Ice Wolves (Elementals, Book 1)

by Amie Kaufman

  Panic gripped Anders. Rayna was struggling to stay conscious behind him, and Lisabet was an unmoving heap upon the dais, where Leif was fighting three wolves at once, brandishing a chair.

  He could see Viktoria trying to help Sakarias to his feet, dragging him toward the doors out of the cave. All around him were howls, roars, and shouts.

  He didn’t want his old classmates hurt any more than he wanted Rayna in danger, any more than he wanted Leif killed—because Lisabet was right. That would start a war, if they hadn’t begun one already. A new generation would end up orphans, just like him.

  He wanted to turn and check on Rayna, and he wanted to get to Lisabet. He wanted to run to Sakarias.

  Perhaps as a wolf he could howl, make himself heard, convince his classmates to retreat. He crammed himself into wolf form, though every bone in his body screamed a protest, and every nerve sang with fiery pain. The scent of blood and sweat was suddenly crisp in his nostrils, and the bright colors of the world faded out for dimmer versions of their old selves.

  And in the next heartbeat, everything seemed to slow down, a second crawling by at a snail’s pace. He saw a huge dragon turn its head, draw breath, and send a pure white flame straight at Viktoria and Sakarias, where they were staggering toward the exit, his arm around her shoulder.

  He saw a wolf’s paws crash down, an ice spear flying straight at Leif’s chest, sharp and straight and true.

  He heard Rayna moan her pain behind him, heard the scrape of sound as she tried and failed to climb to her feet.

  It built to a peak, his fear and his panic taking him over, each new sight hitting him one after another like a series of blows, until a rush came over him that felt like transformation, and yet nothing like transformation.

  He only had a heartbeat to save Viktoria and Sakarias, and Leif.

  He had never understood how the others sensed the water around them. How they drew it from the air, turned it to ice. He’d never even had a hint of that feeling.

  But suddenly, his every nerve sharpened by fear, he saw.

  There was water everywhere, in every breath of air.

  It was all his—he could make it dance, he could make it fly, he could make it freeze.

  And he could do more than that. He could draw in the air around him, so rich and so ready to breathe, and he could combine it with the water . . . and change it.

  It was as if somebody had suddenly switched on a light, and a map was laid out in front of him.

  He reared up, slamming his front paws against the stone floor of the great hall.

  He made ice.

  He made fire.

  He saw it all, and he commanded it.

  A great wave of blue-and-silver fire came pouring forth, arcing across the hall to form a barrier between the scorch dragon’s fire and the ice wolf’s spear.

  The white fire and the ice spear both vanished into nothing as they connected with his blue-and-silver flames.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  ANDERS FELT DIZZY BUT EXULTANT AS THE battle surged around him, both sides momentarily panicked by his silver-blue fire. The power to cast another wave of it came rushing up through him, and as the wolves cast new spears and the dragons breathed new flame, he unleashed his own weapon.

  Again the ice spears vanished into nothing as they hit his fire, and the dragonsfire seemed to vanish as well, becoming a part of his own flame. He heard a note of panic in Ennar’s growled command, and in the next moment a dragon swung its tail around at full speed, sending Det crashing into a wall.

  Bereft of her weapons, Ennar tilted her head back and howled the retreat, a note of panic in her voice that Anders had never imagined he’d hear.

  The wolves were snarling as they backed up toward the mouth of the cave, readying to make their escape.

  Mateo and Jai came racing out of the hallway they’d disappeared into, and though Anders saw that they each carried something in their mouths, he had no chance to see what it was.

  He crouched beside Rayna, pouring himself back into human form so he could gather her up in his arms. Across the great hall Viktoria was still helping Sakarias, and his heart broke as he watched his friends limp away, injured and afraid.

  Afraid of him.

  “Let them go,” Leif was shouting from where he knelt by Lisabet. “Do not follow!”

  “They invaded our home!” A nearby dragon shouted, still brandishing a knife. “What do you mean, ‘let them go’?”

