“We come here of need,” said the little boy. His teeth were chattering.

The old woman welcomed them inside, beckoning to them with her long, bony arms and smiling across her long, bony face beneath her long, bony nose. Her teeth and fingernails were sharp. “Come and warm yourselves, children,” cooed Baba Yaga. She ushered them to a rug before the fire and gave them potato pancakes heaped with sour cream, and they ate and ate.

It was only when their bellies were full and their bodies were warm that the little girl looked in the corner.

Beside the long, skinny broom was a tall, skinny chair.

Both were made of little bones the size of fingers.

The girl’s heart turned to ice in her chest, even as it began to beat hard and fast as a little drum.

Then Baba Yaga wrinkled her nose and frowned. “I smell the blood of the Bear,” she said. (For that is what the Yotne called their northern neighbors: the Great Bear.)

“No, no,” lied the little girl, terrified. “We are not Bears. We are Wolves, like you.”

(For that is what the Bears call their Yotne neighbors to the south: Wolves.)

Baba Yaga shook her head. “A Wolf knows other Wolves.”

Baba Yaga locked the door.

After their defeat by the tsarytsya, fifty long years ago, the land of the Great Bear of the North became known merely as Ranneniy Shenok, the Wounded Whelp. And little Yotunkheym rose to take its place.

I traced the gray mass of the Imperiya again, feeling as if my own heart might turn to ice inside me. I crossed my arms, breathing in the smell of my sweater.

Daddy had been younger when he’d worn it, and sturdier. And nearer to me. Most important, nearer.

Worry chased me down, nipping at my ankles.

I wondered how he would feel if they knew I would have to cross the Imperiya’s dark borders alone, missing him so powerfully I thought I might vanish from the spot where I stood and reappear at his side.

The cabin door groaned. Lang stood in the entryway, staring at my arms wrapped around my middle.

Sometimes, when Godmother Althea looked at me, I got the sense that my skin was see-through, that my thoughts were audible, that none of my secrets were secret at all. I felt the same way as Lang stepped forward, dark eyes piercing my armor.

“You seem to have lost this, Seneschal-elect.” One ink-smudged hand took my shoe from the edge of the map, its gold beads and embroidery winking in the lamplight, and offered it to me. I took it from him, then dropped my gaze to the map again.

“They say she lives in a black iron castle.” I swallowed tightly. “That her throne is built of the bones of her enemies, that she can smell their flesh a hundred miles away.”