“Thank you, Norval. Dismissed.”
He disappeared, and I hurriedly finished breakfast before turning my attention to the bag he had left behind. Pushing back from the table, I lifted the satchel onto my lap and rummaged through the contents. A burlap sack of rations smelled of salted meat. One pocket held a spare pair of trousers, and another contained a leather pouch I had never seen before. Curious, I sniffed it before thumbing through the mix of currencies and coins.
“Your mother never went anywhere without an excess of funds,” Catori said from the doorway.
Feeling like a child caught drawing on a valuable family heirloom, I straightened into a more dignified posture.
“Sound advice, as always, Catori,” Tyrin said, striding in from the opposite entrance. Silver glinted in his golden braids, and he carried himself with the authority of a man who had commanded warriors long before bending his knee to a dragon hatchling. Like me, he wore only trousers, though his were fashioned from a material engineered to stretch with his shift. “I have packed a considerable sum as well.” His gaze found mine, and he offered a bow. “Good morning, m’lord.”
“Good morning, Catori, Tyrin.”
Tyrin’s presence confirmed he was prepared to leave, so I returned my attention to the bag. A length of rope, a handgun, and two boxes of ammunition remained. I had littleaffinity for firearms, finding them graceless compared to magic and a well-forged blade, but I was not so prideful as to reject a sound tactical advantage. This trip would demand blood. The dragon in me welcomed the certainty of that, as well as the opportunity to finally stretch my claws.
“One box of ammunition has been coated in silver,” Tyrin said, stopping beside me. “It is marked.”
Spotting the handwritten rune for silver across one box, I nodded my acknowledgment. Closing the bag, I stood, slung its strap over my shoulder, and headed for the door with Tyrin at my side.
Rain hammered the courtyard, yet every resident of the estate had gathered before the entrance. Norval stood at the front in his drenched suit, chin high. Behind him, faces I had known my entire life watched me with a level of devotion and trust that tightened my throat. They had traded their freedom for the sanctuary of my sire’s ward. The ward now lay in ruins, yet not one of them had fled. Their trust was a weight I would carry over the miles between here and the wolves who had shattered their protection.
Leander handed me my sword. I admired the sheen of the imbued silver before sheathing it across my back. Everyone stepped back, granting me space. I clutched my bag, committing it to memory so I could recall it later. Then I shifted. Bones popped and reformed as the bag, blade, and trousers winked out of existence. Scales stretched, horns grew, and my dragon form filled the clearing.
Shaking out my wings, I watched Tyrin slip from Frode’s embrace and take his own flight form. Then we took to the air.
Without my father’s ward shimmering around this slice of earth, the sky looked strangely larger. Leaving had never been forbidden; it had been impossible. Now, with the rain pelting against my scales and the artifact beckoning to me, my departure became unavoidable.
It was terrifying.
And oddly exhilarating.
We flew over the hedge and kept going. Creatures fled or hid as we passed a field of blooming apple trees and the ruins of a farm, steadily gaining altitude to stay well out of range of any weapons we might pass.
The rain intensified as we climbed, fat droplets hammering against my scales like tiny fists. I squinted through the deluge, straining to make out the landscape below. Everything was gray. The clouds swallowed the horizon, blurring the ground into smudges of muted green and brown, and not even Mount Rainier was visible behind the curtains of water.
Naturally.
How many times had I fantasized about soaring over wild forests, following sparkling rivers, and chasing unfamiliar game? Twenty-five years spent trapped behind a ward, dreaming of the world beyond, and my first flight into freedom took me through the inside of a storm cloud.
A gust of wind buffeted us sideways. I corrected, banking into the turbulence, and tried to find something worth remembering about this view.
There.A break in the clouds revealed a sliver of green valley far below, threaded with silver waterways before the cloud cover swallowed it again.
Annoyed, I pressed northward, following the insistent tug of my stolen treasure, and hoped for better weather on the return journey.
We are approaching the wolves,I said directly to Tyrin’s mind, since this form lacked the vocal cords to do more than roar.
Where?His response was also telepathic. My gargoyles could understand each other in flight form, but to the rest of us, their language consisted of indecipherable grunts and grinding noises.
There.I strained to see through the clouds before recognizing my own foolishness. I was a dragon who commanded ice and water, squinting through condensation like a hatchling who had forgotten his own gifts. I shaped the moisture with a thought,carving two clear tunnels through the gray.Directly below.
I widened the tunnels, straining to hold my position. Hovering in turbulent air was an exercise in controlled exhaustion, and my wings were already protesting the sustained effort.
Below lay nothing but ruin. Crumbled structures. Overgrown streets. The skeletal remains of a city that had died long before I was born. Rain hammered the wreckage without discrimination, and nothing stirred beneath it.
The artifact insisted otherwise. Its pull was vertical—directly below my claws—yet the wolves had concealed themselves so thoroughly that even my superior eyesight could not spot them. Either they were underground, or I was losing my mind.
Beside me, Tyrin struggled to hold his position. He had been locked inside my sire’s ward nearly as long as I had. The laps we flew around the estate every day had not prepared us for hovering after extended, continuous flight. I was not exhausted, merely winded, but there was more than myself to consider. More importantly, we were heading into my battle with the wolves, and I had in my possession new information about their location. As much as I longed to forgo my training and rely on the element of surprise, wisdom insisted we rest first and strategize.
There are islands off the coast,I said.