  “They are children,” Leif replied, close to a snap. “What are you going to do, roast a pack of cubs who don’t know any better than they’ve been taught? Where’s a healer?”

  A man came running across the hall to kneel by Leif and Lisabet, and as the dragons started to take stock of their wounded, a woman knelt by Anders and Rayna, carefully examining Rayna’s shoulder. “She’ll be all right soon,” she promised. “The cold weakens us, but it will wear off in time. She needs to rest, is all.”

  “The others,” Rayna whispered. Already her skin was returning to its usual brown, but she still looked terrible.

  Anders wasn’t sure what she meant, until he stood and realized that the boy Rayna had said was her friend, Mikkel, lay near Lisabet. His already white face was unnaturally pale now beneath his tousled copper hair, and his smirk was missing. The girl, Ellukka, was leaning over him. He must have been all right, because she was scolding him for something as she helped him sit up. They must have been waiting nearby for Rayna, and come running when they heard the battle.

  Anders took hold of Rayna’s hands, gently pulling her to her feet and draping her arm around his shoulder so they could make their way over to Leif and Lisabet and the others.

  Leif was still kneeling by her, issuing quick commands to the dragons around him. “Saphira, take to the skies and watch them retreat, but do not interfere. Unnult, assemble teams to carry the wounded to the infirmary.”

  Together, Anders and Rayna dropped to a crouch beside the pair of them. “Is she . . .” Lisabet was still unmoving, and he couldn’t make himself say it.

  “Unconscious,” Leif said quietly. “The cold didn’t hurt her, but her head hit the ground. I think she stirred a moment ago, she . . .” He trailed off as Lisabet’s eyelids fluttered. She was as snow-white as she’d ever been beneath her freckles, with a sort of dull gray sheen to her skin. After a moment, she subsided again, apparently not ready to wake up just yet.

  “I’ve got her,” said Ellukka, shifting over to sit closer to Lisabet and settling the girl’s head in her lap. “We saw her protect you, Drekleid.” And that, her tone clearly said, changed everything.

  Mikkel leaned back against one of the table legs beside her, quiet.

  Anders shifted to sit on the steps leading up to the dais, Rayna taking her place beside him, an arm around his shoulders.

  He felt as though he’d been clobbered, his head spinning.

  What had he done?

  What was the silver-blue fire he’d thrown?

  He was already forgetting how to do it, the knowledge slipping away like water through his fingers. But for one shining moment, it had been like Ennar and all the other wolves had told him—he only had to see what was in the air, and then control it.

  But it seemed he saw something different in the air than everyone else. Was it just that he had only been looking for water all along?

  “They’ve found Drekhelm again,” a nearby dragon was saying, her voice close to despair. “They’ll come for us here! We have two wolves here, they’ll come back for them too.”

  “The Dragonmeet is here,” Leif replied calmly. “We will discuss what to do.”

  Lisabet stirred and made a soft sound. Anders twisted around and met her bleary gaze. “Are you okay?” he whispered.

  She considered the question for a moment, started to nod, then thought the better of it. “I will be,” she murmured.

  Rayna’s arm tightened around him, and he felt a flash of pain for Lisabet. Whatever she thought of her mother,
she was trapped away from her now, and Anders knew firsthand what losing family was like. He’d only just got his back.

  Death or exile.

  The words echoed in his head once more. Would Sigrid want Lisabet back, or brand her a traitor? It was hard to imagine the wolves ever welcoming them back to Ulfar, and Anders didn’t want to be separated from his twin again, no matter how much he worried about his pack.

  He should never have let Lisabet come with him—though “let” wasn’t really the right word. Lisabet was unstoppable.

  The adult dragons were still speaking. “Do we have two wolves here?” When Anders looked up, the blond man who looked like a relative of Ellukka’s was pointing at him. “Leif, we saw him cast fire. Silver-and-blue fire. What kind of creature does that?”

  “He’s not a creature,” Rayna said hotly. “He’s—”

  But Anders was ready to answer that for himself. For once, he didn’t feel like everyone talking over him. “I’m a wolf,” he said, his voice carrying and silencing those around them. “And my sister’s a dragon. And you’re welcome, by the way.”

