# CHAPTER 10: The Gauntlet's First Bite
Hello everyone, it's me again! How are you all doing? Today I will continue to walk with you and review CHAPTER 10 of *Fourth Wing* — the chapter where the real terror of the Riders Quadrant finally gets a name: the Gauntlet. If you thought Parapet was bad, buckle up, because this is where hope starts to feel like a dangerous, fickle thing. Let's dive in.
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The morning air was cold and sharp, trapped in the shadowy crevice at the base of the cliff. Violet Sorrengail stood with the rest of Second Squad, staring up at the obstacle course that rose through the jagged mountain like a nightmare made of wood, iron, and stone. The first-year cadets were about to face the Gauntlet for the first time.
Rhiannon muttered the thought they were all thinking: "Oh, good, I was wondering when it might get difficult."
Violet located the series of nearly touching, three-foot-wide logs that jutted from the rocky terrain like a set of round steps rising toward the switchback above. *Go fast. Got it.* She could have used that warning earlier. The course was the embodiment of her worst nightmare. For the first time since Dain begged her to leave the quadrant last week, she actually considered Markham's offer to transfer to the Scribe Quadrant. No death courses there. But then she caught herself. She'd already made it this far. And that small, stubborn voice on her shoulder dared her to hope she might survive Presentation.
Ridoc, ever the joker, wondered why they called it the Gauntlet. Tynan sneered, claiming it was to weed out the weaklings so dragons would keep coming to Threshing — and he aimed his pointed look directly at Violet. But Ridoc snapped back, and for a moment the whole squad froze. Violet had never seen Ridoc lose his temper before. Tynan, apparently, had hit a nerve.
"You think because you made friends with Barlowe and Siefert that you have the right to be a dick to your own squadmate?" Ridoc challenged.
Sawyer stepped between them, revealing he had already made it through Presentation last year. His advice was blunt: your time on the Gauntlet doesn't determine whether a dragon bonds you. The last cadet to walk into Presentation bonded just fine, and some of the first ones got passed over. Tynan had a point about squad scores, but Sawyer insisted the name "Gauntlet" wasn't about weeding anyone out.
Professor Emetterio appeared, his shaved head glinting in the growing sunlight. "It's called the Gauntlet because this is the cliff that guards the Vale. Plus, actual gauntlets—armored gloves made of metal—are slippery as hell, and the name stuck about twenty years ago."
Then he told them the real stakes: all nine of them had exactly one hour to reach the top before the next squad practiced. After Sawyer demonstrated, they would each start sixty seconds apart. And in two and a half weeks, the timed run on the Gauntlet would determine the order of Presentation — and whether the dragons would find them worthy at Threshing.
Tynan, still bitter, accused Violet of sleeping with Dain for preferential treatment. She saw red. "Honestly, it's none of your godsdamned business who I'm sleeping with, Tynan." Rhiannon shut it down by revealing the truth: Dain's father was General Sorrengail's aide; Violet and Dain had been friends since childhood. Tynan had the grace to look ashamed—he'd been listening to Barlowe's poison again. Ridoc warned him that listening to that sadistic ass would get him killed.
Violet caught herself thinking that Xaden would have just beaten the shit out of Tynan. She blinked, shoving that thought far out of her head.
Professor Emetterio called Sawyer to the start. Sawyer moved with the grace of someone who had already survived this nightmare. He ran across the spinning log, leapt between pillars, spun through the giant wheel, swung from hanging metal rails, jumped between shaking pillars, and scaled the angled chimney. He sprinted toward the final obstacle—a massive, nearly vertical ramp—and let momentum carry him two-thirds of the way up before grasping the lip and hauling himself over. Perfect technique, Emetterio declared.
But Violet's hope curdled. Sawyer was athletic, smart, and flawless—and still no dragon had bonded him. What hope was there for the rest of them? And she was too short for that ramp.
Then the other cadets started. Pryor hesitated on the rails but made it. Trina nearly fell at the shaking pillars and screamed all the way down—but she survived. Tynan froze on the buoy balls, shrieking for help. Rhiannon, incredibly, jumped for the first ball, clasped it near the chains, and swung toward him. She threw him the rope. Tynan, instead of swinging to the next ball, climbed *down*. Coward.
Then it was Violet's turn.
