Chapter 17: Silver in the Snow

I didn't use the stairs.

I put my palm on the wall and ice ran out of it, down the stone face in a slick white ramp.

"Princess!" the Warden shouted. "Stay up here!"

I stepped over the parapet and let go.

The change came easier this time. It tore through me and left me on four legs, a head taller than anything on that slope.

The ramp held under my paws.

I came down it in three bounds and landed in the snow in front of the gate, between Rhys and the trees.

He turned his head and saw me.

"Get back inside," he said.

I didn't have the words for an answer. I had teeth.

The first of them hit the snow at a run, a long grey wolf with iron-colored fur, aiming for the man standing alone.

I took it across the shoulder and threw it into the nearest trunk.

The sound of that was very satisfying.

Rhys shifted behind me. A black wolf came out of his clothes in one tearing breath, with huge shoulders.

He took the left. I took the right.

Frost spiralled off my paws and wherever it touched, a northern wolf slowed, slipped and skidded into the open.

Ice Moon archers on the wall put arrows into the ones who skidded.

For a while there was only noise. Snarling, bones, a long scream when somebody's leg went through the ice.

Four tiny hearts hammered inside me, and I thought: stay low, stay low, stay low.

Then I smelled silver.

It came off a human man at the edge of the trees, tall, in a plain coat. He stood quite still with a long knife in his hand.

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