Ice Wolves (Elementals, Book 1)

by Amie Kaufman

  Pack and paws.

  Leif was the one who broke the silence. “Anders,” he said, gesturing for the others to take their seats. “Why have you come?”

  “My sister,” he said, his voice sticking in his throat. He took a breath and tried again. “Rayna is my sister. I came because you . . .” Pack and paws, said a little voice in his head. Just say it. “Because you kidnapped her,” he said, louder than he meant to.

  “We rescued her,” a woman shouted from the other end of the table to Leif. “She was under attack!”

  “And she’s not your sister,” the man with the bushy beard added. “That’s impossible.”

  “How convenient,” said Leif quietly, and Anders noticed that everyone hushed when he spoke, “that we have an expert on the impossible. We have more important questions to answer just now. Anders, how many other wolves are coming?”

  A part of Anders desperately wanted to bluff—wanted to tell the dragons that every wolf in Ulfar was right on his tail. But they’d find out soon enough he was lying, and what if they just killed him before they flew out to battle? “None,” he said quietly. “I mean, my professor might try and follow me, I stole—But nobody, I don’t think.”

  Even if Ennar had followed them up the mountain, she’d find the place where their paw prints met the dragons’ footprints, and surely she’d assume the worst. That they’d been killed, or that they were traitors.

  “So you have come alone,” Leif said, thoughtful. “That was unwise.”

  Anders swallowed hard again. He was so very, very tired—he hadn’t slept since he’d left Holbard, a full day before—and even Rayna’s coat felt heavy right now. “The equinox,” he said. “I came to try and get to her before the equinox.”

  Everyone was silent, several of the men and woman around the table squinting at him thoughtfully. It was one of the youngest members of the Dragonmeet who broke it, a girl who looked no older than eighteen. “I’m missing something,” she said. “I mean, it’s a great party, but . . .”

  Anders’s patience broke. Were they just playing with him for fun now? “I know about the sacrifice,” he blurted out. “Please, I’ll do anything! You can have me, but please let Rayna and Lisabet go. Please . . .” It was as if he were watching himself from the outside. Had this been his plan all along? To offer himself up, if he got caught?

  Leif’s mouth fell open, his calm expression completely gone. “I take it you’re not talking about sacrificing lots of delicious food,” he said eventually.

  Anders shook his head.

  “Put your mind at ease,” Leif said. “I would very much like to know how that story got started. We do not sacrifice anybody, Anders, at the equinox or at any other time.”

  “But the stories—”

  The bearded man cut him off, pushing to his feet to shout again. “Is this what the wolves are telling their young? Telling the humans? That we sacrifice children?”

  The hubbub started to rise around the table again, but Leif once again cut it off by raising his hand. “Anders,” he said gravely. “We dragons are often not of one mind. We are individuals. We disagree, we tread our own paths. We spread ourselves all over Vallen, and when we do come together, there is often much debate. There are many who do wish to take action against the wolves—who will see your presence here as reason to do so.”

  Anders swallowed, shoving his hands in Rayna’s pockets so nobody would see them shaking. How many of those dragons who wanted to hurt wolves were here right now?

  But Leif was still speaking. “However, I give you my word as the Drekleid, there is no truth to this story. Not an ounce. We do take children from Holbard at the time of the equinox, but it is not to sacrifice them. It is because they are of dragon blood, and the scouts we have sent to the city tell us they are ready to transform. We must bring them here and help them, or they will die.”

  Anders stared at him, searching his face for the tiny, telltale signs he was lying. And even as he tried desperately to guess the truth, his friend Det’s story came back to him.

  Det had grown sicker and sicker in Mositala, until he came to Vallen for the Trial of the Staff.

  And the story on the street was that the dragons always kidnapped the sickest children.

  Leif’s gaze was steady, and though the outraged shouting around the table hadn’t abated yet, as he ran his eyes over the Dragonmeet he grew surer and surer. His wolf sensitivity to body language was delivering a thousand different messages to him, and they all said the same thing.

  Leif was telling the truth.

