Chapter 33 Splinter
The compulsion craft leaves a residue.
I feel it the moment I walk into Saturday morning's ability session, a cold greasy signature clinging to the training hall air like smoke that hasn't cleared, and Bram feels it too because he stops mid-sentence when I walk through the door and looks at me with an expression that has nothing casual in it.
"You were near illegal working yesterday?"
"Someone ran compulsion craft in the arena gallery," I tell him. "Targeting a dual natured supernatural on the ice."
Something moves through Bram's face fast and unhappy. He crosses to the dampening panel controls and dials them up three levels without explanation, and the training hall seals itself with a pressure change I feel in my ears.
"Show me," he says.
"Show you what?"
"What your ability registered from the craft." He holds out his hand, palm up. "Tamer recall. You stored the signature when you touched it. I need to see it."
I didn't know I could do that.
Apparently I can, because the moment I hold my hand near his the warmth surfaces and carries something with it, the cold dark shape of the compulsion craft rising out of my memory like an object lifted from deep water, and Bram's expression goes from unhappy to something considerably more serious.
He pulls his hand back.
"That's Drevari working," he says quietly.
"What's Drevari?"
He looks at me like he's deciding how much to say and then decides all of it. "A supernatural faction that's been officially defunct for forty years. Old craft, older than the Binding Circle, built around the forced subjugation of dual natured supernaturals." He pauses. "They believed dragon-wolf hybrids were weapons. Not people."
The training hall is very quiet around us.
"They're not defunct," I say slowly.
"No," Bram replies. "Apparently not."
My phone is in my hand before I've decided to reach for it.
Rhydan doesn't pick up.
I try Cassian.
He picks up on the first ring. "Where are you?"
"Training hall. Where's Rhydan?"
A pause that is half a second too long. "He went for an early skate. solo. He's not answering his phone."
Everything in my chest goes cold.
I'm out of the training hall before Bram finishes saying my name.
The rink is supposed to be empty Saturday mornings.
I hit the side entrance at a run and push through into the cold air of the arena and stop on the threshold because the ice is not empty and Rhydan is not alone.
He's in the centre of the rink in full skates and practice gear, and he's facing two figures I don't recognise, not the ones from the gallery yesterday, different people, and the air above the ice is wrong, shimmering with something that presses against my tamer awareness like static electricity turned physical.
They're running the working already.
Compulsion craft active and aimed and Rhydan is standing very still in the centre of the ice with his jaw set and his hands at his sides and I can see from the boards that it's costing him something enormous to stay still, both his natures fighting the compulsion simultaneously, and the ice around his skates is cracked in a two metre radius from the pressure of what he's containing.
I don't think.
I vault the boards.
My skates aren't on. I hit the ice in my boots and slip and catch myself and keep moving and the cold bites through my soles immediately but I don't stop, crossing the ice toward him fast, and the moment my tamer ability reaches him across the distance, it fires like something struck.
Gold-white light, not subtle, not the quiet warmth of the training hall, something enormous and instinctive and furious, surging outward from both my hands in a wave that crosses the ice and hits the compulsion working head on.
The working shatters.
Literally shatters, the supernatural structure of it cracking apart with a sound only I can hear, like glass breaking inside my skull, and the two figures stagger backward and one of them goes down on one knee on the ice.
Rhydan moves.
The moment the compulsion breaks, he moves and watching him cross the ice toward those two figures is the most frightening and extraordinary thing I have ever seen in my life because both his natures come up simultaneously, not fought, not suppressed, fully expressed, and he is not entirely human shaped in this moment.
He is taller somehow. The scales don't just surface on his arms, they spread across his shoulders and climb his neck and his eyes are not grey anymore, they are molten silver-gold burning from a face that is half shadow and half light, and along his spine through the back of his practice jersey something moves, a ridge, a suggestion of something vast trying to exist in too small a space, and his wolf nature radiates outward in a pulse of pure alpha authority so strong it presses against the arena walls.
The two figures scramble backward.
One of them throws something, a small dark object skittering across the ice, and smoke erupts from it, thick and black and supernatural, and when it clears, they're gone.
Rhydan stands in the centre of the ice.
The scales recede slowly.
The silver bleeds out of his eyes.
He's breathing hard, chest heaving, and the ice around him is cracked in a full five metre radius now, deep fissures running outward from where he stands like something exploded upward from beneath it.
I reach him.
My hands find his face before I've made the decision, both palms against his jaw, and the tamer warmth surges into him automatically and his eyes close and his hands come up and close around my wrists, not pulling me away, holding me there, and we stand in the middle of the destroyed ice while his breathing slows and both his natures settle under my hands.
"Rhydan..."
His eyes open.
The last of the silver is gone. Just grey. Just him.
"They knew I'd be here," he says, low and rough. "Solo skate. Saturday morning. Nobody else in the building." His hands tighten around my wrists slightly. "Someone told them my schedule."
Someone inside Northveil.
Someone with access to the Wolves' training calendar.
I look at him and he looks at me and we both arrive at the same answer at the same moment and neither of us wants to say it.
Because the only people with full access to the Northveil Wolves' private training schedule, beyond the coaches, are the players themselves.
Someone on the team.
The arena is silent around us.
My hands still on his face.
His still wrapped around my wrists.
And from somewhere in the high rafters of the empty arena, a sound.
Small. Deliberate.
Slow clapping.
We both look up.
Sera Vance sits in the highest gallery row, legs crossed, completely composed, looking down at us on the broken ice with an expression that is warm and terrible and completely unreadable.
"Impressive," she calls down, and her voice carries perfectly through the cold arena air. "Both of you."
She stands.
"But they weren't trying to take him," she says pleasantly. "They were taking notes."
She walks toward the gallery exit.
Stops at the door.
Looks back down at us one more time.
"So was I," she adds.
The door closes behind her.