Tobia had never known the vicious bite of the cold before. It was always warm in the capital, no matter how badly the winter raged in the rest of the continent, and he had never ventured outside of the tall, white stone walls that used to encase his existence. He used to think he would spend the rest of his life in the castle, shaded by the long, creeping shadow of the King, studying to become a researcher. Back then, when the entirety of the world folded neatly into the boundaries of his home and the castle library, all Tobia wanted to do was follow in his father’s footsteps.
His father, though—he would have known what the cold felt like. He’d grown up in the sticks, so far removed from any steady source of warmth that a trip to the nearest feather temple would take him days, provided that no snowstorms ambushed him on the road. It had been that constant fear, the ever present chill of the winter, that had planted a seed inside of his mind: he would solve the mystery that surrounded the perpetual winter.
Tobia’s father was dead now, though. His ideas had gotten him killed in the end, and all Tobia had left of him were too-vivid memories and a blade that hung heavy as lead at his side. He had no idea why he’d been entrusted with it, but he tried not to think about it, lest the metal grow heavier still with the weight of things Tobia dreaded ever understanding. So far, he’d managed to cling to that unraveling seam of normalcy, his eyes screwed shut against the pressure of the abyss below him.
“How’s Chiara?” he asked. His mother, crouched in the snow next to him, didn’t raise her head to look at him. Her gray eyes stayed fixed on Tobia’s sister, cradled in her arms and wracked by full-bodied shivers.
“It’s just a cold,” she said, too soft. “She should be fine, but we need to get her someplace warm first.”
Guards stood at the sides of the entrance to the town, their armor glinting in the harsh light of the morning turning into early afternoon. Tobia didn’t know if descriptions of him and his family had been divulged, or if the reach of the palace could extend to such a backwater place as this, but he couldn’t risk it. Not when his sister’s and his mother’s lives were on the line. Not when any of those guards looking at him a little too closely could send the whole thing down the drain. The travel lantern sat at his feet, empty and lifeless, and Tobia curled and uncurled his freezing fists, hoping he wouldn’t lose any fingers to frostbite.
He was starting to think he could try his luck looking for shelter in the forest once again, no matter what his mother had to say about wild animals. There was that Behemoth too, the one that looked like a huge, towering mill made of glass and steel. They’d kept away from it in their search for a place to stay, but something about that didn’t sit well with Tobia.
The castle, with its secrets lost forever to the Old Times and its wondrous hallways of marbled stonework, was a Behemoth too. Yet people lived their lives inside it without a care for what might happen to them if they strayed too far from the light of the torches. Then again, the castle existed under the boot of the King. Who knew what an abandoned Behemoth could do, when all its inhabitants were curses and ghosts.
None of that changed the fact that Chiara needed shelter. Tobia was about to ask his mother what she thought of the mill, when he saw two people walking out of the town gate. One was a tall girl, with brown skin that matched the color of her cape and dark curls cascading down her back. The other was much shorter—an avian, judging by the feather-like fringes of their cape—and Tobia could barely spot the glint of their eyes under the pitch black, unkempt fringe that fell in the stranger’s face with each of their hurried steps. Held close to their chest was a lantern, lit with the bright, warm fire of one of the Apostate’s feathers.
“They must be headed for a nearby village,” Tobia’s mother whispered. “Maybe we could seek sanctuary there. Roberto always said villages had a better grasp on hospitality than the city.”
Ignoring the way her voice bent when she said his father’s name, Tobia stared at the two people as they walked further and further up the road, away from the guards and the bustling of the town. The person holding the lantern looked flushed with heat; their cheeks had turned pink from the flame and the wind alike. They were smiling at the girl as if they didn’t have a care in the world.
Blood rushed to Tobia’s head at the sight of them, as cold as the rage gnawing at him. He raised the hood of his cape over his head, feeling as if his mind was going to split in two from the echo of the howl that roared in his ears when he did.
He couldn’t be sure that the people from the village wouldn’t chase them out, or worse, call the guards and happily cash in whatever bounty the King had put on their heads. No matter what his father used to say about hospitality. “You wait here with Chiara,” he said, then he got up, ignoring the pins and needles stabbing into his legs.
He didn’t turn to look back at his mother, because he didn’t want to see the regret on her face as he let the wolf take over him. Clinging to the remains of his habitual form to keep himself grounded, he slowly breathed out. He was covered in fur, but he was still standing on two feet; his arms and hands still felt familiar. His name clung to him, unchanged.
Still, it was a frightening, alien sensation, as if he was going to be swept up by a fierce current the moment he got distracted. If he wanted to fight, though, Tobia didn’t have any other choice. He wasn’t going to use the blade when he could use his claws instead.
