“It’s a bad idea,” Caldren muttered. “Alina, listen. We can free Lucien tonight and hope Joachim won’t realize Lucien is gone. Then we’ll help you escape later.”
“And what if my father does realize Lucien is gone, and he locks me up again—someplace you can never find me?” She turned her wide-eyed gaze on me. “Honor. You swore you’d help.”
“I will,” I said. I looked at Caldren, who gave me a short shake of the head, warning me off. I gave him an apologetic look before I said, “We’ll take you with us, you can see him free, and then you and I will return to the castle. We’ll pretend we went out for a walk, enjoying your new freedom, if anyone catches us. Caldren will take Lucien to the sea.”
Caldren heaved a sigh.
Alina, Cal and I slipped out into the night. We hadn’t wanted to draw any extra attention to ourselves, and I shivered in my tunic and leggings. At least I was wearing wool socks and warm boots.
I caught Caldren’s elbow and tucked my hand over his corded forearm. “Are you angry at me?”
“No,” he said. “I knew you had a big, foolish heart from the first time I saw you. It’s no surprise to me that it’s getting us both in trouble now.”
We ran to the castle where Lucien was trapped, our feet leaving footprints in the snow. Caldren and I quickly shifted aside the rubble covering the door to the basement while Alina stood there helplessly—more helpless than I thought she needed to be. She could move snow-soaked, icy bits of wood as well as I could. But she was a noble daughter and it simply didn’t occur to her. I didn’t have the heart to scold her when she was already so upset.
Then the three of us climbed down the stairs into the darkness, like descending into hell. Hell if it were real would be cold, I was sure of it, like this place buried under the snow.
Alina gasped when she saw Lucien. “I can’t believe that all this time you were here. You were so close this whole time.”
She blinked, and tears streaked down her cheeks.
“Alina,” he said, grabbing the bars with his hands. “You’re here. I can’t believe you’re really here. It feels like an eternity has passed in here. I thought you might have moved on.”
“I thought you might have died,” she said. “But I couldn’t have forgotten you. It always felt like you were close to me.”
The two of them gripped each other as much as they could through the bars. I hastily dug the key into the lock and turned it. The enchantment glowed red in the air for a moment and then the lock crumbled.
I pulled the door open, hardly daring to believe that it would really open.
Lucien Finn walked out of his long imprisonment. “I would have shaved,” he told Alina, resting his fingers in his long, unkempt dark beard. “Honor wouldn’t give me a razor.”
“I’m not worried about your beard,” she chided. She grabbed his shoulders with both hands and yanked him down to her. The two of them trading long searing kisses.
Caldren averted his eyes. “Look at you, making happy endings,” he teased me.
“I just have to figure out how to make my own, which is difficult when the men I love tend to be idiots.”
He laughed then looked up at the other two. “All right, I know you two have a lot of catching up to do but I really need to get Lucien out of here.
“You’re putting yourselves in a lot of danger,” Lucien said reluctantly. “If you take Alina back, I’ll go on my own.”
“You wouldn’t last,” Caldren warned. “I’ll help you, Lucien.”
“And me.” Alina twined her fingers through Lucien’s. “Will you take us both, Caldren?”
Caldren hesitated. “Alina, are you sure you want to go with him? You’ll be giving up your place in the kingdom.”
“And you’ll be putting Caldren in danger,” I said, glaring at Caldren for even entertaining the idea. “No.”
Caldren widened his eyes innocently back at me, as if to say that I’d started this mess.
“My place in the kingdom,” Alina repeated. “My place in the kingdom has been trapped in a cage for being a disobedient daughter for a year now. I don’t think I want my place in the kingdom.”
Caldren’s gaze softened with sympathy, but he gave a sharp shake of his head. “Having both of you escape at the same time will be far more difficult than having Lucien escape now when the Olds don’t want to reveal his presence to anyone else. We could always help you escape later.”
“Please, Caldren,” Alina begged. “Please.”
“We can’t,” I said. “I won’t risk Caldren.”
“We understand,” Lucien said, putting his hand on Alina’s shoulder. He tried to give her a smile, though he still carried that haunted look. “We have a few minutes together, and then—it’s not that much longer to wait, Alina. We’ve been apart this much, and our love hasn’t faded. It’s just a little longer.”
She buried her face in his chest, her body heaving with a sob, and he wrapped his arms around her, murmuring into her ear.
“What is your soul animal?” Lucien asked, his voice quiet, as if he were trying to distract her.
“I’m a wolf.” Her answer was muffled against his chest.
“I am too,” he said.
She raised her tear-filled gaze to his, and his smile turned genuine as he stared at her. Warmth seemed to glow between the two of them, excitement that they were mated in either form.
“Then Lucien and I can run as wolves,” Caldren said. “And one day, the two of you will run together.”
We all went outside. As we left the old castle and stepped out into the wild snowfall of the night, I caught a blur of movement on the rooftop.
I cupped my hand over my eyes. “Look.”
My eyes desperately strained through the night, hoping that it was just servants tending the evening fire that Alina had so often sat so she had a little bit of freedom while she could.
Slowly, an enormous head raised, and my stomach dropped. As wings rippled out and spines showed, those shadows transformed into deadly dragons.
Caldren cursed. “Maybe there were other spells to alert Teris to our presence.”
“I think it might be difficult to pretend we’re just out for a walk now,” I told Caldren.
“Run,” Caldren said. “Honor, with me.”
The three of them shifted but of course, I couldn’t transform. The magic wouldn’t let me transform in front of Alina. Lucien, as a huge gray wolf, prodded Alina, a sleek black wolf, with his nose. Pride danced in his eyes, then the two of them darted into the woods ahead of us.
Cal waited for me, his dark-rimmed eyes impatient. I climbed on between his powerful shoulders. His muscle and his silvery gray fur rippled beneath me as he ran, and I bent low, the wind whistling through my hair.
We reached the pines and raced through them, accompanied by endless flickers of dark motion above the treetops. I had a feeling we would be burned alive if it weren’t for Alina’s presence with us.
“Let me down,” I told Cal. He shook his head and didn’t answer. “You have to trust me!”
He turned into a man abruptly and for a moment I was still clutching his shoulders before he turned.
“Keep going!” he shouted at the other wolves. His gaze searched mine. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to be Lucien,” I said. “I’ll buy you all time.”