"Be with me, Zihnal," she whispered, though she knew she hadn't given the god of luck enough worship. She bolted across the spinning log, chanting "quick feet" over and over. She leapt between granite pillars, ran through the rotating wheel, and reached the buoy balls. Her shoulders screamed as she grasped the top of each swinging ball and threw her weight through them. To calm herself, she recited dragon lore from memory under her breath. *Feathertails abhor violence and are not suitable for bonding... Green dragons, known for their keen intellect...*
It worked—until it didn't. On the hanging metal rails, her right hand lost purchase and she slammed into the rocky mountainside, her cheek splitting open. The ringing in her ears was deafening. She grabbed the rope, clinging to it until her vision cleared. Then, with a furious burst of will, she pushed off and swung back to the rail. She made it across, landed on the shaking pillars, and somehow reached the gravel path.
Aurelie landed right behind her, grinning. "This is the best!"
Violet couldn't believe the girl was enjoying this. They reached the twisting staircase posts—the obstacle Aurelie's brother had warned them about. "Just run straight across," Aurelie said. "If you pause, it'll roll you right off."
Violet ran, quick footwork carrying her across each spinning timber before it could throw her. She made it to the other side and shouted in triumph. Aurelie followed, more agile than ever. Then a roar sounded overhead, and Violet looked up to see a Green Daggertail flying past.
Aurelie cried out. Violet's head snapped toward her just in time to see her wobble, slip, and fall onto the next-to-last spinning log. The post rolled her away. She fell halfway down the cliff.
Violet screamed her name. It did no good.
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The next morning, the death roll was longer. Captain Fitzgibbons read the names of the cadets who had fallen. Violet knew more than half of them now. Calvin Atwater, who sat two rows behind her in Battle Brief. Newland Jahvon, who had breakfast duty with her. And then—"Aurelie Donans."
A single tear escaped. Violet batted it away, ripping open the scab along her cheek. A trickle of blood stained her skin, and she let it.
The ritual felt crueler than ever. They said the names once and went on as if those people had never existed. But they *had* existed. Violet was carrying the weight of that.
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The next night, Dain found her in the dormitory hallway. He was worried, his two lines of concern etched between his brows. Violet was carrying Aurelie's pack to the burn pit because Aurelie's parents had chosen not to come. She was the last person Aurelie had seen—she had to be the one.
Dain offered to go with her, but she refused. He muttered a curse. "I should have been there."
"You couldn't have done anything, Dain. None of us could have. She didn't even have time to reach for the rope."
Dain asked if she had made it to the top. Violet shook her head. "I got caught at the chimney formation and had to use a rope to get back down. I'm too short to span the distance." But she wasn't thinking about that tonight. She had to figure something out before the timed Gauntlet on Presentation day—because on the final day, there was no climbing down. You either completed the Gauntlet or you fell to your death.
She climbed the stairs of the academic tower, past the Battle Brief room, and stepped onto the stone roof. The burn pit was an extra-wide iron barrel, its flames bright against the night. Alone, Violet slipped the pack from her shoulder. "I'm so sorry," she whispered, and flung it into the fire.
Instead of heading back down, she walked to the edge of the turret. The night was cloudy, but she could make out the shadows of three dragons approaching from the west, and the ridge where the Gauntlet waited for its next victim. *It won't be me*, she told herself. But she didn't know if that was a vow or a lie. Standing there, letting the minutes tick by, she grappled with the question she couldn't answer: Should she conquer the Gauntlet, or give in to Dain's request and hide in the Scribe Quadrant? Her whole being repelled at the thought of hiding. And yet...
She climbed back down without a solid answer.
In the courtyard, dark and empty, Violet wandered toward the alcove where Dain and she had first sat after Parapet. Almost two months had passed. She was still here. Still waking every morning to the sunrise. Didn't that mean something? Wasn't there a chance—no matter how small—that she might be enough to make it through Threshing?
The door to the tunnel leading to the Gauntlet opened along the courtyard wall. Violet pressed herself back into the shadows as Xaden Riorson, Garrick, and Bodhi passed beneath a mage light, heading toward the barracks.
"There has to be something more we can do," Bodhi argued.
"We're doing everything we can," Garrick hissed.
Xaden stopped mid-stride, ten feet away, the set of his shoulders rigid.
*Shit.* He knew she was there.
