by Amie Kaufman
But even if the dragons hadn’t always been the way they were now, Rayna had still been kidnapped. Today’s dragons were capable of kidnapping his sister, and who knew what they’d do with a dragon that had been born and raised in Holbard.
If she’d made the mistake of falling for their cunning, of admitting she was related to a wolf, things might be even worse.
He swallowed. “You’re so determined to prove what you think is true. I’m afraid if I tell you, it’ll just be one more thing you can use in your fight.”
Her mouth fell open. “Anders, you’re my friend!” She leaned forward, reaching for his hands so she could gaze straight into his eyes. “I would never hurt you. I would never put you in danger. Didn’t I help you break into Hayn’s office already? Haven’t I been there every night to help in the library?”
Something in Anders’s chest tightened. She had helped him, and he’d lied to her about why. Lisabet wasn’t like the other wolves. Lisabet was his friend, and Lisabet had doubts about everything she’d been raised to believe.
He’d wanted to trust her more than once already, and now, he knew he had to. “I was here to find out about the chalice too,” he said slowly. “I need to figure out where the dragons are as well, but not for the same reason you do.” Lisabet nodded, and he forced himself to go on. “She was my sister,” he heard himself say. “Is my sister. The dragon who transformed the day I did. Her name’s Rayna.”
He was shaking, desperately afraid despite his trust that Lisabet would look shocked, would run straight to Sigrid. He was related to a dragon.
But she simply nodded, as if this confirmed something she’d already decided.
Anders stared at her, trying to process the fact that she didn’t look surprised. “She had no more idea it was coming than I did,” he said. “She’s not loyal to the dragons. She didn’t mean to transform on the dais, and she didn’t mean to do it the second time in the street. She doesn’t want to be part of any battle, and she doesn’t want to kill wolves. She wants to get away from them, and I’m the only hope she has of getting out. I’m afraid they want her for the equinox sacrifice, and I’m running out of time.”
“Pack and paws, the equinox is nearly here,” Lisabet whispered, pale beneath her freckles.
“And the chalice might point to wherever Drekhelm is now,” he said. “If Hayn’s research is right, it could still work. It would be my best chance of finding her. You have to believe me, Lisabet. She’s not the way they say she is.”
“I do,” said Lisabet slowly. “It fits in with everything I’ve been wondering. You’re my friend, Anders, and I trust you.”
Anders just stared at her. He’d grown up with a set of simple rules—you do something for me, I do something for you. Lisabet had only known him a few weeks, but then again, she’d grown up safer than he’d ever been.
“If you vouch for Rayna,” she said, “then I’m prepared to believe you.”
“Just like that?” he said quietly.
“Just like that,” she agreed. “I’d believe you because you were my friend, but it just adds up. Think about what Hayn was saying the other day—that there are rules about dragons and wolves sharing a family. Here’s my question: If dragons are so awful, why is there even a rule? Why would a wolf ever even think about falling in love with a dragon? I think it’s just one more piece of evidence that we got along, some time in the past.”
Anders’s head was a whirl. “Do you really think that’s possible?” he asked.
“It would explain why a rule was there,” Lisabet replied. All Hayn could say was that he’d never heard of different elementals sharing a family. He couldn’t say it was impossible.”
Anders took a shaky breath. Was she right? It didn’t seem real that he and Rayna could be something so uncommon that Hayn had never heard of it in all his research . . . but as Lisabet said, it wasn’t impossible.
“I’ll help you find her, if we can,” Lisabet promised. “I’ll help you rescue her. Even if we did get along with the dragons once, we haven’t since the last battle, and now less than any time since then. Whatever I think about things being the way they are, even I know we can’t just hope she’ll be all right. I hope I’m right about the dragons, but I could be wrong.”
“Nobody can know about this,” he warned her. “If Sigrid found a way to get hold of her, I don’t know what she’d do to her. Kill her, maybe.” But despite the shiver of fear that went through him at those words, he realized he was feeling lighter. Finally, he wasn’t alone.
