Chapter 1

The forest had become a labyrinth of snow and ice.

I’d been monitoring the parameters of the thicket for an hour, and my vantage
point in the crook of a tree branch had turned useless. The gusting wind blew
thick flurries to sweep away my tracks, but buried along with them any signs of
potential quarry.
Hunger had brought me farther from home than I usually risked, but winter
was the hard time. The animals had pulled in, going deeper into the woods than I
could follow, leaving me to pick off stragglers one by one, praying they’d last
until spring.
They hadn’t.
I wiped my numb fingers over my eyes, brushing away the flakes clinging to
my lashes. Here there were no telltale trees stripped of bark to mark the deer’s
passing—they hadn’t yet moved on. They would remain until the bark ran out,
then travel north past the wolves’ territory and perhaps into the faerie lands of
Prythian—where no mortals would dare go, not unless they had a death wish.
A shudder skittered down my spine at the thought, and I shoved it away,
focusing on my surroundings, on the task ahead. That was all I could do, all I’d
been able to do for years: focus on surviving the week, the day, the hour ahead.
And now, with the snow, I’d be lucky to spot anything—especially from my
position up in the tree, scarcely able to see fifteen feet ahead. Stifling a groan as
my stiff limbs protested at the movement, I unstrung my bow before easing off
the tree.
The icy snow crunched under my fraying boots, and I ground my teeth. Low
visibility, unnecessary noise—I was well on my way to yet another fruitless
hunt.
Only a few hours of daylight remained. If I didn’t leave soon, I’d have to
navigate my way home in the dark, and the warnings of the town hunters still
rang fresh in my mind: giant wolves were on the prowl, and in numbers. Not to
mention whispers of strange folk spotted in the area, tall and eerie and deadly.
Anything but faeries, the hunters had beseeched our long-forgotten gods—
and I had secretly prayed alongside them. In the eight years we’d been living in
our village, two days’ journey from the immortal border of Prythian, we’d been
spared an attack—though traveling peddlers sometimes brought stories of distant
border towns left in splinters and bones and ashes. These accounts, once rare
enough to be dismissed by the village elders as hearsay, had in recent months
become commonplace whisperings on every market day.
I had risked much in coming so far into the forest, but we’d finished our last
loaf of bread yesterday, and the remainder of our dried meat the day before. Still,
I would have rather spent another night with a hungry belly than found myself
satisfying the appetite of a wolf. Or a faerie.
Not that there was much of me to feast on. I’d turned gangly by this time of
the year, and could count a good number of my ribs. Moving as nimbly and
quietly as I could between the trees, I pushed a hand against my hollow and
aching stomach. I knew the expression that would be on my two elder sisters’
faces when I returned to our cottage empty-handed yet again.
After a few minutes of careful searching, I crouched in a cluster of snow-
heavy brambles. Through the thorns, I had a half-decent view of a clearing and
the small brook flowing through it. A few holes in the ice suggested it was still
frequently used. Hopefully something would come by. Hopefully.
I sighed through my nose, digging the tip of my bow into the ground, and
leaned my forehead against the crude curve of wood. We wouldn’t last another
week without food. And too many families had already started begging for me to
hope for handouts from the wealthier townsfolk. I’d witnessed firsthand exactly
how far their charity went.
I eased into a more comfortable position and calmed my breathing, straining
to listen to the forest over the wind. The snow fell and fell, dancing and curling
like sparkling spindrifts, the white fresh and clean against the brown and gray of
the world. And despite myself, despite my numb limbs, I quieted that relentless,
vicious part of my mind to take in the snow-veiled woods.
Once it had been second nature to savor the contrast of new grass against
dark, tilled soil, or an amethyst brooch nestled in folds of emerald silk; once I’d
dreamed and breathed and thought in color and light and shape. Sometimes I
would even indulge in envisioning a day when my sisters were married and it
was only me and Father, with enough food to go around, enough money to buy
some paint, and enough time to put those colors and shapes down on paper or
canvas or the cottage walls.
