Winter, White and Wicked - Shannon Dittemore Page 0,50

into it. “I’m going to get more slugs.”

And then he’s gone and I’m surrounded by dead wolves, nothing but the Sylver Dragon at my back. I drag the flat of the knife’s blade across my pant leg before sliding it into its sheath. I should reclaim the other one from the wolf at my feet, but hefting his body is a task I can’t quite fathom. My legs shake—Winter’s absence dark and lonely inside me.

I’m sorry, I tell her again, refusing to look at the creatures at my feet. So sorry.

The Ranger’s pickup grows large in the distance, Winter’s breath rising from the moldering towers of ice on the truck’s left and right. I see the Ranger’s harpoon gun mounted on top, frozen solid. I see two of the men walking toward us almost lazily, their guns hanging loosely around their necks, their laughter high on the wind.

“Come hither, Sylver Quine!” one calls. “The Majority wants a word with you!”

Don’t they know this fight is over? That what comes next is just a waste of life? Is it wise or foolish to laugh in the face of such a thing?

Mars drops to the road, the storm thrust in front of him, but still whipping at us—pelting us with hail and biting flakes of snow.

“There are more,” he says, tightening the scarf wrapped around his waist.

“More what?” I ask.

“Wolves. Seven more. Following the pickup. Frost Whites.”

My stomach heaves.

There are stories. These ones told in the tavern after dark, myths not so different from the one Shyne wanted us to believe. Tales of Winter’s passion for the first wolf to take refuge in her mountains, a Frost White with eyes like goldstone. He was her one great love but her affection froze him solid. She was more careful after that, mourning him, favoring his kin, admiring their beauty from a distance, and allowing them the freedom to roam the mountains as they liked.

I had no idea a pack had taken up with the Rangers. While a Gray is nothing to be careless with, I’m downright terrified of the Whites.

“We can’t win this, Mars. Not with Winter on their side.”

“She has to obey. She has no choice.”

“It’s cruel, what you’re doing. Using her to destroy her own.”

“It’s survival. And you’d best choose the right side here, Miss Quine. The rebels are the ones who will suffer if you don’t. Miss Trestman will suffer. They need what we’re hauling.”

He’s still leaking blood. It’s pushed through the scarf Hyla tied around his waist.

I think of what Drypp once told me about those forced to work at the Stack. Those going slowly mad with all the exposure to the raw kol.

“Even slaves fight back,” I say.

“What?” Mars asks.

“Like the workers in the Stack obeying their overseers, Winter will do exactly what you ask of her and no more. She’ll look for ways to fight you, ways to rebel. She’ll help the wolves however she can without violating the magic that binds her to the kol in your blood.”

“That’s why I need you.”

The wolves are in sight now, coming up alongside the pickup. They’re beautiful, the wolves. One and a half times the size of the average Gray, their eyes like gems. It’s easy to see why Winter loves them as she does.

“I won’t. I won’t order her to massacre her favorites.”

He shakes his head, his grin mocking. “I thought you didn’t believe in fairy stories, Miss Quine.”

“I won’t do it. Not when we can climb into the cab right now and drive away. They will not pursue us out onto the Desolation stretch.”

“And if they do?”

“They won’t get far. Their pickup can’t navigate the Cages. We can outrun them.”

Kyn joins us, his eye pressed to the gun sight. “Hyla’s taken out one of the Rangers, but there’s still the driver in the truck and another on the ground. Seven wolves. A pickup with a disabled harpoon gun and several frozen projectiles. Not much there to improvise with. The wolves are between us and them now. We either run while we can,” he says, clearly disgusted by that option, “or we take on the wolves and then the men.”

“We run,” I say.

“And if the Majority is paying them good coin to track us,” Mars says, “do you think they will just stop pursuing you? If we leave them alive, you’ll never be able to go home again.”

From somewhere deep inside my chest a roar shakes its way into the air. “I’d be of no use to the