Chapter Seven

ANDERS STAYED WHERE HE WAS, SITTING AT THE edge of the roof, and suddenly he spotted a pair of figures that were much smaller than Hayn, but even more familiar.

“Lisabet,” he said quietly. “Lis, come over here. Does that look like Sakarias and Viktoria to you?”

“After dark?” she said, but she crawled over obediently.

Below in the street were two children in what looked, even in the shadows, like gray Ulfar Academy cloaks, trimmed with white. One had long, black, shiny hair, and the other a face that looked pale in the moonlight. They were standing to one side of the crowd flowing in and out of the western gate, and if it was them, then Sakarias was talking quickly—which only confirmed Anders’s suspicions that these were his friends—while Viktoria turned in a slow circle, studying their surroundings. Her head was angled back, looking up at the rooftops, though Anders knew she wouldn’t be able to see him in the dark.

“Friends of yours?” Rayna asked, settling in beside him.

“Our roomies at Ulfar,” he said. “Our friends. And they’re not allowed out after dark. It can’t be a coincidence they’re here. They’ve snuck out to find us, it’s the only explanation. I’m going to go down and find out why. We shouldn’t risk all of us being seen.”

The others lowered him down into a dark alleyway, their hands warm in his. “Be careful,” Lisabet whispered.

“If they get you somehow, we’ll get you back,” Rayna promised.

“Don’t trust them too much,” Ellukka advised.

Anders was tingling with anticipation, his heart thumping. Sakarias had been injured in the battle between the wolves and the dragons, and Viktoria had dragged him free, helping him escape. Anders had been losing sleep over what his friends must be thinking about him, but the fact that they were here now—perhaps even working with Hayn—gave him his first taste of hope that they might not hate him.

He hadn’t realized the Academy was starting to feel like home until he’d realized that he could never go back. But he’d known before that moment that these were his friends.

His heart was beating fast as he made his way out of the alley and darted through the adults who were funneling down the street toward the gate, keeping the hood on his cloak up. Both his friends saw him straight away—and the always-smiling Sakarias wasn’t smiling at all. Viktoria wore suspicion like a mask, hiding her thoughts.

The three of them wordlessly stepped to the edge of the street, and as Sakarias moved, Anders saw for the first time that under his Ulfar cloak, his arm was in a sling. His wiry form looked a little smaller than usual.

For a long moment, nobody spoke. Anders knew he was the one who had to break the silence.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

“Don’t,” said Viktoria quickly, her voice hard. “We’re not here to talk about it.”

Sakarias simply looked away, studying the crowd.

Anders’s heart hurt. “You don’t understand,” he said softly. “If you’d killed their leader, the battle—”

Viktoria held her hand up to stop him. “We were there for you, Anders. You and Lisabet. Because you were our friends. We were terrified, we thought they’d be torturing you. We were so scared of going up into Drekhelm, but for you, we—everyone in the class found the bravery to do it. And when we arrived, you fought with them.”

Anders felt the words like a punch in the gut.

And then Sakarias spoke, still not looking at him. “Why did you go there, Anders?”

Anders fought the urge to look up at the rooftops. He didn’t want to give away where his sister was—didn’t know how much he should tell his friends. Hated that he had to wonder. “It’s complicated,” he said weakly. “I promise it wasn’t to betray you. Did Hayn send you?”

“He’s been arrested,” Sakarias said softly.

Anders reeled. Had Sigrid found out what Hayn was doing? Did she know about their connection?

“He’s been confined to his workshop,” Viktoria said. “We don’t know what’s going on, but Hayn asked one of his guards to pass on a library book to Sakarias, said he’d promised it to him for class.”

“And I didn’t need it for class,” Sakarias said. “And we all know I’ve never borrowed a library book in my life, unless someone made me. So we figured something strange was happening.”

“So we went through it,” Viktoria continued. “And we found a map inside, and a note, asking us to find a way to get out and bring it to you.”

“He was counting on us still being your friends,” said Sakarias, pulling a folded piece of cloth from inside his sling and holding it out to Anders.

Anders took it, mouth dry, tucking it inside his jacket. “And are you?” he asked quietly. “Still my friends?”

Nobody spoke, but the others exchanged a glance.

“How’s Lisabet?” Viktoria said eventually.

“She’s fine,” Anders said, heart sinking. “I promise she’s safe.”

They were quiet again. He waited, hoping against hope they might have something more to say.

