“She thinks she has, and that is what matters. She believes she understands the curse, but she only sees what she fears.”

“Tell me. Tell me the curse you placed on her.”

“First, I must tell you a story.”

“There isn’t time. I have to stop Avery. I have to warn her.”

“Once, a long time ago, there was a woman.”

I closed my eyes, her voice overriding my panic as she told me the story the Huntress had revealed only in fragments, about a boy and a hunt and a woman who would have crushed her chiefdom beneath the heels of her boots if it pleased her.

“What will happen to her now?” I asked when it was over.

“That, child, is entirely up to you.”

“What can I do against a mob of rabid villagers?”

“Do you love her?” The old woman’s eyes were as bright as the wolf’s.

“Yes.”

“Then you will have to find a way.”

She woke with her Hounds around her. Brendan, Masha, Neve, Lyon, and Quince, dressed for the hunt and laughing, bows and axes at their sides and blood on their clothes.

“The game is so much better in the lowlands,” Masha was saying as the Huntress opened her eyes. “And their hunters are lazy. We should raid this spring.”

“You always want to raid,” said Neve, polishing the head of her axe. “Why raid when we could just hunt?”

“If we raid, they will be afraid. Then we can start tithing them for protection,” said Lyon. “Game and grain. Think of how fat the horses will be.”

“Think of how fat I will be.” Brendan smacked his stomach. “What say you, Isolde?”

The Huntress looked at Quince, who had not yet spoken. There was something wrong with her face. She was grinning a wolf’s grin and her teeth were too sharp.

“Quince,” the Huntress said, but as she spoke her Hound faded, and where she had stood was the alpha female of the pack, her tongue lolling over ivory jaws. The wolf snarled once, then trotted out of the room.

“Wait,” she called after her, but the wolf did not heed her, and the fire sputtered in the grate, casting strange shadows on the wall.

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

Something wet and warm brushed my cheek. I pushed it away, thinking it was the wolf, and met resistance.

“Hush, Row,” said a familiar voice.

I tried to open my eyes. One obeyed. The other was swollen shut, letting in only a sliver of light. My head throbbed with the sort of ominous intensity that promised to only get worse the longer I remained conscious, and so I closed my eyes again. The pup could wait to eat. She was almost fully grown, and she knew her way to the stables where there was always a carcass to be had.

“Rowan.”

It was so like the Huntress to wake me when I wanted sleep most.

The Huntress.

Avery.