Not likely to happen anytime soon—perhaps ever. So I was left with
moments like this, admiring the glint of pale winter light on snow. I couldn’t
remember the last time I’d done it—bothered to notice anything lovely or
interesting.
 Stolen hours in a decrepit barn with Isaac Hale didn’t count; those times were
hungry and empty and sometimes cruel, but never lovely.
The howling wind calmed into a soft sighing. The snow fell lazily now, in
big, fat clumps that gathered along every nook and bump of the trees.
Mesmerizing—the lethal, gentle beauty of the snow. I’d soon have to return to
the muddy, frozen roads of the village, to the cramped heat of our cottage. Some
small, fragmented part of me recoiled at the thought.
Bushes rustled across the clearing.
Drawing my bow was a matter of instinct. I peered through the thorns, and
my breath caught.
Less than thirty paces away stood a small doe, not yet too scrawny from
winter, but desperate enough to wrench bark from a tree in the clearing.
A deer like that could feed my family for a week or more.
My mouth watered. Quiet as the wind hissing through dead leaves, I took
aim.
She continued tearing off strips of bark, chewing slowly, utterly unaware that
her death waited yards away.
I could dry half the meat, and we could immediately eat the rest—stews, pies
… Her skin could be sold, or perhaps turned into clothing for one of us. I needed
new boots, but Elain needed a new cloak, and Nesta was prone to crave anything
someone else possessed.
My fingers trembled. So much food—such salvation. I took a steadying
breath, double-checking my aim.
But there was a pair of golden eyes shining from the brush adjacent to mine.
The forest went silent. The wind died. Even the snow paused.
We mortals no longer kept gods to worship, but if I had known their lost
names, I would have prayed to them. All of them. Concealed in the thicket, the
wolf inched closer, its gaze set on the oblivious doe.
He was enormous—the size of a pony—and though I’d been warned about
their presence, my mouth turned bone-dry.
But worse than his size was his unnatural stealth: even as he inched closer in
the brush, he remained unheard, unspotted by the doe. No animal that massive
could be so quiet. But if he was no ordinary animal, if he was of Prythian origin,
if he was somehow a faerie, then being eaten was the least of my concerns.
If he was a faerie, I should already be running.
Yet maybe … maybe it would be a favor to the world, to my village, to
myself, to kill him while I remained undetected. Putting an arrow through his
eye would be no burden.
But despite his size, he looked like a wolf, moved like a wolf. Animal, I
reassured myself. Just an animal. I didn’t let myself consider the alternative—
not when I needed my head clear, my breathing steady.
I had a hunting knife and three arrows. The first two were ordinary arrows—
simple and efficient, and likely no more than bee stings to a wolf that size. But
the third arrow, the longest and heaviest one, I’d bought from a traveling peddler
during a summer when we’d had enough coppers for extra luxuries. An arrow
carved from mountain ash, armed with an iron head.
From songs sung to us as lullabies over our cradles, we all knew from infancy
that faeries hated iron. But it was the ash wood that made their immortal, healing
magic falter long enough for a human to make a killing blow. Or so legend and
rumor claimed. The only proof we had of the ash’s effectiveness was its sheer
rarity. I’d seen drawings of the trees, but never one with my own eyes—not after
the High Fae had burned them all long ago. So few remained, most of them
small and sickly and hidden by the nobility within high-walled groves. I’d spent
weeks after my purchase debating whether that overpriced bit of wood had been
a waste of money, or a fake, and for three years, the ash arrow had sat unused in
my quiver.
Now I drew it, keeping my movements minimal, efficient—anything to avoid
that monstrous wolf looking in my direction. The arrow was long and heavy
enough to inflict damage—possibly kill him, if I aimed right.
My chest became so tight it ached. And in that moment, I realized my life
boiled down to one question: Was the wolf alone?
