Chapter 107: THE LAST PAYMENT

The Frost Wolf ignored Aiden and went for the rim of the bowl. It stopped beside the Ice Heart.

Aiden saw the change in the motes before he saw it anywhere else.

The Ice Heart’s cold rushed into the Frost Wolf.

The hole around the wolf, the one he had spent all morning making smaller, filled.

Every bit of cold it had spent was back before Aiden could understand what he was seeing.

The whole morning. Back in one swallow.

He had guessed the Ice Heart would refill it.

I would have preferred being wrong on this one.

The Frost Wolf turned from the bowl and faced him.

It was worse than it had been on the first ridge. Not bigger. Full.

And it knew the running was over.

No slope left above them. Men on every side. The pit at their backs.

The herd reached the pen.

"Behind me," Aiden said.

It was the first order he’d given all morning that wasn’t part of a plan. There was no plan now.

"All of you. Behind me."

None of his beasts went behind him.

Of course you won’t.

Cinder stepped forward instead.

She put herself between the wolf and him one more time. She crouched low, her fire reduced to a small ember.

Then Cinder’s flanks began to brighten. Aiden knew what she was about to do.

"Don’t. Cinder, don’t feed it. We talked about—"

She lit.

Flames burst from both sides of her body, spreading across her shoulders and back.

For one instant, she looked like a wolf made of sunlight.

Aiden threw himself back, dragging Miasma with him. Nyx followed, and the cat jumped off Cinder’s shoulder.

"Don’t do it, Cinder!" The flames devoured his voice, and he shielded his face with his hands.

The handlers flinched back from her heat. The frost melted for thirty feet in every direction, and the grass vaporised.

Then the Frost Wolf walked into Cinder’s fire.

The flames struck its body and vanished into the cold around it. The fire disappeared, consumed where it had raged.

The Frost Wolf stopped. A wall of freezing air burst from its body and raced toward them, wider and faster than before.

The freezing wave slammed into Cinder and swallowed her in white frost.

Aiden felt the impact through the bond. Then he felt the cold enter her.

No. Not her. Not again.

The cold forced its way through the flames, into her body, and reached the heat burning inside her chest.

And put it out.

Cinder’s legs buckled. Her body slammed into the frozen stone and rolled onto its side.

Frost bloomed across her flank where the wave had struck.

The glow in her golden coat guttered. Then dimmed.

Aiden was beside her before he realized he had rushed back.

The cat was already there, pressed against Cinder’s jaw, trying to warm her with its tiny body.

It did nothing. It kept doing it anyway.

"Get up." Aiden’s hands were on her flank. "You can’t die here. Please. Get up—"

Cinder tried to push herself up. Her front legs slipped on the frost. She tried again, but her legs shook and gave out beneath her.

The cold was inside her. The same cold that had killed her pups and would have killed her too.

His hands trembled over her flank. He couldn’t pull the cold out of her. He couldn’t even keep his hands on her.

I have something else now. It has to work.

He reached for the other thing.

The resonance. The connection that had made the Frost Wolf step back in the barn.

He grabbed for it with everything in him.

It stuttered.

The three lines he had felt so clearly had become thin and wrong, because one of them was dimming under his hands.

The motes still floated far away, where the Frost Wolf’s cold couldn’t reach them. He couldn’t see or feel anything else.

It shows me the world. It doesn’t let me touch it.

He took a deep breath.

Being frightened won’t change what the resonance does.

It’s real. It’s just not enough to save her. Neither am I.

The Frost Wolf took another step.

Nyx lunged.

Not at the wolf. Over Aiden. Over Cinder. Over the cat. Shadows rose around them, forming a shroud of darkness.

It wouldn’t hide them. Not from a beast that tracked heat.

Miasma stepped in front of Aiden and Cinder, her spines raised and venom beading at their tips.

She barely reached Aiden’s knee. She still faced a beast that could kill her with one bite.

Yet, she didn’t back down.

Please don’t. Not you, Miasma. Run if you have to. Take Nyx with you.

I know you’re all giving everything you have.

But it’s not enough. I don’t want any of you to die.

The Frost Wolf came on. Unhurried. Certain.

And the lamps began to move.

The handlers rode their horses in from the rim, closing the circle around them.

Not to fight. There was nothing left to fight.

To collect.

They were here to take them back. Cinder, the wolf that had come back gold. Him, the man who had embarrassed the baron. Miasma and Nyx, just because they stood in front of him instead of running.

The House had already erased them from the city administration. Now it would erase them from the world.

Up on the rim, the man in the good coat did not even lean forward.

Why would he be surprised? We arrived exactly where he wanted us, exactly when he wanted us.

Aiden knelt in the frost with his hands pressed against Cinder’s flank.

Every fire feeds it.

Every path leads back to it.

What the hell am I supposed to do?

I’m not giving up. There has to be something I can still do.

He searched for anything he could still use. Anything at all.

There was one thing left.

The years inside him. Forty-six of them.

He pressed his hand on Cinder’s chest, over the place her fire used to live.

He asked himself the same questions he had been asking himself every morning.

How much left? How fast am I losing it? What does it buy?

Forty-six years. One dying Cinder.

He had known the answer before he started.

They’re not mine alone. I never had that long to live to begin with.

These years are ours. And I’ll spend them every morning to save them.

Except it doesn’t work like that.

Every time I’ve paid, there was something to pay for. A trial. An evolution. A forge. Something that took what I gave and made my beasts stronger.

There was no catalyst, no heat, no right environment around him. Nothing that could make a year of his life become something more.

Then it goes straight into her.

And I have no idea what it will do.

She’s out of fuel.

I’m not.

He opened the bond.