62

There had to be someone here who could help me. I could only hope that the people I found here were still wolves, and not dragons scouting their way into Frasia. I crept around the edge of the building, looking for a window or doorway I could peer inside, to see if there was light, or even better, food—

When suddenly a knife pressed against the center of my back.

“No sudden moves,” a low voice said.

The spike of fear was suddenly doused in the cool water of relief. “Oh, thank the gods,” I breathed. “Kodan.”

Behind me, Kodan inhaled sharply and dropped the blade. I whirled around, and she stared at me slack-jawed. “Your Highness?” She gripped my shoulders and squeezed, as if checking to see if I was real. “By the moon and stars. How— Gods above, are you all right?” Then she hauled me into her broad arms and squeezed so tightly it knocked all the breath from my lungs in a whoosh.

“I think so,” I managed. “You’re crushing me.”

She released me and then shook her head, amazed. “You look like you’ve been traveling for days.”

“I have been,” I said.

“Come on.” She wrapped her arm around my shoulders and guided me toward the house. “I’ll need to hear everything, of course, but let’s get you some warm food first.”

My stomach rumbled at the suggestion, and Kodan laughed. She pushed me over the threshold.

“Where’s everyone else?” I asked as I looked around. The inside of the house had been turned into what looked like a makeshift war camp: a few cots pushed against the wall, a fire burning in the hearth, and a table spread with maps and candles. But there was only one cot that looked like it’d been used—Kodan’s, I assumed—and the rest of the town was quiet.

“I have a few scouts here with me,” she said, “but most of the others have gone out for reinforcement. Fina and Adora took small convoys to their packs, following the messengers. Hopefully with the letters I’ve sent with them, and their connections to the pack, we’ll get some reinforcements to Siena.”

“Siena?” I asked. “Is that where we’re drawing everyone to?”

Kodan nodded. “It’s closer to the border with Shianga, and less likely to be targeted by the remaining dragons.”

So word had not yet reached of Corinne’s attack on the palace. There was so much I had to explain. Where to even begin? Exhaustion sat heavy on my shoulders. Kodan must’ve seen it on my face, because she pushed me to sit down on one of the plain wooden chairs by the fire.

“Here,” she said. “There’s coffee, too.”

She poured coffee from the carafe on the table into a small tin cup and handed it to me. I wrapped my hands around it and sighed with pleasure as the fragrance wound around me like an embrace.

“You’re leading things here?” I asked.

Kodan nodded. She braced both hands on the table and gaze down at the maps, her lips pressed into a hard line.

“Where’s Elias?” I asked quietly. I almost didn’t want to ask at all, too afraid of whatever answer I would get. “Is he… Is he okay?”

“He’s alive, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said.

I slumped down in the chair slightly as relief coursed over me once again. He was alive. Despite everything, he was still alive. “Where is he?” I asked. “Is he in Efra?”

Kodan sighed heavily. “I wish I had better news, Your Highness.”

“Reyna, please. And—what do you mean? Where is he? Is he hurt?”

“I don’t know where he is,” she said.

“What?” I stared at her. “What do you mean you don’t know?”

“Those last few days at the palace…” She closed her eyes and shook her head slightly. “It wasn’t easy. We took a lot of casualties. Lost good soldiers. Even more got hurt. The dragons beat us back over the border, and we retreated back here to this outpost with our tails between our legs. I didn’t know how we were going to recover, but I was sure Elias would have an idea. Some sort of rousing speech or new plan of attack, something creative and cunning and wise—he excelled as a strategist.” She sighed. “But as soon as we got back here, something in him just snapped.”

I took a sip of my coffee, but I didn’t taste it at all. My heart pounded hard in my chest.

“I think he couldn’t bear the reality of what had happened,” she said. “The attack on the palace had gone disastrously. We didn’t have the Nightfall forces to launch an immediate counter. Which meant, I think, that he had no way of getting you back.”

The unspoken truth hung in the air between us. I was the one who had left. I was the one who had chosen to go with Draunar. It’d seemed like the only way to save my pack from exactly this outcome—this kind of devastation. I stared into the fire, numb with exhaustion and pain.

“So what did he do?” I asked.

“He left,” she said.

I stared at her. “He wouldn’t do that.”

“Well, he did,” she said. “Grief makes you do crazy things.”

I pulled my feet up onto the chair and wrapped my arms around my knees, tugging them close to my chest. Guilt writhed like a living thing in my gut. “Where did he go? I—I’ll go to him. I’ll talk some sense into him.”

“I don’t know,” Kodan said. “He shifted and left. I didn’t have time to chase him down—I had to manage the casualties here in Siena. I’d assumed he’d come back, but he hasn’t. I had to send word to Efra.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “And that, of course, was a mess.”

“Surely the court is fine, right?” I asked.

“Your father heard about what happened.”

I balked. “My father was in Efra?”