Raisa stared at her. “Who are you?” she whispered.

“I am Hanalea ana’Maria, who shattered the world.”

“But…” As Raisa groped for words, Hanalea bowed her head and turned away. She broke into a lope, ears back, tail streaming behind her, disappearing into the shadows under the trees.

Raisa opened her eyes again. She lay on her back, staring up at the treetops. The cold and wet had seeped through her coat. Snow sifted down on her as the wind stirred the branches.

Marianna, they whispered.

She sat up, her head still clouded by the remnants of dreams, a knot of dread in her middle.

So it was a dream. But what did it mean, this twilight visitation? Was it a nightmare born of worry? A premonition of something that might occur? An obscure parable symbolizing something completely different?

It was said that the Gray Wolf queens had the gift of prophesy, but she’d never seen it in her mother, Marianna. Was this how the messages came—from gray wolves in a dream?

Or perhaps it was just that—a dream. The remnant and consequence of a tragic day.

Could she trust in a tradition of magic that seemed to have gone dormant—relics of a past when wizards behaved, amulets lasted forever, and queens knew what they were doing.

What would she find when she returned to Fellsmarch? What was the danger so potent that the wolves had issued this warning?

She had to know. She had to know now.

She scrambled to her feet. As she did so, she saw that the snow all around her campsite was pocked with pawprints the size of luncheon plates.

Wolfprints.

Bloody bones, she thought. Maybe she was losing her mind.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to Gillen’s horse, who’d stood saddled all this time. He’d managed to scrape his back against a tree, knocking the saddle askew. She released the bit long enough to feed and water him again, then tightened the girth and mounted up.

When she emerged from the dark narrow canyon, more daylight remained than she expected. The last rays of the sun reflected back from the snow, illuminating the road before her. She looked up and down the trail, then turned north, toward Marisa Pines Camp.

Raisa walked the gelding off the trail when she could, though it made for slower going, hoping it would prevent her being spotted by anyone looking down from above. She kept Gillen’s cocked crossbow next to her, knowing that her one shot was unlikely to save her.

It was all she could do to keep the gelding reined in, when what she wanted to do was break into a gallop, to race all the way to safety. Occasionally she stopped and listened, hearing only the movement of branches overhead and the hiss of snow on snow.