“Nobody will know,” Lisabet said. “We could be exiled if they found out we’re trying to help her. We have to get the chalice. It’s our only hope of finding the dragons. And that means getting it out of Sigrid’s safe.”
They both turned to look at the picture that hid it, and Anders winced.
“Do you know anything about safe cracking?” Lisabet asked.
“Nothing,” he admitted. “I never stole things like that. Just food.” Embarrassment washed over him even admitting that much. Wouldn’t she hear that she was trusting a criminal?
“We’ll figure it out,” Lisabet said. “They’re not telling the truth to us about the dragons, and this will prove it—and even if it wouldn’t, friends stand by friends. We’ll get the chalice, and we’ll find your sister, and we’ll get her to safety. I promise.”
* * *
Over the next couple of days, he and Lisabet kept on trying to come up with a plan to get into the safe. He watched Sigrid every chance he got, wondering if she had any way of telling someone had been in her office. But though he caught her looking his way a few times, she never seemed to look any sterner than usual. It didn’t seem she thought of him as anything other than a new student.
His and Lisabet’s plans grew wilder and more desperate as the equinox drew nearer. Without the safe combination they had no chance of opening it.
So they wondered about trying to get out of the Academy, finding a criminal who did know how to crack safes, and smuggling them back in again. But they weren’t even sure how to manage step one, let alone find the kind of person they were looking for.
Then they tried to think up ways to get Sigrid to take the chalice out of the safe for them. It was when Lisabet wondered how big a fire they’d have to set to have the Academy evacuated—hopefully forcing Sigrid to take the valuable chalice with her—that they knew they were close to failure.
Anders barely slept, turning it all over in his mind, trying to think through everything he’d learned. And when he and Lisabet walked into their next Combat class, he wondered if Professor Ennar had been sleeping either. She had shadows under her gray eyes and a twist to her mouth that warned the class she wasn’t in a good mood.
He couldn’t help staring at her while she gave them their briefing. She was keeping Sigrid’s secret about the existence of the chalice, but she did seem to care—both about her students and about the truth. The truth matters, she’d said.
“Go ahead, Anders.”
He blinked back to the present, and realized Ennar was addressing him, the whole class looking at him expectantly. “What was that, Professor?” he tried, wincing inwardly.
“I asked you to repeat the instructions I just gave the class,” Ennar said, her mouth a thin line of disapproval. She’d spotted him daydreaming. Behind her, Sakarias was dancing about and making gestures, presumably trying to convey by charades what she’d been saying.
Anders stared at Sakarias for a moment as the other boy pretended to walk down an invisible flight of stairs, then grabbed at something imaginary in the air, starting to wrestle with it. Anders had to force himself to tear his gaze away.
“I, um.” He searched for an excuse, but there wasn’t one, and Professor Ennar was still staring at him. “I’m sorry, Professor, I wasn’t listening.”
“In which case you were wasting my time, and now that of your classmates,” Ennar growled. “Anders Bardasen, never has it been more important for you all to pay attenti
on to this class in particular. Dragons are here, in Holbard, and as the humans who live around the port learned only days ago, nobody is safe. I will do whatever it takes to keep my students safe, but at a bare minimum, you need to listen when I give you instructions.”
“Yes, Professor,” he mumbled as his classmates made faces from sympathetic to disapproving. Whatever it takes, his mind echoed. Does that include lying? Does that include killing? Killing my sister?
He pushed the questions from his mind as they began drills. They practiced fighting opponents in large numbers, tracking a human on foot, and tracking a wolf. They talked about ways to track a dragon—the signs of an aerie, how to tell from the clouds whether the air was favorable for flying, how to tell which mountains might hold the volcanoes that created the warmth the dragons needed. By the end of the session, Anders was practically buzzing with excitement despite his exhaustion—all this was exactly what he needed to learn if he wanted to find Rayna.
