Legendary Beast Tamer: Every Beast I Raise Makes Me Stronger

Cinder had to be the bait. And she had to stay visible.

"Let the Frost Wolf sense enough of your heat to follow," Aiden said. "But not enough to attract the watcher’s attention. Run around the bowl and put the grove between you and it."

Cinder looked at the grove. Then at the slope below.

"It won’t follow you all the way around. It’ll cut across the bowl to catch you. That’ll put it inside the sentinel ring instead of behind you."

Cinder looked at him for a moment. Her narrowed eyes told him she still didn’t understand why they needed all this.

But she had learned to trust him. She had learned that when she didn’t, Aiden stared at empty air.

Then he collapsed, and when she looked at him, his face was older, and his hands trembled. Because of her. Because she hadn’t listened to the only human who kept her walking by his side instead of behind him. The only human who refused to hold her on a leash.

The only Tamer good enough to spend himself raising a dying wolf beyond what she was born to be. And foolish enough to try it again.

She growled as she turned. Low. The growl she gave when she agreed.

Aiden got on her back, then she climbed onto the third-shelf slope and went.

Cinder ran a wide, slow arc across the black glass, keeping just enough fire in her coat to draw the Frost Wolf after her.

The Frost Wolf turned.

There. You took it.

Cinder came around the opposite side of the bowl and dropped behind the ridge, taking her light with her.

The Frost Wolf bounded along the outer edge of the second shelf, climbing behind Cinder.

It landed on the third shelf and kept after her.

Straight at the grove.

The sentinels felt the cold coming before they turned. A winter beast was climbing into the one country that had never once gone cold.

A dozen large, scaled heads snapped toward the cold at once.

"Now!" Aiden shouted. The sentinels roared. The Frost Wolf howled. His voice vanished beneath them.

Cinder leaped onto the open glass at a speed he felt in his teeth. Banked low. Barely lit. The cat clamped to her jaw, convinced it was holding the fire down.

Ten.

A hundred yards disappeared beneath her in a handful of strides.

Nine. Eight.

Don’t look at us. Look at the bigger threat.

The guardians were looking at the bigger threat.

Don’t look at them. Look at the tree. Be ready to collect.

Fire cracked across the bowl. The black glass trembled under Cinder’s paws.

He heard the Frost Wolf howl again. This time, it was shorter. Sharper.

It was trained to drink fire. Not the fire of twelve ancient beasts.

Seven.

Cinder reached the low tree.

It stood there as he had seen it through Perception: wrong and glowing, its bark cracked with orange veins, the single orange bead still hanging from the split branch.

Cinder raked one claw down the bark beside it.

The tree bled.

Not a bead. A thick thread of it, orange and slow, welling out of the cut. It smelled like a forge.

Six.

Aiden jumped off Cinder’s back before she stopped moving. He had the vial clenched in his fist, its mouth already pressed under the flow.

The Magma Sap poured like honey.

The heat came through the glass into his palm even with Solar Plexus running. It wasn’t ordinary heat. It felt alive, like the fire in Cinder’s chest.

Five.

Beside him, Cinder had gone still. She stood beside the tree, orange light on her coat and the forge-smell in her breath.

Aiden felt it down the bond. She wanted to bite the tree, swallow the sap, and evolve on the spot.

Four.

"Not yet," he said, catching the last of the sap. "I know. It’s right here, but we can’t stay."

Three.

He capped the vial.

Two.

Enough sap to raise Cinder an entire tier, warm against his ribs.

One.

He climbed onto Cinder’s back. A light tap and a cat’s urgent meow brought her out of her daze.

She lifted her paw.

Before it hit the ground, Aiden saw the motes shift.

He turned toward the centre of the bowl and pushed his Perception through the rock.

The huge mass of fire at the centre, the one that had not moved in two days, uncoiled.

His Perception couldn’t resolve its shape anymore. There was only a single point of fire, impossibly dense, where the sleeping mass had been.

Every golden mote around it bent toward that point.

Then it opened an eye.

Aiden froze.

The vast, ancient eye turned. Across the bowl. Past the retreating Frost Wolf. Past the sentinels.

Its gaze settled on the small banked wolf standing in the grove, with Aiden on her back and the vial of its sap in his hand.

It did not strike.

It looked.

Cinder looked back.

Of course she did. She had met the sentinels and done the same. She lifted her head, held her fire exactly where it was, and looked up at something with no size at all.

It noticed her.

And she wanted it to.

On Aiden’s shoulder, Miasma pressed herself flat. Not one spine moved.

Inside his coat, Nyx had gone small and hard. It did that when something enormous was close.

Neither of them had a single thing to offer here, and both of them knew it.

Aiden’s grip tightened in Cinder’s mane. That thing wouldn’t keep looking for long. They had to leave. Now.

"We have what we came for." His voice came out wrecked. "Down. Now."

Cinder turned and ran.

She did not need him to tell her to stay banked. Even Cinder knew better than to blaze in front of the reason this country burned.

They rushed out of the grove and down toward the second shelf’s black glass. Vial intact. Everyone somehow alive.

Behind them, the sentinels were already returning to their patrol around the grove. Away to the side, the Frost Wolf limped down a different slope. Hurt, whole, and going home.

Aiden risked one look back from the edge of the second shelf.

The whole mountain was awake. The golden motes that had been sitting still for two days were moving now. They all leaned toward that one burning point.

The eye was still watching them.

It’s not killing us, and I’m pretty sure it could roast us with a breath.

It’s curious. And so far, curiosity is keeping us alive.

"Made a friend," he told Cinder, breathless, the vial warm over his heart. "Worst kind there is. The curious kind."

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