“We want to be,” said Sakarias eventually. “Your friends, I mean. We care about both of you, and so do the others—Jai, Mateo, Det. But it’s hard.”

Viktoria nodded. “Right now, we’re in the middle. We’ll carry Hayn’s message—”

“And miss dinner,” Sakarias reminded them, sounding more like himself for a moment.

“And get in all kinds of trouble if we can’t sneak back in,” Viktoria continued. “But we’re doing it because Hayn asked us to. We’re trying to trust you, Anders, but . . .”

She trailed off and shrugged, and Sakarias didn’t contradict her.

Anders had a lump in his throat that made it hard to swallow. He knew that even this was more than he deserved—his friends still felt exactly like he used to about dragons, and as far as they knew, he’d betrayed them.

And they were right, that was the worst part of it. Even if it was to avoid a greater, much worse battle, he had fought against them.

Even if he’d been fighting to keep everyone safe, they were the ones who’d fled, injured and afraid. It was a lot that they were even here.

“Thank you for trying,” he said quietly. “I’ll prove you can trust me. Please just keep trying to believe. You should go, though, before it gets even later.”

“Good luck,” said Sakarias. “I hope you’re not doing something we’ll regret helping with.”

“Tell Lisabet to be careful,” said Viktoria. She moved around to Sakarias’s injured side to shield him from being jostled by the crowd, and after a moment, the two of them slipped into the sea of people. Soon, they were just two more shadows in the dim lanterns hanging outside the shops and houses.

Anders hurried back into the alleyway to help the others down, and together they slipped outside the gate, keeping their heads bowed in the dark to avoid the notice of the guards who still stood watch there, calling out to draw attention to their wanted posters.

“We can take off much closer to the city,” Ellukka said, once they were clear and making their way along the road outside the walls. “Nobody will see, there’s not much moonlight. I can’t wait to be in the air, this place is freezing.” She looked much weaker than she had that morning, after a long day exposed to the cold of the city, and away from the underground lava of Drekhelm.

“We should look at the map first,” Lisabet said. “Just in case there’s anything we need from the city before we go. We’re so late, we’re bound to be in trouble anyway, five more minutes won’t be the worst of it.”

They walked a little ways along the road that led to the distant ford, but with the crowd thinning as the night drew on, it was easy enough to find a gap in the people and slip off the path. They found a spot behind a large rock, and Anders pulled out the piece of cloth, unfolding it and setting it on the ground.

It was a map of Vallen, almost exactly like those he’d seen in class, or on the wall in the map room at Drekhelm, with a compass rose in the top right corner, and intricate knotwork drawn all around the edges. It had been inked directly onto the cloth.

The cloth itself was shot through with silvery thread, the metal Drifa had forged woven straight into the fabric. That must be how its magic worked—all artifacts required metal, and the magical fire of a dragonsmith, and Anders could only imagine that the wolf-designed runes must be engraved on the thread itself, unimaginably small.

“Well, it’s a map all right,” said Rayna, poking at it with one fingertip. “Nothing happens when I touch it. How do we let it know we’re Drifa’s family?”

It still felt so odd, to hear it out loud. Anders studied the map in the pale moonlight. Apart from being made of cloth, rather than paper, it looked perfectly ordinary.

“Blood,” said Anders. “That’s what worked with the purse. Perhaps after such a long time without anyone touching it, it needs help waking up.”

“Good idea,” said Rayna, unpinning the brooch that held her cloak shut and pricking her finger without hesitation. She held her fingertip over the compass rose and gently squeezed it until a drop of blood fell onto the circle at the dead center of it. “I want to find the location of the Sun Scepter,” she said clearly.

At first, nothing happened.

“There!” said Ellukka after half a minute, pointing at the knotwork around the map’s edges. And sure enough, when Anders looked more closely, the beautifully drawn border was writhing, changing, rearranging itself.

“It’s making letters,” Lisabet whispered, leaning in to study the words that now made up the map’s border. Slowly, she began to read them aloud.

“Where the sun greets herself at every dawn,

And the stars admire themselves at night,

Where blue meets blue the whole day long,

The scepter’s head is wedged in tight.”

A shiver went down Anders’s spine. “Well,” he said slowly. “I don’t know what it means yet, but this is it. This is how we find the Sun Scepter.”

“This is how we stop the Snowstone weakening the dragons,” Rayna whispered.

Anders nodded slowly. “This is how we keep the peace.”