I gripped my bow and drew the string farther back. I was a decent shot, but
I’d never faced a wolf. I’d thought it made me lucky—even blessed. But now …
I didn’t know where to hit or how fast they moved. I couldn’t afford to miss. Not
when I had only one ash arrow.
And if it was indeed a faerie’s heart pounding under that fur, then good
riddance. Good riddance, after all their kind had done to us. I wouldn’t risk this
one later creeping into our village to slaughter and maim and torment. Let him
die here and now. I’d be glad to end him.
The wolf crept closer, and a twig snapped beneath one of his paws—each
bigger than my hand. The doe went rigid. She glanced to either side, ears
straining toward the gray sky. With the wolf’s downwind position, she couldn’t
see or smell him.
His head lowered, and his massive silver body—so perfectly blended into the
snow and shadows—sank onto its haunches. The doe was still staring in the
wrong direction.
I glanced from the doe to the wolf and back again. At least he was alone—at
least I’d been spared that much. But if the wolf scared the doe off, I was left with
nothing but a starving, oversize wolf—possibly a faerie—looking for the next-
best meal. And if he killed her, destroying precious amounts of hide and fat …
If I judged wrongly, my life wasn’t the only one that would be lost. But my
life had been reduced to nothing but risks these past eight years that I’d been
hunting in the woods, and I’d picked correctly most of the time. Most of the
time.
The wolf shot from the brush in a flash of gray and white and black, his
yellow fangs gleaming. He was even more gargantuan in the open, a marvel of
muscle and speed and brute strength. The doe didn’t stand a chance.
I fired the ash arrow before he destroyed much else of her.
The arrow found its mark in his side, and I could have sworn the ground itself
shuddered. He barked in pain, releasing the doe’s neck as his blood sprayed on
the snow—so ruby bright.
He whirled toward me, those yellow eyes wide, hackles raised. His low growl
reverberated in the empty pit of my stomach as I surged to my feet, snow
churning around me, another arrow drawn.
But the wolf merely looked at me, his maw stained with blood, my ash arrow
protruding so vulgarly from his side. The snow began falling again. He looked,
and with a sort of awareness and surprise that made me fire the second arrow.
Just in case—just in case that intelligence was of the immortal, wicked sort.
He didn’t try to dodge the arrow as it went clean through his wide yellow eye.
He collapsed to the ground.
Color and darkness whirled, eddying in my vision, mixing with the snow.
His legs were twitching as a low whine sliced through the wind. Impossible—
he should be dead, not dying. The arrow was through his eye almost to the goose
fletching.
But wolf or faerie, it didn’t matter. Not with that ash arrow buried in his side.
He’d be dead soon enough. Still, my hands shook as I brushed off snow and
edged closer, still keeping a good distance. Blood gushed from the wounds I’d
given him, staining the snow crimson.
He pawed at the ground, his breathing already slowing. Was he in much pain,
or was his whimper just his attempt to shove death away? I wasn’t sure I wanted
to know.
The snow swirled around us. I stared at him until that coat of charcoal and
obsidian and ivory ceased rising and falling. Wolf—definitely just a wolf,
despite his size.
The tightness in my chest eased, and I loosed a sigh, my breath clouding in
front of me. At least the ash arrow had proved itself to be lethal, regardless of
who or what it took down.
A rapid examination of the doe told me I could carry only one animal—and
even that would be a struggle. But it was a shame to leave the wolf.
Though it wasted precious minutes—minutes during which any predator
could smell the fresh blood—I skinned him and cleaned my arrows as best I
could.
If anything, it warmed my hands. I wrapped the bloody side of his pelt around
the doe’s death-wound before I hoisted her across my shoulders. It was several
miles back to our cottage, and I didn’t need a trail of blood leading every animal
with fangs and claws straight to me.
Grunting against the weight, I grasped the legs of the deer and spared a final
glance at the steaming carcass of the wolf. His remaining golden eye now stared
at the snow-heavy sky, and for a moment, I wished I had it in me to feel remorse
for the dead thing.
But this was the forest, and it was winter.