“I learned to ride a horse before I could walk, and my mother gave me the hilt of her dagger to teethe on. I was born to the hunt, Rowan. Do not compare yourself to me. Try again. This time, breathe through it, and find the target with your eye as well as the arrow. Your body knows what to do.”

I am not sure I trust my body, I thought as she adjusted my stance again, the length of her leg touching mine. What would she think if she could see my thoughts?

I bit my lip and released. This arrow was closer than the first, and I tried to concentrate on that instead of the dull ache of anxiety that had taken root in my bones. What I felt for the Huntress seemed natural enough to me, but this was not the city, where women could live together without judgement unless, of course, they were the daughters of wealthy merchants with dowries the size of ships. I was also mortal. Whatever the Huntress was, however human she had felt beside me, there was something in her that was too wild to be mere flesh and blood and bone.

I had heard the stories told by sailors about women possessed of unearthly beauty who sang to passing ships from rocky shoals, luring captains to their deaths, and mermaids who seduced men before they drowned them. Henrik had even told us stories about women farther north who wore the skins of seals. If a man stole their skin while they were bathing, he said, the women would be trapped on land forever. Every seafaring culture had stories about dangerously beautiful women, and in each the lesson was clear: beauty killed you.

What stories, I wondered, did they tell about the Huntress?

“Feel the arrow here, and here, and here.” She touched my hand, my shoulder, and my stomach, encircling my waist with her arm. “Breathe,” she said, and I did, feeling the pressure of her hand.

“Draw.”

I pulled back the arrow, and she guided my wrist with her other hand, her arm resting against mine.

“Aim.”

Her hair brushed against my cheek as she sighted with me down the shaft. I narrowed my eyes, focusing until the target filled my vision and my heartbeat matched that of the Huntress.

“Now.”

I released. The arrow took the target in the left-hand corner, and pride overrode desire as I turned to her for approval, not bothering to hide the smile on my face. She squeezed my waist, pulling me to her with some of the same fierce joy I’d seen in her face earlier.

“Well done, Rowan,” she said into my ear, and I decided this must be how eagles felt, soaring over the peaks, higher than any other living thing on earth.

I hit the target what felt like a hundred more times that morning before she took the bow out of my hand.

“How do you feel?”