As usual in Combat, however, something was waiting around the corner to kill his mood. Next, they practiced with ice spears, and a few of the students who had made their transformation nearly a year ago, and were nearly ready to move into second year, practiced summoning cold as well.
All around him his classmates cast jagged ice spears and summoned clouds of cold mist that would weaken a dragon’s ability to channel essence into its fire. His thoughts were clear and his body felt strong as the temperature dropped.
But as usual, he couldn’t sense the water around him, let alone make it do what he wanted.
As usual, he failed to raise even a hint of frost. He knew there were still those in his class who smirked when he got things wrong, who chose to sit at the other end of the table or make sure they didn’t partner with him for combat. To them, he was still the boy who came from the streets, who wouldn’t even say how he’d come to be part of the pack.
Mostly he could just ignore them, and focus on the friends he had made—on Lisabet, Viktoria, and Sakarias, on Jai, Mateo, and Det. Focus on the job he had to do, which was more important than anything else. But at moments like this, it was much harder to push his worries away.
And what was he going to do, if he came up against dragons at Drekhelm? He was the worst chance of rescue anybody had ever had.
At the end of the class, as they were preparing to turn toward the change rooms and get out of their tunics and into their uniforms, Ennar called for them to gather around. “Tomorrow we’re trying something different,” she said. “I’m taking the class out of Holbard, on an overnight camping excursion. Some of the pack is out on the plains today, caching supplies for us so we can travel in wolf form, without worrying about needing to carry anything. Be ready to leave immediately after breakfast tomorrow—we’ll be back the following night.”
Everything else melted away as she spoke, and Anders realized what her words must mean.
The class chattered excitedly as it peeled away, and in a moment Lisabet was at Anders’s side, squeezing his arm. “You know why we’re going,” she whispered, eyes gleaming.
The same thrill was going through Anders. “I’ll bet my tail she’s taking us out as cover, so she can test the chalice,” he whispered. “Making it look like a class trip, so the dragon spies in the city won’t know they’re up to something.”
“And that,” murmured Lisabet, “means the chalice won’t be in the safe in Sigrid’s office.”
“This is it,” he whispered. “I can’t believe it, Lisabet, this is it.”
“Now all we have to do is steal it from Ennar,” she said, though she was smiling too. “And hope it actually works, and get away from the rest of the class without getting caught, and locate the dragons, and rescue your sister. Oh, and the equinox is just a few days away. There are a few steps left between here and success.”
“Who cares?” he whispered back, gleeful. “We’re on our way. That’s what matters.”
That was exactly what Rayna would have said in this moment, he realized. And for once, when he thought about her, he smiled.
Rayna, I’m coming.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THEY ASSEMBLED THE NEXT MORNING after breakfast in warm clothes, different from their regular school uniforms. They wore thicker trousers that tucked into their boots, and looser shirts of coarse material with quilted jackets over the top, all still edged in white to show their status as students.
“We’ll be warm enough in wolf form, but we’ll need layers whenever we change back, like when we eat dinner,” Viktoria said, smoothing down her jacket and checking her amulet at her throat.
“Speak for yourself,” Sakarias replied, grinning. “I want to go hunting. I hope she’ll let us.”
Anders began to pull a face at the thought of hunting, and of raw meat, when suddenly he realized his mouth was watering. His mind might not like the idea, but his body had no problem with it.
Jai and Det started dancing around at the idea of hunting. One after another they transformed into wolf form and starting a wrestling match, which lasted about a minute, until huge Mateo jumped on top of both of them and pinned them to the ground.
Professor Ennar was similarly dressed when she arrived, and she carried a satchel over one shoulder. It was covered in a fine metal mesh that glinted in the sun. All it took was a soft growl in the back of her throat—even in human form—and the wrestlers were back on their feet and back in human shape.