Instead of fear, only anger rose in Violet's chest. If he wanted to kill her, fine. She was over waiting for it. She stood, walked toward him, and told him not to prattle on about commanding the dark.
He asked if she had questions about where he'd been. She said she honestly didn't care. Then he asked what she was doing out after curfew.
"Debating running away," she retorted. "How about you? Feel like sharing?"
"The same."
Sarcastic ass.
Then she finally asked the question that had been burning in her chest: "Are you going to kill me or not? The anticipation is starting to annoy the fuck out of me."
"Haven't decided yet," he said, his gaze fixed on her wounded cheek.
"Well, could you? It would definitely help me make my plans for the week."
The conversation wound tighter, until Violet finally snapped the truth: "I can't make it up the damned Gauntlet."
Xaden caught her wrist, his grip light but firm, his thumb brushing her pulse. "Chances at what?" he asked, and when she tried to pull away, he held fast. He told her that killing her wouldn't be any trouble—leaving her alive was what caused him the majority of his trouble.
Then she said the word that had been eating her alive: *Hope*. She had come to this quadrant knowing it was a death sentence, yet she had let herself get hopeful. Now she had lost a squadmate, couldn't climb a chimney, and she was giving up.
Xaden's shadows swirled around them, concealing everything. He knew about Markham's offer. He knew about Dain's plan. And he told her he knew everything that went on at Basgiath—his shadows heard, saw, and concealed everything.
"Are you going to tell my mother?" she asked softly.
"I'm not going to tell her," he said. "It's why you're still alive."
Then he gave her a piece of his harsh truth: "Hope is a fickle, dangerous thing. It steals your focus and aims it toward the possibilities instead of keeping it where it belongs—on the probabilities." He told her to focus on the things that can kill you, so you find ways to *not die*. "People die," he said, his jaw ticking. "It's going to happen over and over again. What makes you a rider is what you do *after* people die. You want to know why you're still alive? Because you're the scale I currently judge myself against every night. Every day I let you live, I get to convince myself that there's still a part of me that's a decent person."
He didn't care that she was too short to span the distance. "The right way isn't the only way. Figure it out."
Then he turned and walked away.
*Fuck. Him.*
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The next practice sessions were no better. Violet made it further each time, but the chimney remained her downfall—the giant, angled rock formation designed to simulate mounting a dragon. It was, she realized, all about strength and reach. Her size was going to kill her.
Tynan stopped running his mouth, since he couldn't make it up fully either. The buoy balls were his problem. The chimney was hers. By the ninth—and next-to-last—session, Violet was ready to set the entire course on fire.
Standing at the base of the chimney with Rhiannon, she tried everything. Maybe she could climb up onto Rhiannon's shoulders—no, cadets couldn't touch each other on the route. Sawyer offered no solutions. "Because Presentation is tomorrow," Rhiannon snapped, "so if you've got any bright ideas, now is the time."
And there, at the edge of the cliff, with the wind in her hair and the Gauntlet looming above her, Violet knew she had to figure out something. *The right way isn't the only way.* Xaden's words echoed in her head. She would find another way. She had to. Because tomorrow, there was no coming down.
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## Reader's Impressions & Star Rating
This chapter took my breath away — literally. The Gauntlet is everything I feared Parapet would be, and the loss of Aurelie hit hard. Violet's grief is raw and real, and the death roll is one of the most haunting rituals I've read in a while. And that conversation with Xaden? Absolutely electric. He's still terrifying, but he's also cryptic and weirdly honest. I loved the way Violet confronts him instead of running — she's growing, but she's also still achingly vulnerable. The pacing is relentless, the stakes are impossible, and I couldn't put this book down. If you love fantasy that hurts and heals in equal measure, this chapter is everything.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4.9 / 5 Stars
## Next Chapter Prediction
With Presentation only hours away, Violet is going to have to pull off something brilliant at the chimney. I predict she'll use her small size and agility in an unexpected way — maybe a running jump at a precise angle, or using the rough texture of the rock and her fingertips to climb higher than anyone expects. But dragons are watching, and Threshing is coming. I also suspect Xaden won't stay in the shadows forever, and Violet might just prove herself worth more than he ever imagined — or she'll distract him so completely that it changes everything between them. Get ready for the greatest test of her life.
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