“There is a great deal that is still not known of magic. As Sara said to me upon our arrival at the outpost, there are some people who mysteriously lose their abilities over time. Others discover their abilities late in life, as if by chance. The cause, in either case, is unknown.”

~ Bek Trent, M.A.S.O

The air has stilled, weighed down now by the tension of the humans that gather around Silver, their calls to one another a raucous confusion of noise against the background shuffle of their footsteps. A path has been cleared in the crowd, the spectators drawn away by whispers of disease, but kept within sight by the morbid specter of their own fate. And the wolf, for all that she might like to curl protectively about the fallen girl’s head, biting and snarling at any that approach, knows better.

Instead, she forces her way to the girl’s side, nose pressed to her still, feverish body. Elorian’s ears are laid back against her skull, green eyes alight as they probe the surrounding crowds. There is not the smell of sickness around Silver. The only scent, strong and cloying and clinging to the air around them, is the scent of magic.

Around them, the murmur of voices grows. The old woman has come, the redhead with her.

“Sara, I’m taking her back to Alti. As good as you are—” Illian is saying, his bass voice low, soothing. The witch waves his words away before he is even done speaking.

“Take her. There’s nothing I can do for her here.”

“I’m coming,” Bek declares, meeting no resistance.

“I’ll also come.” The dark dark-haired woman so often in Silver’s company still hovers over the girl, but she looks up at Illian now to speak. Her scent is thick with worry and impatience.

“No, Sori. No one knows who Bek and Silver are, but anyone from the guard would recognize you. We’ll take Skourett and Seijelar,” Illian says, already looking away, pointing, acting as an alpha must.

“Elorian,” Sori says softly, touching the wolf’s back then. Their gazes meet, light and dark. “You keep watch over her, you hear me? We can’t lose her right now,” the woman says.

The wolf flicks one ear, and Sori seems to understand well enough. Her dark eyes close as she looks away. Illian is scooping Silver up off the ground, carrying her towards the dragons. Seijelar waits for them, eyes only for the girl.

More people come, speaking briefly to Illian, all of them unaware that Elorian and the dragons can sense Silver’s flickering life in the rich tang of her power and the faltering skip of her heart. Then the trainer comes, his bear-like girth obstructing her view.

“Who is she?” he demands.

Illian looks back at the trainer, waving Bek over nonetheless. “Bring Skourett,” he commands.

“Ya’ can’t ignore me, Illian. Where’d she learn to fight? Where’s she been hidin’ it these past months, waitin’ to strike. One o’ the king’s spies—”

“She’s not, Holtson.”

Silence. It is broken by the unsteady patter of steps around their small group. People are shouting in one of the cottages by the roadside. No one is listening. From somewhere drifts the scent of sweat, and from elsewhere, the acrid tinge of smoke.

“I trained the kivgha fer thirty years, Illian. You think I don’t know their arts when I see ‘em? Ya’ lied to me. Ya’ tell me she’s Atlantian—” he says more softly.

“Holtson,” Illian barks, “we will discuss, at length, what happened today, you can be sure. But not now. The council has been expecting me back for two days. I have business in Altiannia that cannot be ignored, and now, we stand to lose someone to the plague who by all rights shouldn’t even be affected. Your orders come from Sara and the captains while I’m away. Nothing has changed.” There will be no argument; the wolf can sense it in his tone, and in the rounded shoulders of the other man.

Finally, Illian turns to Seijelar and bows his head slightly, asking permission to ride with Silver. Elorian senses the dragon’s reply immediately. Rejection. Hard, impassable, obstinate. Drawing the dragon’s attention with a grinding snarl, the wolf rumbles, “She will die over your pride, dragon.”

The crimson female tilts her head, curious green and golden eyes narrowed, and her nostrils flare. The wolf merely flicks an ear, knowing full well that she is understood.

“I will permit it this once.”

“I don’t ask more.”

The dragon’s flutter of wing membranes is her answer, the slight swipe of her tail, the tilt of her chin. All of them are offering begrudging assent. The wolf hears her reply, and Illian bows more deeply before springing lightly aboard with the ease of practice.

More shouted commands. People are flurrying around them again, their clumsy two-legged gait noisy, smelling of fear and worry and confusion. The dark-haired woman and the princess are telling Illian something, perhaps wishing them well. Skourett and Bek are beside Seijelar, prepared to leave. Then, they are passing quickly beneath the arch, and she is shaking the buzz of the stifling magic away from her silver coat.

The dragons’ pace is a swift one. Elorian has no time to enjoy the freedom of the open woods, or catch more than the fleeting scents of crushed pine and damp earth, decaying leaves and musky mosses. Her ears are up and tilted forward, her nose working furiously, and her paws rise in the tireless lope of her kind, ghosting alongside the two dragons as little more than a silver shadow. They slip into the town just as dusk is searing the sky a fiery golden orange and the last crimson petals of the sun are slipping behind the Grand Castle, casting its spires in deep black shadow. When the wolf sees them like that, they look like nothing other than the spires of the Castle of Divides, stretching imposingly up towards the heavens…the final resting place of the Zara, grave of Alti.

Illian guides the dragons to a halt several feet back in the shade of the trees, where they blink into invisibility. Elorian watches, green eyes bright, as Illian lifts Silver down from the dragon’s back. Bek observes it all in silence, a strange expression on his face. It is one that she has not seen before.

Within minutes, they break the edge of the trees, hurrying into the streets of Alti. There, no one dares linger in their path. Many an eye turns to Illian, but all turn away just as swiftly. The streets are quieter than they were, weeks ago. Homes lay empty, shops abandoned. Even so, they stop once, at a workshop that smells of the witch of the outpost. Someone joins them. A witch, perhaps. A doctor.

The wolf pays her little regard as they wind through the streets to Illian’s home.

Faei greets them. His amber eyes settle on her, the edge of one canine conspicuously revealed. But he does nothing as they pass over the threshold of the house. He simply remains to lurk outside, a soundless and unsupposing specter. He is not the only specter there, surely. The beasts have come; come to watch, come to follow. They are invisible, these beasts, but the wolf knows them nonetheless.

They have come to answer to the powerful draw of magic. Silver’s magic.