Page 86 of Taste of Thorns

“You work out what it is that’s going on?” Dray asks, tearing his teeth through the meat.

I shake my head. “They met with a cloaked stranger out on the marshland–”

“The Hardies or the Smytes?” Beaufort asks.

“Kratos and Henrietta.”

“And who was the stranger? Was it Kratos’ father?”

“Or one of the silent shifters?”

“I don’t know; it was too dark and too misty to see and they were using a silencing spell so I couldn’t hear either.”

“And your nose is shit,” Dray says, with his mouth full, “so you couldn’t catch their scent.”

“But you could?” I point out.

Dray’s eyes light up and then he’s cramming what’s left of the meat into his mouth and yanking down his pants.

“Show me where,” he instructs, already transforming to his wolf-form as he steps through the door.

A couple of minutes later, we’re back out in the swirling mist; it’s much thicker than it was and I struggle at first to find the direction, then Dray picks up Kratos’ scent and we follow his footprints across the boggy land, stopping when they come to a halt at the place where he met with the mysterious stranger.

“It’s a long way out from the academy,” Beaufort observes, as Dray sniffs at the earth, his nose pressed to the ground. “They obviously didn’t want to be seen.”

“Or heard,” I add.

We both look eagerly at Dray’s wolf; he’s sniffing and sniffing and by now I’d expect him to be shifting back to human-form and crowing over us both. Instead, he pads in circles, huffing and growling and clearly becoming frustrated.

Finally he shifts back, standing butt naked in the freezing fog.

“What did you find?” Beaufort asks him.

“Jack shit. The only scents I can smell are Kratos’ and Henny’s.”

“You’re sure about that? It’s not buried–”

“I’m sure,” Dray growls. “They must have wiped it away. Because if it were here, I’d find it.”

I look back towards the academy, hardly visible through the shifting mist. “They knew we were watching,” I say.

“You wanna go beat the crap out of the Hardies again?” Dray asks, a grin spreading over his face.

“No point,” Beaufort says, “they won’t talk.”

“But you know who might with the right persuasion?” Dray says, still grinning.

Beaufort groans and raises his eyes to the heavens.

“Henrietta.”

Chapter Thirty

Briony

This magic in my veins – this light – is new and I’m still trying to understand the strange and unfamiliar sensations it triggers through my body. Most of them I struggle to interpret. However, in this moment, the message is loud and clear.

Danger.