Ice was meeting heat below, sending up great clouds of steam, and Anders could only imagine the pandemonium in Holbard’s streets. The dragons were roaring and breathing flame, and the wolves below were casting ice spears, and the city that had always been Anders’s home was coming to pieces before his very eyes.
Somewhere below him, almost everyone he’d ever known—his friends from Ulfar, the friendly shopkeepers who’d slipped him and his sister meals, the children of the street, the local traders and the foreign merchers—everyone was caught in this battle of fire and ice.
He shouted again, helpless, as half a dozen dragons swooped down at the wolves on the wall, breathing fire and sending them scattering in every direction.
Leif was still flying near his students, but as a sudden volley of ice spears soared toward Ellukka and Rayna, it was Valerius who threw himself into their path to protect his daughter, roaring his defiance.
Ellukka shrieked as a wave of gray cold started at her father’s foreleg, racing along his side. One wing paralyzed, he began to fall, fall, fall toward the ground.
Leif plunged with him, somehow maneuvering himself underneath Valerius. The injured dragon’s good wing flared, his tail whipped, and by sheer luck he managed to keep his balance as he landed atop Leif’s back. And with an extraordinary show of strength, Leif managed to carry him, winging his way toward the plains beyond the city, and safety.
He had saved Ellukka’s father, but he would play no further role in the battle.
As Anders stared after them, a deep red dragon he thought was Torsten soared over the city wall, blasting a long section with white-and-gold flame. He left smoldering ruins behind—Anders couldn’t tell if there were any wolves among the detritus or not.
He jammed the scepter back into Rayna’s harness and thumped on her back with both hands to get her attention.
“Take me lower,” he shouted, the power already welling up inside him in response to the danger and his desperation, threatening to overtake him. He could feel it coming like a rush, and there was no way to slow it, let alone stop it. “Take me closer!”
He had to transform if he was going to do this, and he had to do it while Rayna was arrowing through the air. Without his safety harness. He unbuckled the belt that connected him to the leather straps, grabbing hold with his hands instead. Once he let go, he’d have only a heartbeat to change and grab hold of her harness again.
If we get out of this alive, he told himself,we’re adding extra straps to these things. Some kind of safety system.
And then he was out of time. Rayna dove, understanding his plan, and Anders hurled himself into wolf form with everything he had, channeling his fear and his determination, making the change more quickly than ever before. He grabbed hold of her harness with his teeth, then let his hind legs slide down until they were jammed between the straps and her body. The bright colors of the world faded out, and he was alive with the sharp scents of acrid smoke and crisp frost.
Rayna took a path that would lead her straight between the attacking Dragonmeet dragons and the wolves assembled atop the walls to fight them. Straight into the path of their flame, of their spears.
Nobody was expecting it.
Nobody could stop themselves in time, even if they’d wanted to.
Anders managed to lift his front paws, and he howled and brought them down on Rayna’s back.
And there wasicefire.
Silver flames billowed out, consuming the dragons’ fire and the wolves’ ice, swallowing them whole before they could touch the twins. Rayna pulled up, and Anders grabbed the harness with his teeth again as she looped around to see what lay behind them.
Last time Anders had thrown icefire, both the wolves and the dragons had been so confused, so overwhelmed, it had been enough to end the battle.
This time, they were prepared. His heart sank as he realized the wolves were already launching another volley, and the dragons were regrouping, preparing to reply.
This time, his icefire wouldn’t be enough.
Everything was moving so quickly around him, images whirling past, the wind whipping at him, steam rising from below, ice cracking buildings and heat sending billowing updrafts to grab at Rayna. He thought he saw Mikkel, and Theo, but could his friends have caught up with them already? Once he saw five wolves racing across the roofs, and his heart wanted to tell him they were his Ulfar friends, but his head told him they were simply more attackers.
His gaze traced back a path the way they’d come—and then he blinked, and looked again. Amid the ruins of Ulfar, the crumbled stonework and the jagged trench running through the Academy, there was a beam of white light shining up from one corner of the debris. It was perfectly straight, spearing up into the sky. His tired brain tried to make sense of what he was seeing, tried to understand which part of the Academy the light was coming from, whether it was some kind of new danger.
But then he realized he knew exactly where it was coming from.
It was Hayn’s workshop.
Was their uncle sending them a signal?
He howled to Rayna, throwing his weight in the direction he wanted her to look, and her great head swung around as her wings beat to keep them aloft. Unhesitating—trusting him utterly, even though she had no idea why he was asking her to do it—she made for the pillar of light. She dodged and wove, and he clung to her straps with claws and teeth, flung around like a rag doll as she narrowed in on the signal.
He could see even as they approached that the workshop itself was empty, the whole roof missing, as if it had been blown off. Where Hayn was, he did not know, but the light was shining up like a beacon from a huge sheet of metal, engraved in runes. What had Hayn wanted them to see, or do?
He flung himself from Rayna’s back, aware they had only moments before the wolves would be on them, forcing himself back into human shape even as his feet hit the ground. His sister couldn’t transform—not without losing her straps, and the only way she had of carrying him safely. She roared a warning—to him, or perhaps to the approaching wolves—as he scrambled over the rubble toward the center of the room.
