Phoenix Flame - Sara Holland Page 0,33

less gravity in Fiordenkill? I wonder giddily as I approach Brekken.

He looks different here in his home world, different enough for me to pause a few feet away, just so I can look at him a second longer before he notices me. The light here is strange. Although it’s night, it’s not dark by any means; the light from the stars and the aurora, reflected off the marble walls and the snow on the ground, casts everything in an ethereal pale light. It reshapes Brekken, deepens the contrast between his pale skin and copper hair and blue eyes and the deep green of his soldier’s coat. It sharpens him, bringing out the fine angles of his face and the hollows in his cheeks and around his eyes. It makes him look less human.

It makes me remember what he is. While the delegates have never seemed not-foreign to me, strange in their habits and speech and manner; while even Graylin catches me off guard sometimes when his accent sneaks through or he catches a falling wineglass with supernatural reflexes; something had shifted over the years and allowed me to see Brekken as just like me. Maybe I was trying to convince myself there was some kind of future for us, that he could stay at Havenfall, stay on Earth and be happy. But looking at him now, it’s so clear that this is his home. Maybe he would be happy elsewhere, but it would never be home, the way Graylin has made it so.

Brekken is looking intently out at the road, the wind tugging at his hair like a familiar friend. His eyes gleam with the reflected sky, and his posture is tall and proud, a soldier’s. Beyond him, through a huge black wrought-iron gate, I can see a long straight road shimmering with ice, lined by great thick-trunked trees with graceful, downward-pointing boughs, like silvery pines.

He doesn’t seem to notice me there until I take another step, the snow crunching beneath my feet, and he turns toward me, blinking, clearing some unnameable emotion out of his eyes. A soft smile curls his mouth.

“So what do you think?” he asks.

“It’s beautiful,” I whisper, looking at the reflections of the stars in his pupils. “But why is this area empty? I thought the doorway was always under guard.”

“It usually is,” Brekken replies. “But my mother pulled some favors and arranged for the guards to be elsewhere tonight.”

“Thank goodness.” I’m too embarrassed to admit that I hadn’t even thought about guards on the Fiorden side until now. I was too focused on the next steps of the plan we made: learn as much as we can about the gauntlet, stop over at Brekken’s grandparents’ home to get ready and gather our strength, and then make our attack.

“Do you know the way to Winterkill?”

Brekken shakes his head no. “But they do,” he says, lifting his finger to point.

I follow the line of his arm, down the stretch of ice road, and my heart jumps into my throat. Someone is coming—no, something—something huge. It’s strangely silent except for a soft whooshing sound that gets louder and louder. Finally I understand what I’m seeing: a huge sleigh made of black polished wood, trimmed with silver and bone.

The sleigh is pulled by five ice wolves, each as big as a horse.

My jaw drops. They bound toward us, paws silent against the ice, blue and black eyes gleaming in the starlight. Teeth too. Their coats are black and brown and silver and white. The wolves are bound together and to the sleigh by leather harnesses. As they pull to a stop a few yards from the gate, I see that a woman with long copper hair is holding the reins. She dismounts and comes toward us, patting each of the wolves as she passes them. Steam rises from the animals’ coats and from their open mouths, long red tongues lolling out between white teeth. I’m so transfixed by them that I don’t realize at first that Brekken has opened the gate and gone out. Not until he strides up to the woman and envelops her in an embrace.

My gaze snaps to them. After a long hug, the woman pulls back, holding Brekken by the shoulders.

“My son,” she says with a big grin on her face.

And as soon as she does, I can see the resemblance between them, the ivory cast of their skin, the mischievous grin.

Something goes hollow inside me. Of course I’ve heard plenty about Brekken’s parents