“Do you have a lot of visitors?” he asked, trying to
imagine who could possibly come all the way up a mountain. Trying to find a way toward friendly conversation with this girl who seemed to know his sister so well. He needed every bit of help he could get right now.
“Most dragon families and groups move around a lot,” Ellukka said. “We live pretty spread out. There are aeries all up and down the Icespire mountain range—in mountains all over Vallen, actually—so we visit each other quite often. It’s usually easier not to carry a lot of your stuff.”
She stopped at a wooden door. Inside was a cozy bedroom with a bed on either side, each draped with a thick patchwork quilt. A rug covered the stone floor, and a glass-paned window peeked out onto the face of the mountain itself. There was another wooden door on the other side of the little room, and a water clock on the wall, a slow stream of liquid trickling through marked tubes to show the passing of time.
Good, Anders thought. They could use that to keep track of how long Lisabet needed to stay awake. And how far away morning was, and with it the Dragonmeet.
“It’s warm in here,” Lisabet said, and Anders thought immediately of the hot glow he’d seen deep inside the mountain as he’d flown above Drekhelm on Rayna’s back. “And it was out in the hall too,” she continued. “But there
aren’t any fireplaces. Do you use the lava?”
“What else?” Ellukka said, dumping the clothes on one of the beds and sorting them into two piles. “And some artifacts help with the temperature as well. There’s a bath right through that door there, as much hot water as you want. I mean, I know wolves prefer cold, but I assume you don’t want cold showers.”
“Not when we’re in human form,” Lisabet agreed.
“Well, get clean,” Ellukka said, folding her arms and backing up toward the door. “You smell like wet dog.”
The door closed behind her, and Anders sank down onto one of the beds. Every muscle in his body ached, but he made himself lean over to unlace his boots, and then pull off socks wet from the snow outside.
He realized he was still wearing his sister’s coat. He turned his head and inhaled, and found it held that scent that was uniquely Rayna’s, though now there was a hint of spicy sweetness to it that hadn’t been there before. And even though it wasn’t quite the same, the familiarity of it made his eyes ache.
He had done it. He was here, with Rayna. Whatever came next, he’d find a way through it, because he was with his sister again.
“You have the first bath,” he said to Lisabet. He needed a few minutes to pull himself together.
She disappeared through the door, and he flopped backward onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling. It was smooth stone, just like the walls. Because this room is inside a mountain, he reminded himself. Because it’s inside Drekhelm.
What would the Dragonmeet say tomorrow? What answers did they want to extract?
How could he convince them to let him stay near Rayna, without betraying the wolves?
But despite the nurse’s words and the fear they’d kindled, he also admitted to himself that the dragons weren’t at all what he’d imagined. He didn’t quite know what they were like yet, who they were, but the stories at Ulfar and in Holbard had always made them out to be bloodthirsty villains, living only to hurt those who weren’t like them. And whatever the truth was, he now knew it was much more complicated than that. The dragons had friends here, family. They had rooms for guests and debates about the right thing to do.
Rayna had found a home here in a way he’d never imagined possible. He wasn’t sure what that meant for him, or for Lisabet.
He was still lost in this thought when Lisabet came out of the bathroom. She was clad in a dragon shirt, tunic, and trousers, her black curls wet. There was color back in her face now, her skin a little less white and a little more pink
beneath her freckles, but she was nibbling her lip in the way she did when she was worried.
“Anders,” she said quietly. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know what we can do,” he admitted. “If the Dragonmeet has questions for us, and we can’t answer them . . .”
“I know.” Her words were barely audible. “But we can’t go home. Somehow, I thought we’d be taking Rayna back with us, even though I suppose there was never really any chance that we’d manage to . . . I mean, the pack was always going to follow us. Professor Ennar would never let us go alone. And what would we have done with a dragon once we got back to Holbard?”
Anders felt another deep pang of guilt at the thought of Ennar, their combat teacher, who had put herself and all the class in danger, coming after them. If only, if only they hadn’t followed.
“Rayna likes it here,” he said, not quite knowing what he made of that fact.
“How can she?” asked Lisabet. Lisabet had always been the one to stand up for the dragons in class, to ask questions about how they could be as evil as their teachers claimed, when they’d once worked alongside wolves to produce the magical artifacts found all over Vallen. But now she looked small, and scared.
“She’s had weeks,” he said. “It doesn’t sound like very long, but I was at Ulfar for the same amount of time. And we got to know each other pretty well.”
“Of course,” Lisabet said. “You’re my best friend. She’s had the same time to get to know the dragons, I suppose. She’ll want to stay here.”
“Well, besides the fact that she made friends here, the Wolf Guard tried to kill her last time she was in Holbard,” he pointed out. “She’ll want us to stay too.” She’d want him to stay, at least—he’d make her see about Lisabet. “I don’t know if it’s safe, but we don’t have anywhere else to go. We stole the chalice. Or at least I did, but they won’t believe you had nothing to do with it. Not after the fight. They saw you defend Leif.”
“I had to,” she said helplessly, sinking down onto the bed opposite him. “If the head of the Dragonmeet had been killed, it would have started a war big enough to make the last great battle look like a game. Anyone can see that.”
“Anyone can when you explain it,” he agreed. “But you saw it straight away, and nobody else stopped to think at all.” That was Lisabet, always clever, always solving puzzles. “What do you think would happen if we did try to go back?”
“Exile,” she whispered. “Stealing the chalice and
fighting just now was a betrayal of the pack. They could put us on a ship out of Vallen, never to return.”
They were both quiet, imagining that total loss of their home, that separation from everything they knew. In her own way, Lisabet had lost even more than he had.
Lisabet was the daughter of Sigrid, who was the Fyrstulf, the leader of Ulfar—of all the wolves. And though Sigrid was sometimes terrifying, usually overwhelming, and possibly less than honest, she was still Lisabet’s mother. Anders knew firsthand what losing family was like, but he had Rayna back, at least for now. Lisabet’s loss was only beginning.