His footsteps made no sound as he followed the two strangers. The snow muffled his every movement and the thick canopy of the trees shielded him from the wind, which meant no risk of either stranger picking up his smell. He waited until they’d gotten far enough from the town that the guards wouldn’t hear their shouts, then he took a deep breath. If he wanted to save Chiara, it was now or never.
He jumped into the open with a growl that was halfway to a scream, lunging for the person holding the lantern. If Tobia could just act fast enough, no one would have to get hurt because of him. He was even planning on leaving his lantern by the road for them, so that they could go back to the temple to replenish it again. If these people really came from a village, their Spark there was probably close to fizzling out without any new fire to revive it.
The person holding the flame was staring at him, wide-eyed and frozen in place from the surprise, but the girl was much faster. She put herself in between Tobia and the lantern, staring him down with a snarl of bared teeth. The moment her hands went to the hood of her cape Tobia realized, somewhat dully, that he had miscalculated.
From afar, he had thought she was a wolf, just like him. He hadn’t seen the way the silky fabric of her cape reflected the glint of the sun, reminiscent of a creature’s scales; all he’d seen was a splotch of brown, much like his own fur. It wasn’t a transformed wolf that stood in front of him, though. It was a dragon, and she was furious.
Before he could react, the dragon twisted her body in a terrifying, fluid motion. Tobia tried to duck, but her tail smacked into his chest, sending him crashing against a tree trunk. Fresh snow fell on him and he gasped, incapable of breathing right from the sheer strength of the impact. He coughed, recoiling at the way it sounded through the throat of a wolf. Distorted, inhuman, but snug as a worn glove at the same time.
The dragon, seemingly unconcerned with the state of his crushed lungs, leapt forward. Her front feet landed on top of his shoulders, pushing him back down, and Tobia inhaled sulfur when her maw opened in front of his face.
“Marion! Wait!”
At the sound of the voice, the dragon stilled. Her fangs still hovered mere inches away from Tobia’s nose in a neat row of razor-sharp ivory, but she didn’t make any move to tear his head off. Instead, she turned toward the other stranger, who had rushed to her side in the meantime. “What,” she said, and Tobia could swear she sounded morose.
Rather than answering her, the person crouched down in the snow next to where the dragon was pinning Tobia down. They were still holding the lantern and the warmth of the holy flame flickering inside of it seemed to envelop Tobia’s whole body, like the crocheted blankets his mother would wrap around his shoulders on a lazy rainy day. With a strangled sob, he shifted back into his human form, letting the tawny fur fold back into his cape.
“You were cold, right?” the stranger said. They brushed aside Tobia’s brown hair and pressed their palm to his forehead with a pensive expression. Their hand was warm, too. “Hm, no fever at least. Marion, would you remove your humongous paws from him? This whole… situation isn’t very conducive to having a conversation.”
The dragon—Marion—bristled, but she did step off Tobia. “If he tries to shank you again, you’re on your own,” she muttered. The fact that she had yet to shift back to her human form somewhat undermined her words.
“Yeah, sure,” the stranger said, waving a placating hand in her direction even though Marion looked like she was about to bite it clean off their wrist. “Anyway, um.” They started fidgeting, as if they didn’t know what to do with themself now that the most pressing issue on their list had been solved. Up close, their eyes were a golden sort of yellow, like a bird’s. “I’m guessing you’re one of the folks lurking in the woods?” they asked, not sounding particularly concerned about it.
Tobia’s stubborn silence didn’t seem to deter them, either. “How long have you been walking around without a lit travel lantern? Where’s the rest of your group?” they kept on asking. Each question stoked the curious gleam in their eyes, as if Tobia were a new, exciting puzzle for them to solve.
“That’s none of your business,” he said at last, if only to shut them up. He’d meant to pour bile into the words, but the warmth of the flame was making him drowsier by the second. Hadn’t it been for the wet snow still clinging to his clothes, he could’ve closed his eyes and tricked himself into thinking he was back home, nursing a mug of his mother’s spiced cocoa and listening to the rumble of his father’s voice as he talked about his most recent findings.
The stranger clearly didn’t agree with him. “You made it my business when you attacked us, wise guy.”
“Lux,” Marion said, solving the mystery of their name for Tobia at last, “we promised we’d be back soon. We don’t have time for this.”
Lux made a face at her, looking like they were deliberating on something they weren’t expecting her to be stoked about. “You should come with us,” they said to Tobia, with their words fast and clipped. “The rest of your group should come too, of course,” they added over the beginning of Marion’s protests.
“I’m not carrying any shady strangers,” Marion said, finally shifting back to her human form as if to reinforce her point. Tobia was expecting her to put up much more of a fight at the prospect of offering refuge to the guy who had just tried to rob the two of them, but when he looked up at her he saw something like a distant, scabbed-over sadness in her eyes.
Maybe it was that sadness, which seemed to mirror his own, or the thought of his sister shivering in the cold, that made Tobia cave in too.
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