  Relief flooded through him like rain sluicing the streets of Holbard, carrying away all the mess and confusion, and leaving him cleaner, clearer in its wake. Sure, he was still trapped in a remote mountain with the twenty-five most important dragons in Vallen, but at least nobody was planning to sacrifice his sister tomorrow. He decided to count it as an improvement.

  The youngest woman spoke again. “What’s being said in Holbard, Wolf? What are they saying about dragons?”

  Anders considered how best to answer—he didn’t want to provoke them by refusing, but he didn’t want to give away information on Ulfar either. “That there are dragon spies in the city,” he said eventually. After all, the dragons already knew that.

  The Dragonmeet were murmuring among themselves once again, and Anders stood and waited, unsure of what to say next.

  Leif solved his problem by nodding at the door Rayna and Lisabet had gone through. “Thank you, Anders,” he said gravely. “Please go and wait with Rayna, and send the other wolf out. I think we’d better speak to her next.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ANDERS MADE HIS WAY THROUGH THE painted green door Rayna and Lisabet had gone through, accidentally banging it against Rayna’s head as he pushed it open. She squeaked, stumbling back, one hand rubbing at her temple, looking at Anders like he should have known better.

  “She was eavesdropping,” Lisabet said from farther down the short hallway, where she was nursing a steaming mug, and had a blanket around her shoulders.

  “’Course I was,” said Rayna, leading him down the hall and into a small room lined with bookshelves and couches, probably a place designed for people to wait. She pulled a lever just inside the door and a trapdoor in the ceiling opened, lowering down a tray suspended by four metal cords, one at each corner. On it sat a second mug of what smelled like cocoa, which she handed to Anders. “Kept your drink warm for you,” she said.

  “They have artifacts and machinery we’ve never even seen,” Lisabet told him, somehow looking excited despite her exhaustion, and the fear in the back of her gaze. That was Lisabet. Trying to understand and learn, even now.

  “They want to speak to you,” he said quietly.

  She nodded, took a deep breath, and let herself out.

  And then it was just Anders and Rayna in the little room. Silently she wrapped both her arms around him, careful not to jostle his mug, and pulled him in for a gentle hug.

  Anders closed his eyes, tilting his head sideways to rest it against his sister’s, drinking in the heat of her skin that had never been there before, and the faint scent of her that always had been, though now there was a sweet note to it, like cinnamon.

  “Rayna,” he murmured. “I was so scared. I thought you were a prisoner here. I was imagining . . . all kinds of things. I didn’t know what was happening to you.”

  “Me too,” she whispered. “I was scared at first, but once I realized I was safe, I had a screaming match with them about getting back to you. They were teaching me to patrol when we found you, but I was looking for a chance to run for it to Holbard, if the cloud came in enough. I was so worried about you.”

  “I didn’t know what they’d do to you,” he murmured. “I saw a woman in Holbard, she had one of your hairpins, but I couldn’t get near her. She disappeared every time she saw other wolves.”

  “I convinced her to try and give you a message,” Rayna said. “Though I didn’t tell them you were m
y brother. She found Jerro, and he told her you were at Ulfar, so she waited by the gates.”

  “When I saw her, I didn’t know what she’d done to get the pin from you,” he said quietly. “Or what they’d do to you next.”

  “Nothing,” she said, as confident as usual.

  “You don’t know everything about dragons,” he told her. “There’s no way you can be sure. Our parents died battling dragons. There are still scorch marks all over Holbard from battling dragons. How can you be so sure they’re safe? We’re their prisoners.”

  “Not if we don’t want to be,” she replied. “And I’ve made friends, Anders. The boy and the girl you met with me, their names are Mikkel and Ellukka. I like them. You could fit in here too, you know. We could talk to Leif. He could win over the Dragonmeet.”

  “What?” He drew away from her in shock. “You just said you were getting ready to run for it, and now you’re saying I should move in with dragons?”

  “Well, the wolves tried to kill me in Holbard,” she pointed out. “And it’s not Mikkel’s and Ellukka’s fault the Dragonmeet said I had to stay here. This place isn’t anything like the stories.”

