“Avery is the head of his clan now.” I tucked the wolf into a pocket, half-wishing she had kept it. I did not want to think about Avery. I did not want to think about what he might do, as chieftain, to avenge the loss of father, brother, and bride.

“Perhaps he’ll learn from their mistakes.”

“I doubt it.” Ask me more about the sea, I thought. Anything that isn’t Avery.

“Do you think he will come looking for you?”

“No.” I squared my shoulders. “I think he will be happy to be rid of me.”

“And yet you would return to him.”

“I would return to my family. If that means I have to marry Avery . . .” I trailed off, unwilling to finish the sentence.

“We do terrible things for the people we love.” Her words reached in and shaped my panic.

“And we do terrible things to the people we love,” I finished for her, thinking of my father. “Were you ever betrothed?”

“No.”

It was a stupid question. She was the Huntress. She probably would have devoured the heart of the first man foolish enough to beg her favor. I remembered the woman in Avery’s story, then dismissed the thought.

“I had my first suitor when I was thirteen. They were relentless.” She touched her shoulder, grimacing. “First my mother said no, and then my father, and by the time it was up to me I’d learned the only answer I was willing to give.”

“Where are they now? Your parents?”

“Somewhere in the snow.” Something in her tone told me that was the only answer I was ever going to get. “I’ll let you get back to your reading,” she said, leaving me with my head full of ships and wolves and men I wanted to forget.

“Lockland,” the girl had said. The word echoed in the empty hallway, and there was a bitter taste in her mouth. Irony perhaps. Or hate. She’d tasted too much of both to remain discerning. Hot, bitter copper. The blood of winter.

How many years had it been, she wondered, since she had tasted anything else?

How many years had it been since there had been anything else to taste?

The sky flashed through an arrow slit— blue, as blue as the eyes of the boy she’d killed. Things had been simpler when all she had wanted had been sharp teeth and soft flesh. Before the voice in her head had started speaking again, taking control of her tongue and twisting it into words she’d long forgotten.

Words. Words were the currency of memory, and yet even without them she had never really escaped those eyes.

“I have paid,” she told the witch. “I have paid for his life ten times over.”

“Then let it end.” She heard the witch’s words like a whisper of ice.