Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
IDALLIA
Fyrestar drops below the tree line so fast I barely mark the moment we go from being above the canopy to below.
The dimness is sudden, but my eyes adjust quickly.
Going from dark to light usually feels like twin daggers in my eyes, but going from light to dark is easy, almost a relief sometimes.
Unfortunately, now I can perfectly see the type of werebeast I’m chasing, and it doesn’t look good.
“Bloodpit,” I growl. “Snow tigers.” Faster than bears. More dangerous than wolves. They’re the worst type of weres to fight, especially alone.
“This group is bigger than I thought from above.” Fyrestar is right to be wary. But everyone else took off after their own quarries, and I’m not about to let these weres get away with the kids.
The snow tigers are in half-skin to carry the children.
They see Fyrestar and me closing in from above, and three of the six werebeasts fully shift and accelerate, breaking away from the group.
The three carrying kids need arms and keep running in their in-between forms. I can’t tell from this distance if the little ones are too young to shift, but they wouldn’t anyway.
The Muirvale werechildren spot us and start struggling against their kidnappers with a violence worthy of Torridaigan soldiers.
My grim smile praises their efforts to slow their captors as Fyrestar banks left and right, angling in between big trees at a breakneck pace.
This part of the forest isn’t as thick as the border woods, but Fyrestar’s wings still clip branches, leaving a trail of smoldering leaves.
In summer, I’d worry about starting a forest fire and making the Were King spitting mad, but the autumn woods are cool and damp.
Not even Bale’s firebreath will burn for long.
The lead weretigers move so quickly that they disappear around a bend.
We gain on the ones in half-skin, and I lie flat against Fyrestar’s back as he dips lower, almost skimming the ground.
Fyrestar is faster than anything on two legs, and little hands reach out, stretching toward me.
These kids know who’s coming for them. A dragon shifter could be anyone, but a warbird only flies with the Elite Wing.
“Closer, Fyrestar!” The wind snatches the words straight from my mouth as we race along the rough werepath.
“You grab the girl. I’ll distract the beast.”
My answer is to grip Fyrestar even more tightly with my legs to free up my hands while he delivers an impressive burst of speed.
He brings us close enough to the last weretiger and the little girl bouncing against his shoulder that I can see the gap of her two missing front teeth.
What age would that make her? Six? Seven?
Definitely old enough to help me rip her from his grasp.
I sit up straighter, meeting her eyes with a rock-hard stare. My expression says, “Now!” and she’d better understand, because Fyrestar opens his beak and scorches the snow tiger’s lower back just as I pitch forward and grab her outstretched hands.
Howling in pain, the weretiger skids to a stop and whirls.
He holds on to the child’s waist so hard that her hands slip from my grasp as we blow past. The next weretiger on the path twists to face us and slashes out.
He nearly clips Fyrestar’s chest, but my warbird spins, putting the top of my head so close to the ground that my braid sweeps up dry leaves, then spits them out again as he rights us and pivots in the air to come back around.
Holding a child under one arm, the second weretiger blocks the path while the other two crash away through the forest. Concentrating on the one who stayed, we attack head on, and Fyrestar avoids lethal claws as I reach for another little girl, hoping I can hold on this time.
Her hand snaps out to meet mine, but the weretiger jerks her in tight, and I only brush cold fingertips before we’re gone.
“Bloodpit,” I snarl in frustration. “Circle back.”
“Two,” Fyrestar caws in my head as we race straight for the weretiger again.
Just one word is enough to communicate the strategy, and I somersault off his back as I draw my blades.
We charge the final distance together, forcing our opponent to divide his defense between us.
Not seeing an alternative, the weretiger tosses the girl aside, fully shifts, and bats a vicious paw at my warbird.
Fyrestar zips under flashing claws and rams his fire-filled beak into the werebeast’s side, yanking out a burning mouthful of flesh and fur.
Just a step behind, I dart in and stab the weretiger through the chest with one sword and cut off his forepaw with the other as he tries to strike.
The limb drops, and blood sprays me before I can yank out my blade and spin away from him.
He stares at me, swaying on three legs. His flanks heave as the lifelight leaves his eyes.
