“And where do you belong?”
I sat with the question for a few moments before replying. “I’m trying to figure that out.” I pulled my fur mantle tighter about my shoulders.
“Well, I don’t want to go back. So we can figure out what to do next. Together.”
I took a bite from my apple, forcing myself to eat, and telling myself that maybe I could still find Fell. If I roamed widely enough and covered enough ground, if I happened to be close to where he was buried … then maybe he would stir and reach out to me. I had nothing to lose by trying.
WE WALKED ANOTHERweek, my hope clinging by a fraying thread.
Kerstin stayed by my side, supportive and encouraging, but I felt her sidelong glances. She made no demands, keeping up and tromping beside me through snow and over rough terrain, never once inquiring how long we would keep at this before we quit. And if we did declare it quits, what then? Where would we go? I knew she was starting to wonder, but I didn’t know that answer myself.
I only knew I couldn’t stop.
Not yet.
“You’re quiet today,” she remarked as we made camp for the night.
“Just tired.”
Not an untruth. The journey was taxing, the reminder never far that not so long ago I had been broken and clinging to life as the last leaf of fall clings to the branch. And yet it was more than that.
It was the energy spent trying to reach Fell … flinging myself out there, casting a wide net in the hope of finding him somewhere in that plane, in that ether where we had come together before, seeking and grasping for him wherever he might be and coming up empty every time, coming up with … nothing.
I DIDN’T KNOWwhat woke me. It wasn’t dawn yet. I blinked in the swollen air and held still for several moments, letting my gaze catch and hold on the waning flames of the fire, feeling every scalding lick like a breath unwinding from me.
“Tamsyn?” Kerstin softly queried, also awake.
I heard it then. Pressing my hand flat on the cave floor, muscles tight and ready to spring into action. I pushed myself into a sitting position and peered around.
Over the sound of my name … a howl flung long and low on the air. Air that felt thicker than when we went to sleep. Viscous as soup now. The pale mist undulated around us, ribboning over our bodies.
Wolves.
We held ourselves still, frozen in the miasma, gazes locked in silent communication, a world of understanding passing between us.
Another mournful howl stretched out, clawing toward us on the air.
We could not remain here. Not where we could be trapped. That was the way of wolves, how they hunted dragons. They were experts at what they did.
In the days of the Threshing, they tracked us through the tunnels, surrounding us, cornering us in our dens. They never went after us in the open. It was only in caves like this where we perished.
Kerstin and I lurched to our feet. Grabbing our packs, we doused the fire. Our vision acclimated, pupils flaring wide in the darkness. We clasped hands, needing the connection for reasons that had nothing to do with the darkness and everything to do with the sudden fear swallowing us whole.
We inched out from the cave into the night, into the wild world, ready to lift up into the air if necessary, if a pack of wolves materialized in front of us.
More wolves howled.
Another and another and another answering the rallying call of the first.
They were close. It would not take them long to catch our scent and run us to ground. That’s what they did. It was bred into them. The earliest of wolves were nursed on dragon blood—the very first, sired by Fenrir himself, conditioned to crave it. The taste and hunger extended beyond memory. It was embedded into their very marrow, in the fiber of their beings.
My fire was a useful weapon, depending on how many adversaries I faced, but a pack of wolves could number as many as twenty, even thirty. They needed numbers on their side to overcome us. To bring down dragons, they had to be a formidable force. Not great odds for me and Kerstin.
More wolves gave voice to the night—their howls broken only by the occasional squabbling and wounded yips as they lashed out at each other like fractious children.
We hastened toward the first outcropping of trees. There, among the fir and pine and spruce was a tree I’d only ever seen in the Crags. The trunk wide, at least five times the width of me, it soared to the skies with an abundance of leaves unaffected by the cold. The rough bark was scattered with offshoots that were perfect for climbing, and its boughs promised shelter.
We climbed. It was easy enough. No need to turn into our dragons. We would only ruin a good set of clothes if we did that—and we’d each brought only one spare change of clothes in our knapsacks. No, it was far better to climb and secure ourselves high in the limbs where wolves could not reach us.
