“She’s dead?” Disappointment twisted his face. “She can’t be dead. She was mine to kill.”

“Go,” I told him. “Go back to your village before you kill any more of your neighbors. Go back to my sister and your child. Treat them well, Avery Lockland, or I will rip your throat out with my teeth.”

Avery laughed. There was blood in his beard.

“You? You can’t hurt me if she’s dead. Step aside, Rowan. I’m going to bring her head back and mount it on my wall, right next to her wolves and that thrice damned beast of a bear.” He raised an axe as he spoke, his eyes narrowing, and struck me across the face with the butt. I flew backward, skidding through the roses, until I lay with my face on the cool ground. The room tilted, then righted. Avery raised his axe again. He did not see the white she-wolf behind him, but I did, and I cried out as his downward swing missed the Huntress and took the wolf in the side, but not before her jaws closed on his arm. The crack of breaking bone split my ears, and Avery screamed.

The wolf growled, once, but then her jaw slackened, and she slid to the ground with his axe buried deep in her rib cage. Her eyes found mine. I held them, gold and black, huge as harvest moons, until they glazed over with death and the sound of Avery’s ragged breathing filled the air. I pushed myself up to stand unsteadily on legs that desperately wanted to fold beneath me.

Avery let his broken right arm fall and raised his left. The blade glinted in the light from the window, arcing high above his head.

“No.” The voice was mine, exploding from my chest, but the words were not. “You will not strike that blow, Avery Lockland.”

Avery froze. I would have frozen, too, except my lips kept moving.

“It is done. The price has been paid. Your debt is settled. Go back to your greening hills and leave this place.”

“I will leave. With her head.”

“You will leave, and if you are lucky, you will get to take your own head with you.”

“Who are you to threaten me, girl?”

I walked towards him, each step shaking but certain. “I am Winter, boy, and I will slaughter you like a spring lamb.” A gust of wind rushed through the window, stirring up small whirlwinds of rose petals. They settled on the Huntress’s body like a shroud. With the wind came a smell that made my chest ache anew. Rain. A clap of thunder shook the tower, but within me ice hardened, the power that had sustained the Huntress through her endless winter flooding into me.

“Rowan?” His arm shook with the effort of holding the axe and beads of sweat dripped down his face.

“Walk away, Avery Lockland.”