“I didn’t mean that,” I said, wondering at the truth in my words.

“You haven’t met many monsters, have you?” she asked.

I thought about the bankers in the city, with their cold calculations and unflinching exactness as they stripped everything of worth from my family. “I’ve met a few,” I said.

“And your betrothed? Is he a monster?”

I felt her words like a slap. “Avery?” I asked, my world tilting. I had not told her about Avery. By not speaking his name out loud, I had kept these worlds separate, safe, protecting myself from acknowledging the things I did not grieve and, worse, the shimmer of relief I had found at the bottom of my despair. She reached into the slim pouch she wore at her belt and pulled out the carved wolf.

“Avery,” she said, turning the carving over in her hands. “Is that his name?”

“How did you know I was betrothed?”

“This is a traditional betrothal gift, Rowan. Although he carved it with more skill than power, unfortunately for you. You’re having quite the wolf winter.”

I forced myself to breathe. It didn’t matter in the end if she knew about Avery. “He’s not a monster.” I owed him that, at least.

“Do you love him?”

I laughed. The sound seemed to startle her, and her pupils contracted.

“No.” I bit off the words. “No, I don’t love him.” I will never love him. I am not capable of loving him, I thought. Not like I loved Sara. Not like I could love someone like you, if you weren’t the Huntress. If you weren’t made of ice.

Leaves rustled a warning.

She looked up. Her eyes filled half the room, and there was a wildness to the high planes of her cheekbones that set the hairs on my arms on edge. “A wolf pup is not a dog, for all their similarities,” she had told me when she had caught me trying to train the pup to sit for a scrap of meat. “She will always be her own master. Never forget that. She may sit for you now because she feels like it and because it pleases you, but never forget what she is. She is wild; you will never know her heart, and she will never come to heel.”

What about you? I wondered. Are you a woman, or are you too like your wolves?

“Here,” she said, handing back the wooden wolf. “I should not have taken this from you.”

I accepted the carving. It felt oddly heavy in my hands.

“Avery Lockland,” I said, stroking the little wolf’s blunt snout. “You killed his father and brother, you know.”

An unfamiliar expression flitted across her face. “I killed poachers. I did not ask them their names.”