  “He is a wolf,” Leif agreed. “A particular kind of wolf. I believe what we saw today was icefire.”

  All around them now, dragons were staring at Anders with something like awe.

  “Icefire is a myth,” a woman said.

  “Except we just saw it,” Rayna replied. “And he’s right, nobody’s said thank you to him for driving the wolves out.”

  Guilt washed over him at her words. He hadn’t just driven “the wolves” out. He’d driven his friends out. But at least Sakarias and Viktoria, Mateo and Det and Jai and Ennar and all the rest of the class were safely away. He’d done that too.

  “The discovery of Anders’s icefire has bought us at least temporary safety,” Leif said. “The battle might have been far, far worse, save for his bravery.”

  Everyone was looking at Anders now. “I was only—people were in danger,” he said. “My sister, my friends. It wasn’t—”

  “That is what bravery is,” Leif said. “Doing what you must.”

  Anders sat quietly with Rayna, watching as a healer checked Lisabet over.

  “I can’t believe you did that.” Rayna’s voice startled him, pulling him back from his own thoughts, his own worries. “You were amazing, Anders.”

  “I was afraid,” he said quietly.

  “Everyone was afraid,” she replied. “What you were saying before, about being able to do things yourself. I know you can. You’re right, that’s how you got here, and you just saved all of us.” Her arm tightened around his shoulders. “I’ll try and remember you can stand on your own two feet. Or your own four feet, some days.”

  “Do we know what they took?” That was Ellukka, who still had Lisabet’s head in her lap, one gentle hand resting on her forehead to stop her from moving. “A couple of the wolves had something in their mouths when they left. They went farther into Drekhelm.”

  Everybody shook their heads. Anders suspected they’d find out soon enough.

  Once Ennar was back in Holbard, Sigrid would know exactly where to find Drekhelm. And he knew she wouldn’t be content to simply sit on that knowledge.

  As the noise around them devolved into many smaller conversations and the dragons started to help their wounded to the infirmary, Anders looked around at his companions, old and new.

  Rayna leaned in against Anders, her head on his shoulder. Ellukka had accepted a cold cloth from a healer, and was leaning in to lay it on Lisabet’s forehead. Mikkel watched from his place by her side.

  “Did anyone hurt you?” Lisabet asked Anders, looking up at him from under the compress.

  “I’m all right,” he said. Because despite everything he had to worry about, despite everything that had gone wrong, he was.

  He had bought them time to think. And as he looked around at the company he was keeping, for the first time in a very long time, he felt like he’d done enough.

  Nobody had won today, but he had saved them from injuries that could never be undone.

  It was a start.

  He had no idea what to do next. His friends and his sister were hurt, and his classmates were on the run, nursing injuries, and no doubt thinking he’d betrayed them. He was exiled to a mountain full of dragons who didn’t trust him, and didn’t understand his icefire. He should have been ready to creep under a rock and hide there. But he wasn’t.

  If Leif was right, and bravery was doing what you must, then perhaps Anders was braver than he’d realized. He’d been doing things he didn’t know he could for weeks now.

  He’d spent all his life looking for something he could be good at, a way he could be useful, a place to belong. Now, for the first time, he was realizing that a place to belong—a home—wasn’t a place you found.

  It was a place you made. And though he hadn’t done it yet, he felt as he never had before that, given time, he could.

  “Let’s get Lisabet to the infirmary,” he said. “First things first.”

  And as they worked together to help her to her feet, he was even surer. Everything had changed, but this didn’t have to be an end.

  This could be a beginning.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Writing this book has been a joyful experience, and I’m even luckier than Anders—I had a whole army of Lisabets to help me. I’d like to thank a few of them here.

  Abby Ranger edited the first book I ever published, and working with her was such a joy that I jumped at the chance to do it again. Abby, thank you so much for your guidance, your encouragement, your good humor, and your friendship. It was a joy all over again.

