65

“When will that happen?” Kodan asked. “When will she attack Shianga?”

I gazed toward the mountains. “She already has.”

The silence between us seemed to last for days.

“You were there, weren’t you?” Kodan said.

I nodded.

“She must’ve had scouts in the area,” Kodan said. I could almost hear the gears working in her mind. “She was waiting for the dragons to be weakened and off guard. She waited until they fought us back, while the dragons were injured and busy licking their wounds.”

Again I nodded.

“Did she win?” Kodan asked. “Does Draunar live?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “She captured him. When I escaped, he was in the dungeons.”

“Gods above,” Kodan said. “The Fae queen in Shianga. I never thought I’d hear anything like it in my lifetime.”

“There were moments when I thought I’d never escape her,” I admitted. “She’s stronger than Draunar. And she craves power—real power, not just wealth and treasure. She shouldn’t be taken lightly.”

“Reyna,” Kodan said. “I’m sorry.”

I blinked, glancing over at her. “What? Why? Because I was the one who chose to go along with Draunar’s terms?”

“It never should’ve gotten to that point,” Kodan said. “We should’ve pulled out of the negotiations when Draunar dared to suggest such a ridiculous thing. Elias can be so bullheaded.”

“So can I,” I said. “This was our first negotiation as king and queen. We both wanted it to work.”

We walked in silence after that, stopping for a few short breaks for food and coffee. After spending so much traveling in my wolf form, it was nice to be on foot again, even if it wasn’t quite as efficient. It helped me settle back into humanity again—into this new version of me, who wore mostly pants and boots and functional leather armor. How long had it been since I’d worn a gown? The young woman in Daybreak who had never worn a pair of trousers before would hardly recognize me at all.

After a few hours, the sun was beginning to set low in the sky as we approached the mountain pass. The air had grown colder, and snow still lingered, crunching under my boots as I walked. Kodan cast her gaze around the base of the elevation.

“We should camp here for the night.” She dropped her pack onto the ground. “Better not to travel through under threat of darkness. We can continue in the morning.”

“Wait,” I said.

Kodan paused, hands stilling on the pack where she was about to unfasten the bedrolls.

I gazed toward the mountain pass. I focused my senses on the brisk air, the rustle of the breeze in the sparse trees. My wolf was now awake and alert.

“You sense something?” Kodan asked.

“I should shift,” I said. “I could find him.”

My wolf howled with delight at the suggestion, up and bounding around inside of me. The desire to shift prickled over my skin. With my canine nose, it’d be easy to find him, surely. I’d just take off, leave Kodan behind, and Elias and I could be together again.

I was a breath away from shifting and taking off into the pass when Kodan gripped my nape roughly and shook it, like one might do a misbehaving puppy.

“Do not,” she hissed. “Do not shift.”

“What?” I wrenched out of her grasp. “Why not?”

“Because,” she said, “then you two will run off together into the wilderness, and all of Frasia will be fucked.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” I said. But even as I said it, I knew she had a point. My wolf longed to find his, to nuzzle close, and take off away from all of this. To build a life together as wolves, free and wild in the snowy mountains of the north.

“We need to find him,” Kodan said, “and get him to come back as a man, not a wolf. If you approach him as a wolf, he won’t want to shift at all. He’s already been living as one for too long.”

I nodded. Kodan was right. In either form, I was his mate, but I wanted to meet him as a woman, and for him to meet me as a man.

“Which way?” Kodan asked.

I nodded toward the notch. Kodan left the pack in the snow and gestured for me to follow.

We clambered up the snowy slope, and my wolf longed to escape—we both knew her claws would function on this icy landscape better than my boots slipping and sliding. I crested the hill and gazed down at the narrow pass, with the quartzite mountain jutting out on either side.

In the snow along the path, I saw a pawprint.

A single one. It looked like it’d been there for a while. But it was big, bigger than an average wolf, with deep points in the dirt from the claws. I knelt down and swept my hand over it.

“He was here,” I murmured. “I know it was him.”

“You found a print?” Kodan dropped next to me. She looked closely at the print, then glanced around. “Here,” she said. “This way.”

Kodan was clearly an experienced tracker, and she led me in a hurry down the notch, where it turned and split in two. She knelt down again, then glanced up toward the pass to the right and looked over her shoulder at me for confirmation.

“Yes,” I said. My wolf whined. We were close. I could sense him, his presence prickling over my senses like an oncoming storm.

Then I saw it. Carved into the side of the mountain by years of erosion was a small, shallow cave, the entrance half-hidden by a dying tree.

“There,” I said. “He’s there.”

From the darkness, golden eyes glowed.

“Elias,” I whispered.

The wolf drew back its upper lip and growled.

Internally, my wolf whined, desperate to burst forth and press close to him, to soothe the rage radiating off of him.