It took several attempts for my frozen fingers to get a spark, and another several attempts before the torch lit. The light cast more shadows than it illuminated. When I was halfway to the door, I heard a yip coming from the next stall. I edged forward, holding my breath until I could peer around the edge of the stone. A pair of eyes caught the torchlight, and I made out the dark shape of the she-wolf hunched against the far wall and the handful of smaller shapes milling around it, mewling. Beneath the glowing eyes of their mother, I spotted glistening, bared teeth.

“Go no closer,” said a voice at my shoulder.

I almost dropped the torch.

The Huntress raised her arm, placing it gently but firmly between me and the wolf.

The pups mewled louder at the Huntress’s voice, a few bold ones attempting to cross the sea of straw and old bones between us.

“This way.” She stepped back, waiting for me to follow, but the light of my torch had just fallen on another mewling shape. This one was only a few feet from my boots, lying prone on the exposed stone floor. Its little chest rose and fell so slowly I was not sure it breathed at all.

“What,” I said, struggling to find my voice. “What about that one?”

The Huntress’s eyes, like the she-wolf’s, burned gold in the light of the torch.

“It is weak.”

“Is it going to die?”

She knelt beside it, pressing a finger to its muzzle. It barely stirred.

“Yes,” she said.

“And you’re just going to leave it?”

“The mother did.”

“But—” The pup tried to raise its head, belatedly recognizing the departed warmth for what it was.

“Life is cruel, and winter is crueler. The other pups will be stronger without it.”

It let out a high, thin sound.

I recognized that sound. It was the whimper that had been building in the back of my throat for a week now, full of desperation and bewilderment.

“No.”

I thrust the torch in front of me, moving before she could stop me, and scooped the pup up from the flagstones. The she-wolf let out a growl that threatened to rip muscle from bone, and I scrambled backward into the Huntress with the pup pressed against my breast.

The wolf held her ground.

I clutched the pup tighter to me as my heart knocked against the pup’s fragile rib cage, momentarily grateful for the strength of the Huntress’s body behind me, until I realized that she could feel the quickness of my pulse and the terror radiating from my pores. Animal instinct jerked me away, and I looked up into her face. She did not say anything, but her eyes wavered between green and gold.