Fourth Wing Summary & ending explained

The stone under my boots is barely wider than my shoulders, slick with rain, and the wind wants me dead.

Below, the gorge drops so far I can't see the bottom. Behind me, a line of candidates shuffles forward. Ahead, the far tower of Basgiath War College, and the end of the parapet, and whatever comes after.

I was supposed to be on the other side of this college. The Scribe Quadrant. Books, archives, quiet rooms where nobody tries to kill you. I'm small, my joints slip out of place if someone looks at me wrong, and I've spent my whole life training to be a scribe like my father. But Dad is dead, and my mother is General Sorrengail, commanding general of Basgiath, and she has decided that no daughter of hers will hide in a library.

So: the Riders Quadrant. Dragons. Death.

My sister Mira, a rider herself, spent the morning trying to prepare me. She strapped me into a vest of black dragon scales, made for my small frame. She told me where to keep my daggers. She told me to stay away from anyone carrying the mark of the rebellion, because their parents died by our mother's order.

I take one step, then another. The girl ahead of me, Rhiannon, is crossing on footwear I traded her at the last minute; hers had no grip. Somewhere behind us, a scream cuts off as a body goes over the edge.

Then I hear heavy footsteps. A huge, grinning cadet named Jack Barlowe has just shoved someone into the gorge, and now he's coming for me.

"Move it, little girl," he calls. "Or fly."

I run. On a wet ledge, in the wind, I run, and when I reach the end I spin around with a dagger in my hand. Jack skids to a stop, the blade at his belly.

"You're dead," he promises. "Not today. But soon."

I turn, shaking, to give my name to the riders at the tower. One of them is waiting for me. Tall, dark-haired, a scar through one eyebrow, swirling black marks climbing his neck.

He reads my name off the list, and his whole face goes still.

"Sorrengail," he says softly. Like it tastes of blood.

His name is Xaden Riorson. My mother executed his father.