  “And what will I be if we stay here?” he asked. “The odd wolf out?” He didn’t want to leave Rayna. But he wasn’t a dragon, and he knew nothing of this place. He couldn’t begin to imagine living here, away from his pack, stranded among dragons who thought he was the enemy. Drekhelm wasn’t built for him, for anyone without wings. He couldn’t come or go, unless he wanted to brave the long, treacherous path up from the valley below.

  Though he’d fought every day since they were separated to get to Rayna, he’d never really known what would happen after he reached her. And now he was here, it turned out he still didn’t know.

  “I’m just so glad to see you,” she murmured, and he felt himself soften. He knew what she said was true, but it wasn’t like her to actually voice something like that, unless she was comforting him over his latest mistake.

  “Me too,” he said. “We’ll figure something out, and we’ve got Lisabet as well, she’s smart, we can—”

  Rayna cut him off. “Anders, I’ll handle it. Promise. I always do.”

  His temper surged. “I handled plenty of things while you were gone,” he snapped. “I got myself into Ulfar, I figured out how to find Drekhelm, how to find you. I can do things myself, Rayna.”

  She stared at him, mouth open, and he realized his was open too.

  Had he just said that?

  He waited for her temper to flare in return, for her arms to cross and her scowl to sweep across her face. But instead, she just kept staring at him. Eventually, she spoke. “I know you can,” she said stiffly. “I know you can do things for yourself.”

  “You don’t know that at all,” he shot back. “You’ve never let me make a decision.”

  “You never wanted to make a decision,” she replied, her voice rising close to a shout.

  “Well, now I do,” he snapped. “I’ve changed.”

  And he hadn’t realized how much until this moment, when he’d found himself back with Rayna, her telling him she’d handle everything, expecting him to fall into line as he always had.

  Well, he wasn’t going to.

  In the weeks they’d been apart, Rayna and he had both seen things and learned things the other hadn’t. They’d never been separated before, and now it seemed that in such a short time, their paths had diverged more than he’d ever imagined they could.

  “You look cold,” Rayna said eventually, her tone conciliatory. “Drink your cocoa?”

  He knew it was her version of an apology, and he sank down onto one of the couches, taking a slow sip, then another. His frustration faded out. He knew he should feel lots of things, should be trying to think his way out of this.

  But right now, all he felt, all he could think, was that he was afraid—afraid for Rayna, afraid for Lisabet, afraid he’d never be able to keep everyone he cared for safe.

  “Listen,” said Rayna, thoughtful. “Perhaps we can—”

  But she got no further. A deafening crash sounded from the great hall, and above it, a chorus of screams, and the bellowing roar of a dragon.

  Together, he and Rayna ran for the door. They burst out into the hallway, and were nearly at the green door to the great hall when they heard a new sound rise above the chaos beyond it.

  It was the howl of wolves.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  TOGETHER THEY PUSHED THE DOOR OPEN, and Rayna grabbed him just in time to slam him to the floor as an ice spear came flying straight at their heads. Pain rattled through his body as his knees and elbows connected with the stone. They crawled along the wall, away from the doorway, so used to escaping tight situations together that they instinctively turned in the same direction.

  All around them was chaos. Three full-size dragons dominated the hall, twice the size Rayna had been, at least thirty feet each. But there was no room for any more—they were surrounded by a throng of bodies, human and wolf alike, all locked in battle. In an instant Anders spotted Professor Ennar’s steel-gray pelt, and moments later he was picking out his classmates.

  Those dragons in human form were fighting however they could, swinging chairs, a few brandishing knives—they had overturned the huge table, which must have been the crash he heard, and some were fighting from behind it. The wolves were fighting with teeth and ice spears, his classmates acting with trained precision.

  As Anders crouched against the wall an ice spear crashed into the shoulder of one of the dragons, who let out a bellow of pain. For an instant its red scales turned gray and blue around the injury, jagged like frost, and it staggered back, nearly crushing wolf and dragon alike. The spears weren’t just inflicting wounds—it was like the cold was doing some kind of other damage to the dragons.

