I rush back toward the North Tower, the sack over my shoulder containing the white wand.
Emerging from the wilds, I step onto the large, sloping field that lies before the tower, the irregular, frozen ground rough against my boot heels. I pause, overcome by the immensity of the black dome of sky reeling overhead. It’s ribboned with silvery clouds, sharp as talons.
Something moves in the sky to the northeast. Flapping.
Legs buckling, I’m seized by a sudden, crippling terror.
Dragon. Another dragon.
I stumble back into the shadowy woods. Shuddering with fear, I frantically search the northeastern sky.
A cloud. One of the ribbony clouds. The dragon shape has dispersed and split into three separate slashes against the black dome of the sky.
I brace myself against a large stone, struggling to breathe as it all washes over me—the dragon attack, the beast’s terrible claws, the wild pain, the mountain falling apart.
We’ll be caught. They’ll find us and arrest us all. And then...
“Elloren.”
I flinch at the sound of Yvan’s voice and the feel of his hand on my shoulder.
He’s so warm. I can feel the heat straight through the layers of my cloak, my tunic and my camisole. His warmth steadies me.
It’s a cloud. Nothing but a cloud. I force down my panicked breathing.
“Are you all right?” he asks, the angular lines of his face thrown into sharp relief by the moonlight.
“The cloud,” I force out, peering into the night sky. “It moved.” I swallow, fighting back the memories. “I...I thought it was a dragon.”
Yvan nods and looks up at the sky, his expression darkening. He lets his hand fall from my arm, leaving a void for the cold to rush back in. He looks tired. And worn.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, the wind stinging at my face. “We’re supposed to separate.”
“I wanted to thank you,” he says.
I shake my head tightly in protest. “You don’t need to thank me.”
“No, I do.”
“For what?” I ask, incredulous. “For almost getting us all killed?”
Yvan shakes his head in surprise and disbelief. “Naga’s alive because of you. I needed help. I couldn’t do it alone. Before you came here...before I met you...” He seems to be having trouble finding the right words. “Naga...she was...”
“Your friend. I know.” I finish for him softly, feeling suddenly defeated, and as tired as he looks. I fix my eyes on his. “I know you can talk to her, Yvan.”
He grows quiet, his expression turning carefully neutral.
I study him in the moonlight, the vivid hue of his eyes muted to silvery gray. I remember how his eyes glowed a fearsome green. His inhuman strength. His strange language. His terrible hiss.
“What are you, Yvan?”
The line of his jaw hardens.
Perhaps it’s the exhaustion, or the lingering fear that makes his stubborn silence feel so piercingly unkind.
“I don’t understand,” I press. “After everything that’s happened...why can’t you tell me what you really are?”
His face tenses with frustration, but he doesn’t say anything, and I’m inexplicably hurt by his silence. Tears sting at my eyes.
“But the dragon knows what you are,” I force out. “And so does Wynter, doesn’t she?”
“Elloren...”
I bite my lip, horrified that I’m so close to bursting into tears. I struggle, to no avail, and pathetically start to cry right there in front of him.
He just stands there, staring at me with those intense eyes of his, and I’m suddenly terribly aware of how my skin must shimmer in the darkness—highlighting how irreconcilably different we are.
A cloud shifts, and the panic rears its head again. I struggle to fight it back, trembling. “I could have died...”
“You didn’t.”
“But I could have. We all could have.”
Again, he retreats into silence.
“They might catch us,” I insist, my voice growing shrill. He doesn’t respond, and his continued silence sends a flare of hysteria through me. “They might find us...and arrest us...and kill us...”
His face grows hard, his eyes flinty. When he speaks, his tone is as hard as his eyes. “Yes, Elloren. They might.”
I’m oddly steadied by his terribly blunt reply. He’s faced this fear and moved past it. It’s possible to move past it.
And then his hand is on my arm again, his gaze searing, but his touch gentle and warm.
“Go on,” I relent as I wipe roughly at my tears with the back of my hand. I gesture toward the twinkling lights of the University city with my chin. “Go get some sleep. You look exhausted. Your dragon will be fine. Ariel may be a bit...unstable...but she knows what she’s doing when it comes to caring for any winged animal.”
He nods tightly, his face incredibly tense as if he’s desperate to say something, but just can’t. Unexpectedly, he steps toward me, eyes burning. “Elloren,” he breathes as he brings his hand up to cup the side of my face, his long fingers sliding back through my hair.
I gasp. His hand is so hot on the cold skin of my cheek, his fingers threading back through my hair. His touch...it feels so good.
He leans in, his face close to mine as if he’s about to kiss me, and for a moment it seems like everything is about to right itself.
I tilt my head up, my heartbeat erratic, suddenly wanting nothing more than to feel his lips on mine.
He steps back sharply and pulls his hand away from my face as if he’s been burned.
I’m so shocked, I don’t know what to do.
He looks furious with himself.
“Good night, Elloren,” he finally says, his voice strained.
And then he turns and strides quickly away, leaving me to the ice-cold night, too hurt and dazed to react. I watch his darkened form recede, then disappear, swallowed up by the University.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Revolutionary
The wanted postings appear the next morning.
They’re affixed to the message boards of every tavern, lodging house and hall.
I skid to a halt at my first sighting of the crisp sheets of parchment. A newly vicious cold has swept in with the morning wind, and it burns at my exposed skin and chills my lungs. It sets me shivering and hugging my winter cloak tight with woolen-gloved hands as I peer at the notice before me.
It’s nailed to a board outside the apothecary lab. Across the street, three Elfhollen scholars slow then stop in front of another posting tacked onto a lamppost. Their circle tightens as they murmur gravely to each other, their faces growing troubled as they read.
By joint order of the Verpacian and Gardnerian military forces, a search for those connected with the destruction of the Gardnerian’s Fourth Division military base is being aggressively conducted and a reward has been posted.
Rebels... Revolutionaries... Resistance. As I skim the posting, these words stand out in sharp relief. Each of them sends a fresh stab of fear through me. I’m seized by a sudden, startling understanding that my brothers and I, our strange circle of friends...
My stomach gives a hard lurch.
We’ve become all of these things.
I read on, light-headed, struggling to see the letters through a fog of disorientation.
Information regarding those connected with the destruction of the Gardnerian Fourth Division base is to be immediately brought to the attention of the base’s newly appointed military leader: Commander Lukas Grey.
Just above the poster hangs a fresh advertisement for the upcoming Gardnerian Yule dance. Next week’s end.
He’ll be back, I realize, heart thudding. To bring me to the dance, and to find those responsible for the mayhem.
My knot of fear pulls tighter.
How on Erthia will we possibly evade Lukas Grey?
*
We’re avoiding each other, all of us. The stakes raised impossibly high.
“Bring Tierney to Professor Kristian,” Yvan tells me in passing, late that night in the kitchens, his voice terse, his eyes averted, as if the very sight of me burns his eyes. He stalks off toward the other Kelts, and my heart aches.
The way he’s avoiding me—it goes beyond what we all have to do for self-preservation. No, this is more than that. Something between Yvan and me has fractured, and I don’t know how to fix what we’ve broken.