In the morning, after we’ve rinsed our plates and greasy fingers and I’ve washed my hair and shaken it out to dry with the sun, Eogan straps his broadsword on his back and takes us to another clearing four terrameters away.
It’s slightly lower on the glittering mountain range and facing a sheer stretch of ice and snow on the adjoining peak above. It also has a clearer view of the villages dotted down the craggy, forested sides. I can see the yellow rooftops of the little town we visited on our way up, where the small boy with the chubby hands lives. His flowers are still in my pocket back at camp.
“Please tell me yer havin’ us go after those Bron ships now?” Colin says with jittery excitement.
“Not exactly, mate.” Eogan tosses a water skin at me. “Ready?”
I catch it just as a wolf howl pierces the air in front of us. What the—? It’s followed by more howls all around as other wolves join in.
Colin recoils next to me. I shiver. “What in litches?” he mutters.
“They’ve been tracking us,” Eogan says.
The howling spreads out, and from the sound of it, the pack is surrounding the entire west end of the clearing with its snow-covered pine trees and rocky ledges. An enormous wolf emerges on one of the ridges in front of us and bares his teeth. Two more slink out behind him, like giants, easily as tall as Eogan, and shaggy. The leader’s long, gray coat is hanging off his bones, exaggerated by hunger-crazed eyes bulging above a thin, foamy snout.
Snow begins to fall, and the wind lashes my hair back as the thrum tweaks my blood. I sneak a glance at Eogan to ask what we’re to do, but the words dissolve with the swirling snowflakes flecking his black skin as he stares calmly at the animals. He knew they’d be here.
A deep growl, and the alpha on the ridge centers his attention. Colin retreats three slow steps and leans to the ground.
“Colin, don’t,” Eogan says. “Let Nym take care of them.”
Me? “What?”
“You need to know how to take down live, moving targets.”
This is a test? I back away and toss the water jug down, keeping my eyes on the leader as he tests the snowy gravel flanking the ridge. The two wolves with him whine and circle. How many more wait hidden? I shake my head, nausea rising in my stomach. I can’t. “I don’t want to kill anything.”
“I’m not asking what you want, Nym. Do it.”
The alpha slides down the gravel fifteen feet to land in the clearing. The animal’s growls become louder, vicious.
Colin bends low again. “It’s fine, Eogan. I’ll handle it.”
“I said this is Nym’s, mate.”
Why? To prove I can be the bigger monster? My insides are buckling. The other two wolves scamper down the slope, and suddenly more emerge all over the clearing. Five, ten, twenty. They’re growling and taking cues from their leader. They make their way toward us as the sky rumbles overhead. The falling snow feels like an inferno on my skin as the scent of smoke and salt in the air demands forth my curse. Eogan’s already beside me, ready to clench my arm if I don’t erupt, but it doesn’t matter. Because the lead wolf charges.
Colin’s gaze connects with mine.
The wolf jumps.
CHAPTER 19
MY MUSCLES SEIZE AND MY ARM JERKS BACK. A bolt of lightning hits the ground directly between Colin and the alpha. The beast yelps and flips back five steps. Shakes his head. He leaps again, and the next bolt nearly takes off his head. His yowl is consumed in the other wolves’ snarls as they release and plow toward us, frothing, churning, angry.
My ears nearly explode from the fracturing sky as my hand pulls jagged streak after streak of lightning and slams them into the ground, cutting off the lunging beasts. Hailstones begin to fall. Then shards of ice. The wolves keep rushing, and I keep blocking their surge. There’s an explosion of smoke followed by the smell of burnt flesh, and suddenly, all twenty of the pack members back away with their tails between their legs. In a chorus of weak howls, they turn and slink into the forest.
“Ease it off,” Eogan says, his fingers on my wrist, and immediately the squall dims until there’s only crackling in the air from the ebbing friction and depleting wind. “Perfect.”
The area falls calm, except for the drifting ice flakes and the smoking, scarred ground. And the broken body.
“Hulls!” Colin yells. “You’re incredible, Nym! How the . . . ?”
He keeps talking, but the words blend together until the only sound I hear is my own heartbeat pulsing in time with the labored breathing of the alpha lying on the ground. I walk over. The entire back half of his emaciated body is blackened with exposed pieces of smoking bone and muscle. He looks at me with pained, clear, beautiful eyes and whimpers. Broken. Wheezing. Thinner than any animal should be—a pitiful, starving creature who’d simply been looking for food.
And I’ve burned him alive like Bron did to those towns.
My mouth turns bitter.