“That bag Ennar has is an artifact,” Lisabet said casually, when she saw Anders looking at it. “It means it’ll transform with her, like her clothes.” Her tone was innocent as she went on. “She must be carrying something she didn’t trust the team building the cache to carry, or something she didn’t want to leave out there all night and all day today.”
“Must be,” Anders agreed, a thrill of anticipation going through him. He kept one eye on that satchel, trying to imagine the chalice inside. It was certainly the right shape.
If only the chalice worked, they’d have their chance to make it to Drekhelm. The plan was to try and creep in unnoticed, and hunt for Rayna without being discovered—wolves were so small, compared to a dragon. Surely dragons’ homes would be huge as well, with plenty of crevices and shadows to hide creatures as small as he and Lisabet.
They transformed as a pack, and Ennar, whose fur was as steel-gray as her hair, led them up Ulfarstrat and toward the city gates. Loping along in the middle of his class, Anders found himself enjoying the cobblestones beneath his paws, the breeze ruffling his fur. This was different from the mad dash to the fire at the docks in every way.
As they left Holbard and moved farther out onto the plains, they found there were still patches of snow covering the grass in places. The night’s frost had yet to melt, edging the grass in silver and reflecting the early morning sunlight, and it seemed to Anders that the ground stretched away forever. He had never left the city before, and though he’d seen the plains from his perch high up on the roof of the Wily Wolf, being out on them was something else entirely.
Their breath fogged the air, and the ground stretched away in front of them, all the way to the forest at the base of the mountains, so far away it was only a faint line on the horizon. The Great Forest of Mists, it had said on the map. Tonight, Anders would have to find a way to steal the chalice, and to follow it, he hoped, to Drekhelm. The day after tomorrow would be the equinox.
But just now, he gloried in running.
Ennar lifted her head to howl her pure pleasure at being out on the plains, at racing along with her pack behind her, and as one, they lifted their heads to rally with her, an extra kick to their stride. Then she really stretched her legs, putting on speed and racing away, and the class spread out behind her to follow, losing themselves in the pace.
Now they were running as they couldn’t in the city, with its tight streets and crowds. This, Anders could see now, was nothing like running laps in the combat hall.
This felt like being alive.
Eventually th
ey settled into an easy lope that chewed up the miles, and as the morning sun melted the frost off the grass but never quite banished the last patches of snow, Anders let his mind fall into the rhythm of his limbs. The plains were so big, it was almost like being in the middle of an ocean—he felt he was moving impossibly fast, or perhaps standing completely still.
Every time his paws hit the ground, he remembered that each mile was one closer to that evening’s camp. Each mile was one closer to the mountains, with their steep black sides and snowy tops. Finally, he was moving toward Rayna.
The grass of the plain was light and tufted, giving way frequently to patches of black, jagged-edged rocks that were the only remaining signs of long-ago volcanic explosions. Now they lay quietly, covered with a thick layer of golden-green moss that looked like fuzzy velvet, stretched thin where the black showed through at the sharp edges and corners.
Streams snaked across the plains, twisting and turning back on themselves, never straight, the water flowing quietly. From a distance, they looked like perfect silver mirrors, reflecting the pale sky above, and he took them all in as he ran by.
The pack stopped for lunch, arriving at a small structure built of stones on the bank of a stream, standing about waist-high to a human. Ennar transformed back to human form, barely breathing heavily, and the class followed her example, panting, leaning over to brace their hands against their knees.
The Wolf Guard had been through the day before to leave supplies for them, and Ennar pulled out dozens of rolls of rich, dark-brown bread, packages of cured meat and cheese, then a pile of tin cups that fitted one inside the other.
They dipped the cups into the stream to fill them with water and sat along its edge, pulling open the bread rolls and stuffing them full of meat and cheese.
“I’m starving,” Sakarias said, taking a bite of his cured meat and chewing with relish. “Is it just me, or is the meat way more interesting than the bread and cheese?”