  The injured dragon exhaled a shower of white-and-gold sparks, but though it swung its head this way and that, wolves and those dragons still in human form were mixed everywhere, and it could find no safe target for its flame.

  “What do we do?” Rayna screamed above the chaos. “They’ll kill each other!”

  But Anders was paralyzed—he wasn’t sure which side he was supposed to be fighting on, his friends’ or his sister’s, much less how to help.

  He saw Mateo run by, as bulky in wolf form as he was as a boy, disappearing down a hallway, followed by Jai. Turning back to the crowd, he saw Viktoria and Sakarias together, snarling as they backed a pair of human dragons up against the wall, snapping at them when they brandished poles that had once supported tapestries. His classmates might be young, but Ulfar Academy knew how to train its soldiers, and they were winning. Would one of them be forced to actually kill a dragon?

  A howl he knew grabbed his attention, and he saw Lisabet in wolf form by the overturned table. By her stood Leif, who remained a human. She was the one who had howled, and even in his human form, Anders understood her.

  Stop, she howled. We don’t have to fight, we can talk to them!

  Some of the wolves ignored her, but Anders saw others hesitate, turning toward her to listen. Det paused, ducking a knife instead of striking back.

  Sakarias wavered, and he turned his head. It was all the chance the human he was fighting needed—she swung the tapestry pole hard at him, connecting with his head and shoulder and sending him flying backward.

  Viktoria ducked and shifted to human form to grab him, hauling him out of the fray, crouching over him and baring her teeth like a wolf when one of the dragons looked set to follow them. She glanced up at Lisabet by the table, then turned her attention to Sakarias, who was almost unconscious.

  He had trusted Lisabet, and he paid the price for it.

  Stop! Lisabet howled again. If you kill their leader, there’ll be a war! But this time the wolves weren’t listening. Behind her, Leif raised his hands, shouting some command to the dragons, looking out across the crowd.

  He didn’t see the ice spear flying toward his body.

&
nbsp; But Lisabet did, launching herself up to intercept it. It crashed into her side, sending her flying back past Leif.

  She crashed into the table and fell to the ground, limp and still. And suddenly Anders was moving, pushing to his feet to shove his way through the crowd, ducking weapons and flames, jumping over wolves and humans where they wrestled, teeth snapping and knives glinting.

  A pair of hands grabbed him, yanking him down to the ground as a flame lit the air just above his head, burning where he’d been a second earlier. He looked around and found himself face-to-face with Professor Ennar. “Are you all right?” she shouted, looking over his shoulder for danger.

  “I’m fine,” he shouted back. “Please, you have to stop! They didn’t kidnap me, my sister’s here! My sister’s one of them!”

  “A dragon?” For a moment, Ennar was so incredulous, so confused, that she let go of him. Then a scream nearby yanked her back to the present. “I will do whatever it takes to keep my students safe,” she growled, an echo of her words that day in the combat hall.

  Suddenly Anders wasn’t sure—had she come here to rescue him? Or to discover Drekhelm and tell Sigrid where to find it? Or both?

  He tore free of her grip, ducking through the crowd again to get to Lisabet. The tide was beginning to turn in earnest—if the battle had been in the open, the dragons and their flames would have certainly had the advantage, but in here they couldn’t understand the snarled commands the wolves passed along, and the ice spears seemed to be really hurting them, even when they barely grazed their targets. The dragons were disorganized, and the wolves fought as one.

  “Keep moving,” someone shouted in his ear, and suddenly he realized Rayna was beside him, helping him shove and fight his way toward Lisabet. “Anders, we—”

  But she never finished the instruction—an ice spear caught her shoulder, knocking her back into the crowd, and she hit the ground.

  She screamed, grabbing at her shoulder, arching her back in pain, and he lunged to grab her just as a huge dragon’s tail came swinging around toward both of them, pulling her clear by her legs. There was no blood at her shoulder—it looked as if the spear had pierced her clothes, but not her skin—but her face was already turning from its usual warm brown to a completely unnatural shade of blue-gray, as if she were turning to ice right in front of him. She tried to move, to climb to her feet, and collapsed, her eyes rolling back.