“I figured that out,” she said, “which is why I have my sword out. Why aren’t you armed? Why are you howling and letting the wolves know precisely where we are?” She shook her arm free from his grip and began to pace in an arc again, ready for an attack.
“Because they aren’t after us,” Daemon said. “They’re trying to warn us against the ones who were here before.”
She lowered her sword. Daemon often downplayed his ability to communicate with wolves—he called his language skills “rudimentary eating and fighting words,” since that’s pretty much all he remembered from his wolf cub days—but Sora thought he sold himself short. Other taiga apprentices might have been better at magic, but how many of them could be left in the wild for years—or even weeks—and survive alongside predators like the wolves, bears, and cougars of Takish Gorge? Not many.
Sora watched as he tilted his head up and let out another cry, his eyes closed and lashes fluttering as he poured himself into his past self, lost for a minute from this world. He usually kept his wildness stashed away, but in moments like these, Sora saw his true essence, and she swelled with pride. She also, irrationally, felt safer, knowing that her gemina had this ferociousness in him. She silently thanked Luna for bonding her with Daemon.
The wolves streamed in now from the surrounding parts of the canyon, into the center of camp. They were all colors—gray and black and snowy white—and their leader was a mottled brown, grizzled and scarred from winning his place at the top of the pack. The muscles beneath his fur heaved, fierce and taut, and he bared his fangs as he growled, teeth shiny and sharp in the sunlight.
Daemon crouched on all fours and bowed his head in submission. Sora mimicked him.
The alpha wolf barked.
Daemon lifted his head, growled, and barked in return. Despite living as a civilized human for thirteen years, he still seemed surprisingly at home in the company of wolves.
“What are you saying?” Sora asked.
“Shh,” Daemon said, as the wolf answered. They exchanged a few more rounds of barking and guttural growling. The effect echoed through Sora’s gemina bond, and she felt the rumble deep in her core.
Daemon finally turned to her. “I don’t understand everything he’s telling me, but from what I can gather, the people in the camp could do a lot more than turn a bonfire green. The wolf said the log fortifications were built in less than a day. Trees were ripped from the forest throughout the canyon and then flew through the air here.”
“Flew through the air?” Sora said.
“Yeah. He also said something about giant balls rolling out of the camp . . . they were made of ice and fire and . . . something about insects?”
Sora frowned. She didn’t want to doubt Daemon, but by his own admission, his wolfish was a little shaky, and what he was translating made no logical sense.
But he had enough doubt about his abilities as a taiga. Sora wasn’t going to undermine him now.
“Do the wolves know when the group left the camp, and did they see where they went?” she asked.
Daemon faced the brown wolf again and barked his questions.
The wolf consulted two others near him, then replied.
“I see.” Daemon was so fully in wolf mode, he pointed his nose—rather than his finger—northeast to indicate to Sora where they had gone.
“Huh. I wonder where they’re going?” Sora envisioned a map of Kichona in her head. They were in the tiger’s tail, and there wasn’t much else there. “Paro Village, maybe?” It was a short distance inland.
“Possibly,” Daemon said, his voice still rough from the transition between wolfish and humanspeak.
He said something else to the wolves.
The alpha barked.
Daemon went quiet, but their gemina bond blanched white.
“What is it?” Sora asked. “What did he say?”
Daemon stayed still for a minute, then looked up, swiping at his eyes. “He expressed condolences for my pack. The last of my wolf family passed on in the winter.”
“Gods, I’m so sorry.”
He waved it away. “Wolves in the wild don’t live that long usually. They had full lives.”
The alpha wolf growled again.
Daemon composed himself and nodded.
“The pack will accompany us to the top of the canyon,” he said. “They want us to exact revenge against those who came in and cut down their trees and disrespected the gorge.”
Sora bowed her head to the wolf to convey her thanks and accept his charge. Daemon reinforced it with a string of barks.
“I guess we’ll head in the direction of Paro Village and see where it takes us,” Sora said. Her heartbeat was already sprinting ahead.
“And if we don’t find them?” Daemon asked.
“We report what the wolves told you.”
“That’ll go over even better than trying to convince Glass Lady of what we saw.” He twisted his mouth downward. “It always sounds ridiculous when I say I can talk to wolves.”
Sora crossed her arms. “Well, they’ll have to deal with it, because you know what else sounds ridiculous? A magical cult cutting down flying trees and rolling around in balls made of ice and fire. But if that’s what Kichona is about to face, then the taigas had better listen.”
“And if they don’t?”
“Then I suppose we’ll have to take matters into our own hands.”
Chapter Eighteen
Sora and Daemon emerged from the unfettered wildness of Takish Gorge only to be greeted by the different sort of wildness of Paro Village. They rode into town, their horses pushing through curtains of flowering vines every few feet. It was difficult to see where they were going.
“This is the strangest-looking town I’ve ever been in,” Sora said. “It’s like they cleared the land a long time ago to build the village, but then the forest came back with a vengeance, and the people didn’t bother to fight back.”
“Maybe we should leave the horses,” Daemon said. “It might be easier on foot.”
They secured their horses to a nearby post and crossed over a mossy bridge to the main street where most of the shops were concentrated. Even here in the center of town, the forest was so thick that they had to elbow their way through the greenery. Sora almost shoved her arm into someone’s face accidentally as she was pushing through some vines.
“I’m sorry!” she said.
The woman laughed pleasantly. She was short and red-nosed from the cold. “It’s all right. It’s a part of life here. Are you a tourist?”
“Not really. We’re looking for the taiga outpost.”
“Oh, of course, silly me.” She nodded at Sora’s and Daemon’s uniforms. “But I’m afraid there are no taigas here, Your Honor.”
Daemon frowned. “What do you mean, no taigas? There’s a Society post here. We received a message from them a few days ago.”
“They went with Prince Gin, to make him emperor! He is so very kind.” She smiled blissfully.
The color drained from Sora’s face. The Dragon Prince had been here.
But the Paro Village taigas wouldn’t support him, let alone leave this outpost unguarded in order to go with Prince Gin. That made no sense. Those who’d fought for him during the Blood Rift were either dead or gone. The taigas who remained in Kichona were on Empress Aki’s side.