m a shareblood dragon.”
“What happened?”
Yehan swallowed. “It was bad. Not at first. My section’s orders were to run surprise attacks and kill as many haldur as possible, to try and take some of the pressure away from Telir.” He smiled wanly. “We got very good at it: attacking during the daytime when the haldur were sleepy and half-blind, and then slipping away before they could retaliate. For a while it even seemed like our little band of shields would turn the tide, d
