“I won’t let her touch you,” Griffin says.
He sounds so sure. I look at him, and my heart starts to ache, the pain physical and overwhelming. This is exactly what I didn’t want, what terrified me and drove me to push Griffin away for as long as I could—Mother going through him to get to me.
“Is this like with the She-Dragon?” Flynn asks softly. “Some kind of long-distance compulsion?”
I nod, answering in equally quiet tones, despite the harsh drumming of my pulse. “Alpha Fisa gets a relayed impression of what the creatures see—five riders, the woods, our general location. Words are more direct. She can hear through them just like with Sybaris, and speak through them if they’re capable of speech. To try to control three creatures at once is risky, especially ones this powerful and malevolent. My read on their magic is that they’re incredibly sentient, yet at the same time…empty.” I shake my head. “I don’t understand exactly. It’s like there’s something missing.”
Griffin pulls a long, straight dagger from his boot and holds it in the same hand as his reins. His other hand carries his sword. “Can you break her hold?”
“I couldn’t with Sybaris. And I can’t handle three. If I somehow break her hold and then can’t control them myself, they’ll attack on their own anyway.”
I glance back. I’ll always refuse to use compulsion on humans, but I really need to gain some control over creatures if Mother is going to keep throwing them at us.
The wolf-like things are closer now, weaving between the trees with no thought to keeping hidden anymore. The yellow glow of their eyes intensifies with each loping step.
I shiver. I don’t know what they are. “We can’t let them keep following us and hearing half of what we say. We should make a stand.”
Griffin nods in agreement just as we emerge into a large clearing, seeing our first direct sunlight in hours. A field ripples before us, mostly flat. No cover—for us or them.
“Don’t forget that nothing is ever what it seems this close to the Ice Plains,” I remind everyone. Then I turn to Griffin, a bad feeling kicking around inside of me. “I love you.”
Griffin scowls. He looks like I just punched him in the gut. “Fight. Youfight. You can tell me you love me when it’s over.”
I nod. “When it’s over.” A heartbeat later, I slip my feet from my stirrups, swing my right leg over Panotii’s neck, and then slide to the ground. I land facing the creatures, leaving my horse to continue on.
The monsters stop. And they really are monstrous. A menacing frill of gray-black fur rises along each of their spines from the base of their oversized necks to the tips of their curving, whiplike tails. I don’t like the look of this. Knowing Mother is behind it makes it even worse.
“Cat!” Griffin wheels Brown Horse around. Panotii swings back toward me like he’s tethered to them.
“Stay back!” I throw out my arms as if that could somehow keep four seasoned warriors from charging into the fray.
“Dismount,” Griffin barks. “They’re too low to fight on horseback.”
“Which part of ‘stay back’ did you not understand?” I snap.
Like a big, predatory panther, Griffin drops down next to me. He sends his mount to the far side of the clearing with a shove on Brown Horse’s rump, and Panotii follows like a sheep. “The part where you fight alone,” Griffin snaps back.
I glare at him, but really, what did I expect? “I’m going to incinerate them.”
Stone-faced, he says, “Be my guest.”
I focus on the wolf-things again, and that sense of foreboding deepens, scraping through me like a sawing in my bones. Their legs and paws are massive, but their bodies are still too big for them, huge and barrel-like, with almost no shape, just mass. They could flatten me in seconds and then rip out my throat.
Good thing I have Dragon’s Breath.
The lead creature bares its fangs in a warped smile, revealing splotched gums and razor-sharp teeth. I’d recognize that expression anywhere.
My mouth twists into a smile that’s probably just as awful. “It was nice seeing you, Mother. But, really, you didn’t need to send gifts.”
The monster growls. Mother never did like my sarcasm.
Once the creatures are far enough from the trees—I don’t want to burn the forest, and us, along with them—I draw in a deep breath. Magic leaps from the well of power inside me, ready and eager. It sizzles through my veins and then pours from my mouth in a crackling inferno. The torrent of flames blisters the grass between the creatures and me, slamming into them with enough force to lift them off their feet.Ha!
But instead of melting into piles of sludge and bone, they snarl and gouge their claws into the scorched ground, crouching low as the lethal firestorm boils over them.
I slam my mouth shut on the Dragon’s Breath. They burn, and yet theydon’t.
The monster in the back spins and races for the woods. My heart lurching, I throw my two knives in quick succession, afraid of what will happen if it reaches the trees.
