Legendary Beast Tamer: Every Beast I Raise Makes Me Stronger

Aiden had spent his whole life counting one thing: how long until his lung killed him.

Every morning since the contract, he counted what he had left, how fast it was disappearing, and what he could afford to spend.

Now he could count something else.

He could see the motes in the air, and where they were not. He could see the cold around the wolf.

The Frost Wolf stopped just outside the barn doorway. One pace. No more.

But one pace was a gap, and Aiden had spent four years learning what to do with gaps.

"Out," he said. "Now. All of you."

Cinder went first, filling the doorway with her body. The cat leapt onto her shoulder, head high, and glared at the wolf as if it could make it look away.

The wolf didn’t look away. It didn’t advance either, leaving just enough space for her to pass.

Aiden rushed out under Cinder’s flank with Miasma on his arm.

Nyx pulled the dark off the opening last and came after them.

Then they were out in the grey country. The barn was behind them. In the doorway, the Frost Wolf turned to follow.

It let us out.

It could have held that door all morning, but it stayed a step back instead.

He kept running. He didn’t have time to think about why. He didn’t even have time to understand what the motes were.

But he knew one thing for certain: he had never heard or read of anyone seeing them.

They got two hundred paces away before the Frost Wolf came after them.

Aiden dropped into a dry drainage ditch and pulled his beasts with him.

The wolf walked around them without hurry, then stopped ahead and blocked every path except the one it wanted them to take.

"New plan," he said. "We don’t fight or outrun it. We make it spend itself."

Cinder’s coat brightened.

"No. Not like that." He put his hand on her neck. "A full blast is a feast. You give it too much, it eats, it grows."

Her coat dimmed a little.

"Little fires. Just enough to make it use its cold." He held his thumb and finger apart. "The second it throws cold at your fire, you kill the fire. It pays and gets nothing back."

Cinder looked at him.

She hates that wolf more than the Ice Heart. She wants to avenge her pups. To avenge herself.

You tried. It didn’t work. You have to understand.

Cinder’s coat dimmed. She lowered her head and pressed it against his chest.

"You’re the best I’ve got. You can do it, big girl." He ruffled her fur.

They put the plan to work at the first cold wave.

The Frost Wolf closed in. Frost spread across the ground toward Cinder.

Cinder ignited. A small flame flared from her side, no bigger than Aiden’s hand.

The Frost Wolf exhaled a wave of freezing air toward Cinder.

Aiden kept his eyes on the Frost Wolf, not the wave. The hole around it wobbled, then seemed smaller.

He had been right. The wolf could run out of cold.

Cinder snuffed out the flame before the wave reached her.

The cold rolled over the spot where the fire had been. It found nothing. It ate nothing. It refilled nothing.

Net loss.

"Yes," Aiden breathed. "Again."

They made it pay again. And again.

They kept running through the grey morning. For the first time, Aiden wasn’t just running away. He was making the wolf pay for every step.

Cinder flashed bait-fire and killed it. The Frost Wolf spent cold on empty ground. The cold around it shrank a little each time.

Every trade cost Cinder too.

Each new flame came a little slower than the last. She was conserving what she had left.

By the second mile, Aiden’s legs were heavy and shaking.

Nyx rode his shoulder and watched the wolf. Aiden watched the motes.

Twice it went rigid half a second before the Frost Wolf attacked. Both times, Aiden saw the warning, and Cinder snuffed out her flame before the cold reached her.

You’re still feeling it before I can.

Miasma ran ahead, keeping the group spread out.

Aiden followed her without asking why. A mile later, he understood.

She’s keeping us spread so the wolf has to throw wider to cover us. Wider costs more.

You figured that out on your own. You’re still the smartest.

It was working.

The hole around the Frost Wolf was smaller than it had been at the barn.

Later that morning, it cost the wolf something Aiden could see with his plain eyes.

The frost that had raced fifty feet ahead now reached only twenty. Then it stopped and pulled back.

The wolf stopped. It stood in the killed grass and shook itself. It had never done that before.

There. You felt that.

I’ve spent years making a lamp burn when there wasn’t enough oil left. You’re not bottomless. Nothing is.

They climbed the long slope of the clay-belt with the wolf behind them, and for one hour Aiden let himself believe he was winning.

He had a working method. He could see the wolf’s cold weakening. He had three beasts doing exactly what they were best at without being told twice.

It’s working. We can actually beat this thing.

Then he reached the top of the slope and looked down.

At the top of the slope, the ground dropped into a shallow bowl of clay, cut into the hill years ago for the kilns and never filled back in.

The Ice Heart sat at the bottom of it.

Not on a cradle. Seated on a stone bed, unwrapped, breathing winter up the sides of the bowl.

Around the rim stood a dozen handlers with lamps. They were not moving. They were not hurrying.

They had the look of men waiting for a herd to reach the pen.

Aiden stopped at the top of the slope. His stomach dropped.

It let us out of the barn.

I thought I stole that step from it.

It gave me that step.

He looked back down the slope they had just climbed.

In the motes, he could see it plainly. A band of cold stretched all the way back along the path they’d taken. The same corridor he had seen from the barn door and had not looked at twice.

Every clever withdrawal. Every wide route Miasma had picked. Every bait-and-kill he had been so pleased with.

All of it led uphill. All of it led to the Ice Heart.

I’ve been watching how much cold it had left.

I never watched where it was taking us.

The plan was sound. It had worked. And we’d been losing the whole time...

Below, the Frost Wolf climbed toward them.

It walked without hurry. It had never needed to hurry. Not in the barn. Not in the basin. Not once all morning.

He turned slowly, taking in the ground around him.

Below him, the bowl. Behind him, the slope the Frost Wolf was climbing. On both flanks, the rim, with men holding lamps along it.

Frost was already spreading up the sides of the bowl toward his boots.

He looked for the gap.

There was always a gap. Four years of locked tunnels and he had never once stood somewhere without one.

His eyes followed the rim. He found no gap.

Cinder came beside him. Her coat was dim. Her breathing had gone rough somewhere in the last mile. She looked down into the bowl and did not step back.

Cold behind us. Cold below us. Men on every side.

And she’s still standing here waiting to be told what to do.

He put his hand on her shoulder.

We spent all morning weakening the wolf. And we’re still exactly where it wanted us.

The Frost Wolf had never been trying to kill them. It had been bringing them to the Ice Heart.

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