Leif sent word that he felt it would be best if they kept to their room, with so many dragons still unsure about two wolves—even wolves who had saved them in battle—staying at Drekhelm. Lisabet was disappointed, as she said it was a lost opportunity for cultural observation, but Anders didn’t mind. Leif was right—it was better to keep a low profile.
Rayna and Ellukka showed up at Anders and Lisabet’s room just as the two wolves were starting to wonder about dinner, carrying plates laden with food from the feast: steaming fish spiced with chella, glossy buttered peas and orange and yellow carrots, dark-brown bread stacked on top of the vegetables. Rayna had little cakes as well, bright-yellow sponges made with sour cream, lavished with orange-flavored frosting.
Ellukka had red ribbons braided through her hair, and Rayna... Rayna’s braids were gone. She’d cut her hair so it just brushed her shoulders, her curls springing free from their usual restraints.
“You like it?” she said, tossing her head this way and that so Anders could look at it. “It was Ellukka’s idea, for the party.”
“I...” He wasn’t sure what he thought. “It looks great,” he said automatically. But a small part of him he didn’t have time to examine felt strange about Rayna cutting her hair. She was different enough in her dragon’s clothes, without changing the face he’d known for years. And because Ellukka had suggested it?
“Where do dragons get their food?” Lisabet asked around a mouthful, already eating. “You couldn’t grow it up here in the mountains.”
“We trade,” Ellukka said, taking up position at the end of Lisabet’s bed. Rayna came over to sit on Anders’s bed with him. “The people we’re trading with don’t know we’re dragons, obviously. And we have farms as well. Mostly run by people whose parents were dragons, but who didn’t transform themselves. They don’t mind living away from the mountains, but of course they shouldn’t have to leave the community. They run farms in the Uplands, crew ships that sail out of Port Tylerd and Port Alcher. The oranges are grown in greenhouses near Port Baernor, in the southwest. Just like us, they follow the lives that call to them.”
Anders ate his meal quickly, trying to make himself savor every bite, but so hungry he could barely slow down. It was as if his body was still recovering after throwing the icefire yesterday. With a small smile, Rayna broke her orange cake in two, and put one half on his plate.
“Did the Dragonmeet talk all day?” Lisabet asked.
“All day,” Ellukka confirmed. “Twenty-five people is a lot to have on a council, especially when you want everyone to have their say.”
“And dragons always wanteveryoneto have their say,” Rayna interjected. “It takes forever.”
“Even with the Snowstone out there, probably in the hands of the Fyrstulf by now, they can’t hurry,” Ellukka said. “They’re trying to work out what she’s thinking.”
Anders and Lisabet exchanged a quick glance—they still hadn’t admitted to anyone that Sigrid was Lisabet’s mother, and Anders felt a guilty tug about that. After all, he’d been furious when Lisabet had kept that from him. But at the same time, they didn’t need to give the dragons any more reason to doubt them than they already had. He was truly beginning to understand why Lisabet had lied about it.
“What’s the party like?” he asked quickly, when he thought he saw Ellukka intercepting that glance.
Rayna and Ellukka looked at each other. Rayna raised her eyebrows, and Ellukka laughed. “Want to see?” she asked. “There’s a secret spot where you can look down at the Great Hall, nobody will know. I go there sometimes to spy on them, when I’m trying to work out whether Father’s ever going to be done talking. You can’t tell anybody about it.”
“We promise,” said Anders, and Lisabet grinned.
Five minutes later they’d finished their meals, and they were in the hallways of Drekhelm, ducking off through a side door to climb a narrow, winding staircase carved into the rock. It was barely big enough for a twelve-year-old, so it was hard to imagine how an adult could ever get up there.
At the top was a little ledge. It looked as if it had just eough room for the four of them to pile in together like a pack of wolves settling down for the night, side by side and half on top of one another.
“I’ll go first,” Ellukka whispered, grinning. “I’m bigger than you, I’ll squash you otherwise. Then Anders, he’s next biggest.”
She crawled into the nook, and Anders went next to lie beside her, with Rayna and then Lisabet cramming in after to lie on top of them. There was a hole in the rock that gave them a view down to the Great Hall, and it was covered by a thin metal grate.
“They think it’s ventilation up here,” Ellukka said.
“I wish,” Rayna muttered, trying to get comfortable, and making an apologetic noise when she drove an elbow into Anders’s spine.
But he didn’t mind. His gaze was fixed on the scene below. The huge double doors were flung open, the night sky visible beyond. In the Great Hall itself there was a bonfire, and musicians were standing on top of the Dragonmeet’s long table, playing guitars and fiddles and drums for all they were worth.
The dragons were all in human form, and some were dancing around the fire, others talking in groups, eating and drinking. There was a kind of ferocity to the underlying energy of the room, as if their fear of the Snowstone, of the potential wolf attack, was driving them to greater, louder, more lively celebrations. Anders couldn’t say why, but he felt a little as though the figures below him were shouting and singing and dancing all the more wildly to defy their fear.
In some ways, it was like the dancing he’d seen at year’s end in the streets of Holbard. In others, from the mountain visible beyond the doors to the bright colors of the clothing below, the many red dresses and tunics and cloaks—a dragon color, one rarely seen in the city—it felt completely foreign.
But one thing was clear—just as the wolves were a pack, the dragons below him were connected to one another after all. This was their home, and together they were family. Their wild celebrations and their joined hands proclaimed it.
He felt a sad tug back toward Holbard, toward Ulfar, where his classmates would still be nursing their wounds. He wished there was a way to tell them he’d never meant for any of it to happen. That all he wanted was a safe place to be with his sister. But Rayna’s body was warm against his, and though he didn’t know if he could ever be part of the big family he saw dancing below, with her and Lisabet beside him, he hoped he could find his place here.
Chapter Four
THE NEXT MORNINGRAYNA ANDELLUKKAcame by to collect the two wolves for breakfast, leading them down the hallways with the lamps that slowly glowed to life as they approached and then faded out as they passed. Anders wondered if the meal would be in a dining hall like the one at Ulfar, with long tables of dragons. He was tense just imagining it.
He wished he had more chances to talk to Rayna. He’d expected they’d somehow end up in a room together, but she and Ellukka were sharing a room, and when he’d asked if he and Lisabet would stay in the guest room, the dragon bringing them more clothes and other supplies had said they would. Anders had got the distinct impression that although their door wouldn’t be locked again, the dragons wanted to know where the two wolves were at all times.
