Chapter 118: THE PRICE IT WOULDN’T TAKE

The Frost Wolf climbed the last stretch of the slope while Vane’s men stood back and let it.

Aiden understood the whole plan by the time the frost reached his door.

They’re not forcing their way in again. The door bit them.

So they sent the one thing that doesn’t care about doors while they wait outside Nyx’s range.

The Frost Wolf stopped six feet from the entrance.

The temperature in the shelter dropped so fast Aiden’s ears popped. Frost crawled up the stone slabs. The black glass beneath Cinder turned grey with frost.

The wound from the grove scarred the Frost Wolf’s flank, the hide around it puckered and dark. Its breath formed a long, slow cloud.

It looked past Aiden entirely, its hungry eyes locked on Cinder’s blazing light. It howled at her, demanding she lose to it one more time. The last time.

It doesn’t even see me.

Behind him, Cinder lay burning in the back of the shelter, so weak that the howl she managed was barely a whimper.

The Frost Wolf didn’t charge. It didn’t need to.

It set itself at the entrance, two feet in front of Miasma. It opened the cold.

A wave of freezing cold erupted from its body. It swept past the venom-thing it didn’t care about, past the man it could kill at its whim, and reached for the light.

Then it started drinking.

Nyx felt it before he did. The shadow on his shoulder let out a thin, panicked sound it had never made before.

Then he felt it through the bond, and he didn’t need to understand it to panic as well.

The light behind him dimmed.

He snapped his gaze toward Cinder.

The flares along her spine dropped an inch, then another. The stone stopped ticking. The pulse of light that had been shaking the slabs every few seconds slowed, and slowed again.

The evolution was faltering.

No! That damned thing is pulling the heat out of the evolution faster than the sap can put it back.

Get the heat even slightly wrong, and the evolution kills her.

The smith had said that in a forge a country away, over a bar of steel, and there was a lot more than one degree of cold standing six feet from the door.

If the evolution gutters now, she doesn’t return to being a Solarflare Hound. She comes out half-evolved into something else.

Then she dies.

It’s not happening.

Aiden bit his lip and put himself between the cold and the fire, in the narrow space where the wave came through.

The cold hit him.

Solar Plexus fired.

His core climbed. The frost that reached his coat stopped biting. For five seconds he stood in a doorway with winter pouring through him and none of it touching him at all.

Five seconds. Then I’m just a man waiting to be frozen.

He counted them.

On five, the heat in his chest went out.

The cold flooded into his body. His breath clouded. The wet on his lip froze. His fingers went numb around his knife.

He refused to let his legs falter anyway.

If I’m not in the door, it reaches her.

He closed his eyes.

He could still feel her fangs around his neck, and her tears on his coat when they first met. How she had walked behind him, her warm head against his legs, her watchful gaze fixed on his trembling hands ever since he sacrificed fifteen years to save her from the Frost Wolf.

He snapped his eyes open.

And he opened the bond and poured.

He opened it wide, as he had on the frozen slope, like a vein split open in a wound that would not close, and he bled his lifespan into the dimming light behind him.

Take it. Take all of it. Just don’t die.

He felt the bond open. He felt his lifespan leave him. Then it hit something and came back to him, unspent.

He looked for the box. There was no box. No number moved.

The system’s not taking it.

He pushed harder. The light behind him kept dimming.

The years stayed in his chest.

Is Cinder refusing? No. She would have refused last week if she could.

Why won’t you take it? Damn it. Damn it!

It took fifteen off me on a hillside. It took a year for the bloodline trial just last week. It’s never once refused me.

Miasma had slipped around the Frost Wolf’s cold wave. She hadn’t run. She still held the path behind it.

Most of the handlers weren’t climbing. They stood at the edge of Nyx’s darkness and waited for their wolf to do the work.

A few crept forward with their beasts to test her. She met each one at the narrow place and drove them back with a poisonous bite, a spine through the skin, or a four-millimeter thread of Acid Weave across the shin.

They writhed on the ground, then went still. Not dead. Their chests still rose and fell. Unconscious.

Nyx pressed against his neck and made a sound he had never heard from it. Thin. High. Awful.

It could not fight the cold. It had never been able to.

So it spread itself over Aiden instead. A shroud across his shoulders and his head. A shadow between him and a winter it could do nothing about.

You know exactly how useless that is.

Do it anyway. I’d rather have it than not. And I thought you were mute until two hours ago.

The cat climbed onto Cinder now that her heat had lowered.

Its claws dug into her burning shoulder, its head pressed beneath her jaw, clinging to the fire that was about to go out.

We have nothing to beat the Frost Wolf. It’s wounded. We still can’t approach it.

No. It would have killed me already if the Vanes’ good coats didn’t want to capture me.

From the doorway, Aiden watched his beasts struggle beside him. Again, they all chose to stand with him.

Why?

His eyes watered. Tears froze before they trailed down his cheeks.

We’re doomed. It’s my fault. Run. At least survive. Somewhere you’ll live happily.

He watched the light fall behind him.

Cinder’s flares dropped lower. The gold in her coat went to orange. The cracked glass under her stopped glowing at the edges.

You suffered so much that I wanted you to be happy.

Nyx and Miasma wanted that for you too. Now I understand.

They’re your sisters. We’re all family. So, please, try something, anything. Take them with you and leave.

Deep in the light, Cinder felt him.

She glared at him, the same way she had on the frozen grass when he emptied fifteen years into her and she began to hate what he was doing.

She was too far into the evolution to climb out and stop him.

But she was still looking at him. Still fighting.

Aiden’s breath caught.

Then I’m not giving up either.

I’m not spending anything. That’s the issue.

It won’t let me.

He tried once more, with everything he had. The bond stayed shut against him.

His knees wanted the floor. The cold had his hands and most of his arms.

Six feet away, the Frost Wolf drank Cinder’s heat without hurrying. It still hadn’t looked at him even once.

Under the panic, a small, cold, steady thought finally made sense.

It’s taken every year I’ve ever offered it.

It’s refusing this one.

Which means paying isn’t what this needs.

Which means I’m doing it wrong.