Chapter One
THE BATTLE BETWEEN THE DRAGONS AND THE wolves was over.
Now, less than an hour later, Anders sat between his best friend, Lisabet, and his sister, Rayna, both of whom were on makeshift beds amid the bustle of the infirmary.
All the scorch dragons were in human form—the crowded cave was deep inside the mountain, not big enough for even one actual dragon. As it was, bodies were packed into every corner as medics hurried back and forth.
Anders’s attention was abruptly yanked away from the flurry of activity when Lisabet groaned beside him. Her pale skin was whiter than usual right now, and even her freckles didn’t look like themselves. She’d hit her head hard defending the dragons from the wolves she and Anders had accidentally led here.
“Are you okay?” He leaned in to get a better look at
her, but the answer came from his other side, in his twin’s dry voice.
“She tried to knock her brains out. She’s probably not.”
He turned to look at Rayna, who was curled up under a huge pile of blankets, only her head visible. Her warm brown skin had turned a dangerous gray when she’d first been hit by a wolf’s ice spear, and though it was slowly coming back to normal, her cheeks were still unnaturally pale, the color of ashes. Cold damage, the healer had said.
One of Anders’s Ulfar Academy classmates had done that to her. He and Lisabet had come here to try and save Rayna, and his class had followed in pursuit. If only they hadn’t followed, everybody would be safe right now.
During the long race to reach Drekhelm, Anders had been constantly afraid. Afraid Rayna was about to be sacrificed by the dragons. Afraid he wouldn’t know how to save her even if he did make it. Afraid she wasn’t his twin sister at all, since she could transform into a scorch dragon while he was an ice wolf, and everyone knew it was impossible to find both in the same family.
But instead of saving her, he’d found her settling in just fine. He’d brought danger right to her doorstep, and he’d made enemies of the wolves he’d just learned to think of as his pack. And now he was trapped at Drekhelm, the dragon stronghold.
“I’m okay.” Lisabet’s voice jolted him back to the present.
“The nurse said you’d have a headache,” he told her quietly. “And you have to stay awake for a few hours more, in case there’s any damage inside your head that they can’t see.”
“Rayna?” she whispered, and Anders and Lisabet both looked across at Anders’s sister, who was still shivering.
“I’m fine,” Rayna insisted. “It was just an ice spear, it’ll wear off eventually. I’m lucky it only nicked me. I’ll probably be walking around in an hour.”
Anders felt a quick rush of affection, warming him from the inside out. That was Rayna, ready to get up and keep going, as she had been all their lives. He still couldn’t quite believe he was by her side again.
But a nurse loomed up behind her, his hands on his hips. “You won’t be going anywhere in an hour,” he said firmly. “If you’re lucky, you’ll be discharged in the morning, and then it’ll only be because we have others worse than you. As for you two”—and he nodded to Anders and Lisabet, his square-jawed face stern for the two wolves—“you can go to guest quarters. We’ve got an escort waiting to take you there. The Dragonmeet won’t want to see you until the morning.”
Anders followed his gaze and saw Ellukka, the blond
girl Rayna had said was her friend. She’d been anything but friendly at first, but right after the battle she’d seemed to feel a little differently. She’d seen Lisabet defending Leif, the head of the Dragonmeet.
Just now, she had her arms folded across her chest and was leaning against the wall by the infirmary door. She was bigger and broader than Anders, and with her arms crossed like that, she looked like she meant business all over again.
Anders turned back to Rayna. “I don’t want to leave you here,” he said, and his concern was mostly for his sister.
“They won’t let me go until tomorrow,” she said. “You know where to find me. Go and get some rest, I’ll be okay.”
His instincts still rebelled against leaving his twin, but he knew she was right. She had been safe up until now, and he did desperately need to rest. He’d run with the pack all yesterday across the plains, and overnight he’d crossed a river and climbed a mountain with Lisabet. It was late morning now, which meant he’d been on the move for more than a day straight.
“Tell them to call me if you get worse,” he said to Rayna.
“If I were you,” the nurse said to Anders, scowling, “I’d be more worried about myself right now. There are
going to be a lot of questions for you tomorrow, and if you don’t have answers the Dragonmeet likes, you can be sure they’ll extract better ones.”
“Leave him alone,” Rayna snapped, pushing up on one elbow.
With one last significant look at all of them, the nurse stalked off to see to other patients, and Rayna turned her attention to Anders. “I’ll make sure someone calls you if I get worse,” she promised. “And let’s deal with tomorrow when we get there. We’ll make them understand.”
Anders wasn’t nearly as confident as she sounded—Rayna’s version of talking their way out of things was what had started their transformation to wolf and dragon in the first place—but he knew there was nothing he could do today, not with his sister and his best friend both almost too weak to move.
So he helped Lisabet sit up, then stand, keeping an arm carefully around her. Ellukka pushed away from the doorway to lead them outside, but despite her improved opinion of Lisabet she didn’t seem inclined to help keep her steady.
She led Anders and Lisabet down hallways carved into the dark stone of the mountain, all human-size rather than dragon-size. Anders wondered if, like the wolves, the dragons spent most of their time in human form.
The trio passed lamps that appeared to be made of solid metal, fixed to the wall by brackets. Whenever they came within a few steps of one, it began to glow softly, and when Anders looked behind him, the others had faded into darkness once more.
Lisabet was watching them as well. “That’s actually happening, right?” she asked. “It’s not just that I hit my head?”
“The lights?” Ellukka asked, looking over her shoulder. “Well of course. They’re artifacts.”
Now that Anders looked more closely, he could see the rows of runes engraved around the sconces. Those runes meant the lamps had been designed by wolves and forged by dragons—before the last great battle ten years before, no doubt.
Ellukka stopped by a cupboard built into the hallway, pulling out mismatched clothes for them in blues and greens and reds—the dragons seemed to prefer bright colors, and even in the short time he’d been here, Anders had noticed they all dressed differently. The wolves all wore the same uniform—a sign of their pack, their togetherness.
“This is the guest area,” Ellukka said, in answer to his questioning glance. “There are spare rooms, spare clothes, things like that.”