My skin meets his.

But his hand isn’t rigid or still. It twitches against my fingertips.

Not dead.

Still alive.

The boy’s eyes flinch open—forest green, gray green, alive-green. He coughs at the same moment his fingers close around mine, gripping tightly.

I scream—a strangled sound, swallowed by the trees—but Fin immediately springs up next to me, tail raised, nose absorbing the boy’s newly alive scent. I yank my arm away and try to stand, to scramble back, but my legs stumble beneath me and I fall backward onto the snow. Run! my spiking heartbeat yells. But before I can push myself up, the boy is rolling onto his side, coughing again, touching his face with his hands. Trying to breathe.

Alive. Not dead. Gasping for air, warm skin, grabbing my hand, kind-of-alive. My throat goes dry and my eyes refuse to blink. I’m certain he’s not real. But he draws in deep, measured breaths between each cough, as if his lungs were full of water.

I sling my backpack off one shoulder and reach inside for the canteen of hot juniper tea. It will save your life if you ever get lost, my grandmother would say. You can live off juniper tea for weeks.

I hold the canteen out to him, and he lowers his hand from his face, his eyes meeting mine. Dark sleepy eyes, deep heavy inhales making his chest rise and fall as if it’s never known air before this moment.

He doesn’t take the canteen, and I lean forward, drawing in a breath. “What’s your name?” I ask, my voice broken.

His gaze roves the ground, then moves up to the sky, like he’s searching for the answer—his name lost somewhere in the woods. Taken from him. Snatched while he slept.

His eyes settle back on me. “Oliver Huntsman.”

“Are you from the boys’ camp?”

An icy wind sails over us, kicking up a layer of snow. His mouth opens, searching for the words, and then he nods.

I found him.

The Jackjaw Camp for Wayward Boys is not an elite facility, not a place where the wealthy send their sons. It’s a meager collection of cabins, a mess hall, and several neglected administration buildings—most of which were once the homes of early miners who panned the Black River for gold. Now it’s a place where desperate parents send their headstrong boys to have their minds and hearts reshaped, to turn them into docile, obedient sons. The worst come here, the ones who have used up their last chances, their last I’m sorrys, their last detentions or visits to the principal’s office. They come and they go. Each season a new batch—except for the few who spend their entire high school years at the camp. They learn how to survive in the woods, to make fire from flint, to sleep in the cold under the stars, to behave.