  I wasn’t just lucky enough to have one incredible editor on this book—I’ve been lucky enough to have two. The wonderful Andrew Eliopulos stepped in to help with the end of this book, and to take on the next with kindness, humor, effortless expertise, and just the right amount of nerdiness for me. (By which I mean a lot.) I can’t wait for the rest of this adventure.

  Thank you as well to all the wonderful Harper crew, from sales and marketing to production to art and more. Thanks in particular to Rosemary Brosnan and Kate Jackson for their support, to Rose Pleuler for her wonderful editorial work, to Joe Merkel and Levente Szabo for my gorgeous cover and design, and to Virginia Allyn for a map of unsurpassed beauty. Thank you to copy editor Jill Amack and production editor Emily Rader for saving me from myself, not once but many times.

  Thank you to my incredible agent, Tracey Adams, who never fails to know exactly what I need—even when I don’t. Tracey, I’m grateful for your smarts, your calm head, and your friendship. A huge thanks as well to Josh Adams, who’s part of the pack on every book.

  I’ve also had such wonderful friends to share this journey with, and I barely know where to start in thanking them. Meg Spooner—dedicating this book to you doesn’t begin to express my gratitude for the ways in which you’ve changed my life. Thank you for all the road behind us so far, and I can’t wait for all the road ahead. Marie Lu—when I wasn’t sure, you told me to just jump in and take on this story, and you were right, as you always are. I can’t imagine my life without you in it. Jay Kristoff—that bacon was the best investment I ever made. I’m so grateful for your friendship, your humor, your constant support, and all the miles we’ve covered so far. Leigh Bardugo—thank you, thank you, for being your marvelous self, for always having my back, and for reminding me in one incredibly timely email that first drafts don’t need to be perfect.

  On that note, a huge thank-you to Alison Cherry, who helped me get started when I was totally stuck, and read this book as it came to life—Alison, your amazing smile is your superpower, and it saved the day! Shannon Messenger proves herself a superhero on a regular basis—Shannon, thank you for all your enthusiasm, support, and cheerleading. I’m awash with wonderful authors who helped out at every stage—Sarah Rees Brennan and C. S. Pacat provided friendship, cheerleading, and a turning-point conversation about the link between my own fears and Anders�
�s over the most valuable Korean meal I’ve ever had. The lovely Arwen Elys Dayton ran her expert eye over this book and it was all the better for it, and the ever-generous Garth Nix gave me a gentle push at just the right moment. Kiersten White showed up like a dream just when I needed her, Ryan Graudin somehow always knew just the right thing to say, and Lindsay Ribar always knows just the way to lift my mood. Alex Bracken, Sooz Dennard, and Erin Bowman—good things come in threes! To the authors who offered such generous words about this story, a huge thank-you—Shannon Messenger, Marie Lu, Margaret Peterson Haddix, Gregory Funaro, Claire Legrand, and the ever sparkly Alex Gino, I appreciate your collective kindness so much!

  Michelle Dennis—for every walk, every talk and text, every evening, and just plain everything, thank you. Kacey Smith—I have no idea what I’d do without you, and I never want to find out. Nic Crowhurst—your heart is even bigger than your brain, and that’s saying something. Kate Irving—we stick together though oceans separate us, but I’m so glad they no longer do. Soraya Een Hajji, who knew a punch in the nose could be a harbinger of such great fortune? Peta Freestone, you’re a constant delight. Eliza Tiernan, you light up every room you’re in. And to every member of Team Roti Boti—having exceptional friends like you is proof I’m as lucky as they come. (And look, I finally wrote something that won’t scare your children!)

  Every author has help from experts, and I’m no exception—as always, everything I get right is thanks to them, and everything I get wrong is all on me. Alexander Daly and Will Marney provided invaluable feedback and advice, as did Alex Gino, Anna Prendella, Becky Albertalli, Marianne Kirby, Dhonielle Clayton, Tempest Bradford, Nisi Shawl, and other excellent people as well. The staff of the Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem, New York, provided me with a research opportunity I’ll never forget—thank you!