She chokes back a shout of alarm as I pull hard on the horses’ reins.
A large fallen tree blocks the narrow road. As the horses stop, I turn in the driver’s seat to gaze in all directions. There’s no one around trying to remove the tree, no houses or farms within view, and no noise of other carts rumbling down the road in either direction. For a moment, I consider just guiding the horses around it. But the ground here is swamp-like, with more mud and puddles of standing water than dirt, and I’m afraid we’ll get stuck.
I smile reassuringly at Azelie. “I’m sure someone will be along to help soon. At least this one didn’t fall and hit me in the head, right?”
A faint crease appears between her brows. “Someone will come eventually. But we can’t be sure when, since this isn’t a main road. I—I took a shortcut before we switched seats, and... this is wild land, where the wolves hunt.”
“Wish you’d mentioned thatbeforewe started down it,” I say through gritted teeth, jumping down from the driver’s seat into a puddle. Nipper coos, blowing smoke at me as I splash mud everywhere.
I start toward the tree. “If this thing’s dry enough, maybe I can have Nipper burn it with her fire breath.”
Nipper coos again, louder this time.
The baying of something wild answers.
Branches crack and rustle in the distance to our right, somewhere beyond a thicket of trees too dense to see into.
“Death be damned,” I groan, gooseflesh rising on my arms at the sound.
“Get in the cart, and get your daggers ready just in case this doesn’t work,” Azelie mutters tersely as she jumps down beside me. “Hurry. Get in the—”
“What are you going to do?” I blink at her, completely at a loss as to how a girl of her size could move a tree that big before whatever’s crashing through those trees comes out. “I’m strong, let me help—”
Another howl cuts me off, louder this time, as Azelie’s eyes flash a warning.
“I have to do this alone. Just trust me!” she calls as she runs toward the fallen tree just a few paces away. Crouching beside it, she lays her hands on the trunk.
Climbing back into the driver’s seat, torn between training my gaze on the rustling trees and watching Azelie work, I pull out my daggers. Hopefully I won’t need them. After all, I’ve got a dragon on my side now—a fire-breathing, poisonous, biting dragon. Wild bears or wolves should run fromher.
The fallen tree groans, rolling to the left. Azelie rubs her forehead with one hand but keeps the other on the bark. There’s no way she has enough strength to push it, but somehow, the tree keeps rolling until it’s almost completely off the road, giving us enough space to pass. Azelie looks ready to collapse. Either she’s way stronger than she looks, or I just witnessed something like magic.
As Azelie staggers back to the cart, Nipper imitates the howling, and the wolves—definitely wolves, I can’t mistake their calls now that they’re so close—answer. Nipper’s scaly tail swishes from side to side as the sounds of unbridled hunger shiver past our ears. I think she likes them.
So much for having the dragon on our side in a fight.
Gathering the horses’ reins in one hand, I take aim with one of my daggers in the other, my gaze trained on the thicket. “Whatever it was you just did to that tree—thank you,” I murmur shakily as Azelie jumps in beside Nipper.
I flick the reins, and the horses charge forward just as the first sleek, dark body bursts from the trees. The wolf snarls, stumbling in a deep pool of mud.
The dagger still in my other hand, I hesitate. The last life I took was Hadrien’s, and I hadn’t really wanted to kill him. He forced my hand, but he had a choice. This poor beast is acting out of necessity. I can’t bring myself to end its life just because it’s doing what all wolves do. I can’t even bring myself to wound it, knowing the only help it might receive from a passerby is a swift end. I drop the dagger and urge the horses faster, until white foamy sweat flies from their hides and the wolf and his friends are far behind.
Only once the horses have slowed, and there’s no more distant baying, do I turn to look at Azelie over my shoulder.
The fallen tree seemed to move of its own accord, and it reminds me of a story Meredy told me once, about a man with amber eyes who could change his shape. But Azelie’s eyes are the darkest brown. According to the rules of Vaia, the Five-Faced God, her giftshould beinventing, like all brown-eyed mages. Yet...
“What exactly did you do back there?” I ask softly.
As she raises her gaze to mine, an errant ray of light breakingthrough the clouds spills into her eyes. For the first time, I notice that while one of them is blackish-brown, the other is a green so deep it’s almost black, too.
“Now you know,” she murmurs, seeming to brighten with the sun’s touch. “I see colors around plants. I figured out when I was little that I could make them do whatever I wanted, if I touched them and spoke just the right way. I made flowers dance in my mom’s garden. I made carrots grow faster. I made night-blooming jasmine open in daylight. It scared the few friends I showed, and even my family.” She bows her head. “It’s why my parents never liked me as much as my brothers. They taught me to hide what I can do, because there’s no one to teach me how to control it. If anything, I—I’d wind up as an experiment or something, studied to see how my gift works. And of course I wouldn’t want—”
“Azelie!” I take a quick glance at the road, just to make sure there aren’t more obstacles in our path, then turn back to her. There was a time when witnessing a strange new gift would have terrified me—after all, my entire life, everything new and different was forbidden in Karthia—but the part of me that was paralyzed by newness died about the same time King Wylding did, taking his fear and hatred of change with him. “Calm down. I’m not afraid of you, and I’m not going to tell anyone about your gift, all right?”
Taking a deep breath, she nods. “All right. And, Odessa?” Her smile finally returns. “My friends call me Zee.”
Relaxing against the driver’s seat board at my back, I nod, an idea quickly forming in my mind. “You know... my friend Valoria is starting a school for mages of all sorts back in Karthia. I have a feeling you’d fit right in—that is, if you don’t mind a bit of seasickness and a yearlong detour to get there. If that doesn’t deter you, you’re welcome to come along.”
Azelie leans forward, her eyes widening. “Seriously? You’re talking about a chance to see the worldandattend a... a school for mages? That’s a real thing?”
