The howl carried across the academy and the fields beyond it and the forests beyond those and the mountains beyond those. It was the first howl. The first sound of its kind produced by a Fae-born throat on Fae soil, the frequency of a species that was being invented in real time by a boy whose body was the prototype.
In the academy dormitory, Tristan Aelindor sat up in bed. His green eyes were wide. His hair was a catastrophe. His expression was the expression of a man who had been asleep three seconds ago and was now fully, irreversibly awake.
Tristan crossed the room to the window.
In the training yard below, lit by the last of the moonlight, a wolf the size of a small horse was standing on the grass with its head tilted toward the sky.
"Oh," Tristan said. "He is going to be insufferable about this."
He had approximately nine hundred questions and his sleeping clothes were not dressed for any of them.
✦✦✦
A FEW WEEKS LATER
