Tension and growing hostility I don’t want to acknowledge sweep over me on a ripple of shadows that blend into the fast-falling night. I lift my head, dragging air deep into my nostrils. I still don’t smell her, that unique mix of sunshine and ice. We all have dry, aged scents—heated rock, parched earth, windblown sand, crisp autumn leaves already on the ground—but Idallia is a spring lake about to burst, the frozen surface cracking under the strong rays and ready to transform into something else.
“I saw her head northwest,” Arran says, then shifts. “We should fly that way first.”
I tamp down the useless annoyance I feel at Arran knowing something I don’t. Idallia slips out of my sight too often, but treating her differently isn’t an option. She’d rebel.
Except, she is different. I need to tell her just how different, but I can’t bring myself to do it. The moment she knows the truth, it’ll change this team forever. It could change everything, and some truths alter people. I’m already two centuries too late in confessing what I know, but I want her where she is as much as I need her where she should be.
My silence was an absolute necessity for a long time to ensure her safety, probably her freedom, and maybe even her life. But is it now?
And would Idallia’s life be better for knowing the truth? I’m wary and unsure of the answer, and it’s a question I’ve been grappling with since the day I plucked her from school.
The snarl finally leaks out. “Danica, Wade—keep all the wing guards with you and follow us with the children. If anything goes wrong, fly them straight to Muirvale. The wing guards can help carry them.”
I take off without waiting for a response. Fyrestar can come back if he’s killed, but Idallia can’t, and the too-silent forest around us makes my heart pound harder than it should.
CHAPTER FOUR
IDALLIA
Fyrestar drops below the tree line so fast I barely mark the moment we go from being above the canopy to below. The dimness is sudden, but my eyes adjust quickly. Going from dark to light usually feels like twin daggers in my eyes, but going from light to dark is easy, almost a relief sometimes. Unfortunately, now I can perfectly see the type of werebeast I’m chasing, and it doesn’t look good.
“Bloodpit,” I growl. “Snow tigers.” Faster than bears. More dangerous than wolves. They’re the worst type of weres to fight, especially alone.
“This group is bigger than I thought from above.” Fyrestar is right to be wary. But everyone else took off after their own quarries, and I’m not about to let these weres get away with the kids.
The snow tigers are in half-skin to carry the children. They see Fyrestar and me closing in from above, and three of the six werebeasts fully shift and accelerate, breaking away from the group. The three carrying kids need arms and keep running in their in-between forms. I can’t tell from this distance if the little ones are too young to shift, but they wouldn’t anyway. The Muirvale werechildren spot us and start struggling against their kidnappers with a violence worthy of Torridaigan soldiers.
My grim smile praises their efforts to slow their captors as Fyrestar banks left and right, angling in between big trees at a breakneck pace. This part of the forest isn’t as thick as the border woods, but Fyrestar’s wings still clip branches, leaving a trail of smoldering leaves. In summer, I’d worry about starting a forest fire and making the Were King spitting mad, but the autumn woods are cool and damp. Not even Bale’s firebreath will burn for long.
The lead weretigers move so quickly that they disappear around a bend. We gain on the ones in half-skin, and I lie flat against Fyrestar’s back as he dips lower, almost skimming the ground. Fyrestar is faster than anything on two legs, and little hands reach out, stretching toward me. These kids know who’s coming for them. A dragon shifter could be anyone, but a warbird only flies with the Elite Wing.
“Closer, Fyrestar!” The wind snatches the words straight from my mouth as we race along the rough werepath.
“You grab the girl. I’ll distract the beast.”
My answer is to grip Fyrestar even more tightly with my legs to free up my hands while he delivers an impressive burst of speed. He brings us close enough to the last weretiger and the little girl bouncing against his shoulder that I can see the gap of her two missing front teeth. What age would that make her? Six? Seven? Definitely old enough to help me rip her from his grasp.
I sit up straighter, meeting her eyes with a rock-hard stare. My expression says, “Now!” and she’d better understand, because Fyrestar opens his beak and scorches the snow tiger’s lower back just as I pitch forward and grab her outstretched hands.
Howling in pain, the weretiger skids to a stop and whirls. He holds on to the child’s waist so hard that her hands slip from my grasp as we blow past. The next weretiger on the path twists to face us and slashes out. He nearly clips Fyrestar’s chest, but my warbird spins, putting the top of my head so close to the ground that my braid sweeps up dry leaves, then spits them out again as he rights us and pivots in the air to come back around.
Holding a child under one arm, the second weretiger blocks the path while the other two crash away through the forest. Concentrating on the one who stayed, we attack head on, and Fyrestar avoids lethal claws as I reach for another little girl, hoping I can hold on this time.
Her hand snaps out to meet mine, but the weretiger jerks her in tight, and I only brush cold fingertips before we’re gone.
“Bloodpit,” I snarl in frustration. “Circle back.”
“Two,” Fyrestar caws in my head as we race straight for the weretiger again.
Just one word is enough to communicate the strategy, and I somersault off his back as I draw my blades. We charge the final distance together, forcing our opponent to divide his defense between us. Not seeing an alternative, the weretiger tosses the girl aside, fully shifts, and bats a vicious paw at my warbird.
Fyrestar zips under flashing claws and rams his fire-filled beak into the werebeast’s side, yanking out a burning mouthful of flesh and fur. Just a step behind, I dart in and stab the weretiger through the chest with one sword and cut off his forepaw with the other as he tries to strike. The limb drops, and blood sprays me before I can yank out my blade and spin away from him.
He stares at me, swaying on three legs. His flanks heave as the lifelight leaves his eyes. Maybe the sudden fear in his gaze should affect me, but all I feel is the rage that comes with knowing the child cowering on the edge of the path could’ve been lost to her Muirvale kin forever, and with time, would’ve probably forgotten her home, her people. The color of her mother’s hair and eyes.
Fuming, I stare back at the weretiger. I don’t remember anything from before Glarraden aside from snippets of dreams that might not even be real. I was just months into life and shouldn’t remember anything, but the flashes and feelings are hard to discount when I know my memory doesn’t work like other people’s. What goes in never goes out, and ever since I was a few years old, it’s all stayed so sharp that it could just as easily be yesterday as more than two hundred years ago.
I kick the dying weretiger in the shoulder and topple him. Breathing hard, I grind out, “You don’t. Take kids. From their families.” Especially from families who want them.