Maybe the sudden fear in his gaze should affect me, but all I feel is the rage that comes with knowing the child cowering on the edge of the path could’ve been lost to her Muirvale kin forever, and with time, would’ve probably forgotten her home, her people.
The color of her mother’s hair and eyes.
Fuming, I stare back at the weretiger. I don’t remember anything from before Glarraden aside from snippets of dreams that might not even be real.
I was just months into life and shouldn’t remember anything, but the flashes and feelings are hard to discount when I know my memory doesn’t work like other people’s.
What goes in never goes out, and ever since I was a few years old, it’s all stayed so sharp that it could just as easily be yesterday as more than two hundred years ago.
I kick the dying weretiger in the shoulder and topple him. Breathing hard, I grind out, “You don’t. Take kids. From their families.” Especially from families who want them.
Blood seeps into the ground around the snow tiger’s body and stains his white fur. His eyes stay open, glassy and cold, and he dies in his animal form—the choice of all weres at their end, as far as I know.
My nostrils flare as I stare at the dead werebeast, my ears pricked for any sign of those who fled.
Most weres aren’t raiders and live peacefully in Wyndwood or in other places, especially Torridaig.
The Muirvale weres would love to live peacefully in their chosen territory, too, but fanatics like this one have been making that impossible for years.
“Idallia!” Fyrestar’s warning explodes in my mind.
I whirl, lifting my blades on reflex. My warbird shoots over my head, breathing fire at a huge weretiger who springs out of the woods.
The weretiger knocks me over, her fresh, phoenix-fire burns heating my skin.
I hit the ground on my back, my swords crossed between us, and her weight almost buckling my arms. Before she can overpower me, I slash up and outward with both blades, drawing blood that splatters my face, but not severing her neck deeply enough to kill.
Fyrestar zooms back around and slams into the snow tiger from the side, shoving her off me and sending the two of them tumbling across the ground.
I jump up, and for a moment, there’s a battle of talons and claws, then they crash into a tree with Fyrestar pinned between the weretiger and the trunk.
The were’s huge jaws clamp down on Fyrestar’s thigh with a sickening pop of feathers and flesh.
I gasp as Fyrestar squawks in pain, and his inner fire surges to the surface.
Leaping forward, I attack, stabbing deep into the weretiger’s shoulder, twisting my blade, and yanking it up.
My bird flames so violently from every feather that the werebeast abruptly spits him out and slinks away.
Blood streams down the were’s bulky shoulder and strong leg. She limps sideways, her agitated gaze bouncing from me to Fyrestar and back. The child she was holding captive before she fully shifted runs to join the little girl we already freed.
I see them out of the corner of my eye, both so shaky and scared that they’ve shifted into odd, unintended half forms. Whiskers, clumps of fur, and animal ears poke out of their heads.
If this is their first transformation, I fear it may traumatize them for life.
Weres have been known to repress their animal skins if shifting makes them feel unsafe.
I sense increasing danger before I see or hear anything new.
My blood goes cold, the way it does sometimes in warning.
A chill bursts across the back of my neck, and a waiting silence fills me, as if even my own pulse doesn’t beat anymore.
My suddenly heightened senses tingle with the knowledge that we are absolutely not alone.
“Fyrestar, can you fly?” I ask quietly.
“I’m injured, not incapacitated.”
He sounds offended, which wasn’t my intent. Maybe he’s just on edge, like I am, because he knows something bad is about to happen.
The enemy group emerges from the woods, and my heart drops like lead through my chest. They’ve doubled their already significant number with other werebeasts they must’ve gathered in the woods.
There’s not a single little leithrat or delicate fox among them.
They’re all wolves, bears, and snow tigers. Huge, lethal, and spitting mad.
“Can you fly with two werechildren?” I whisper, getting the children behind me and angling them toward a tree.
I don’t see the third child anywhere, and my gut tightens with worry.
A dozen massive opponents and a missing kidnapping victim was not how I envisioned this going.
And now Fyrestar is hurt, which worries me most of all.
Fyrestar’s golden eyes cut to mine, their fiery glow lighting the dusk-dark forest. “And you—difficult.”
I don’t say to leave me behind. Fyrestar will sacrifice those kids for me if he has to, and I don’t bother pretending, even to myself, that I wouldn’t do the same for him.