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She blamed me. It was the only explanation for why she would leave me the way she did. Because after they were murdered, she could barely stand to look at me.

My shoulders remained sore and heavy, laden with guilt.

“Ary,” Gemma gently implored. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have let her force me out.” Despite her healthy and agile build, the pressure of her boots made the floor creak. “Like you’re forcing me out now. Don’t,” she pleaded from behind me. I felt her touch my hand, and I recoiled. “Listen—”

“I don’t think I can listen to any more right now.” I stepped away with every intention of locking myself in the bedroom I never slept in. It was a room I could hide myself in, and that’s all I cared about. Halfway there, I paused, fists clenched. “But you can stay, if you want.”

Please don’t go, I silently begged, scared of saying the words aloud like I’d fear exposing an open wound.

***

Mercifully, Gemma stayed. Hours later, I finally gave in to thirst and unlocked myself from the bedroom, and for the rest of the day, she and I coexisted in silence.

More than once, I tried to speak, desperate to fill the void that solitude had carved inside me, but I couldn’t find the right words.

That night, though I’d tried and failed to sleep in bed—it was too cold —I returned to the floor beside the fire.

I wanted to be alone, but I wanted to sleep even more.

Quiet the hateful voices snarling at my soul.

It took me a while to settle, and I could feel her nervous gaze flickering over me. When she wasn’t peering at me by the light of the fire, I began to watch her, too, and I noticed things I hadn’t before.

The pale, jagged line of a scar—a stark contrast to her mahogany complexion—began behind her ear and disappeared deep into her collarbone.

That wasn’t the only scar. There was another one, less noticeable, to the left of her forehead, receding into her hairline.

They both faded into places less accessible to the common eye.

Marks of the rough and ragged life she’d lived in the last year.

Those marks withdrew into her, and I wondered what else she hid.

What else she kept hidden. And I realized…

I had never thought to ask much about where Gemma came from.

She had been orphaned, but from where? For how long?

I frowned, my stomach souring with unease.

Was it possible she’d also been lied to?

She had always been tough, honest, often frigid to everything and anyone but me.

Had she been given a choice to be anything but, or had she been abandoned, then accepted by strangers Phillip and Elowen Gold, only to truly be forced back out by the closest thing she knew to a family?

Relief and unease warred in response to having her back. She was a cure for my loneliness but brought with her a whole host of mysteries.

The churn of my thoughts was finally dulled by exhaustion, and I drifted to sleep—a dreamless one, thankfully.

***

When dawn broke, I rose wearily from my floor bed and caught Gemma half asleep, leaning against the front door.

“Gemma? ”

“Shit!” She startled awake and took inventory of her surroundings—bright eyes frantic—before rising to her feet.

“Sorry. I was going to try for a hunt but didn’t want to leave you before you woke.

Fell asleep here. All you have is that bone broth, and the eggs are gone.

The cellar is out of reserves, did you know? You hardly have any food, Ary.”

I worked my throat through a swallow and nodded. “I went to the nearest village to try and trade or buy something, but…” I hadn’t had enough to give.

And Phillip had never taught me to hunt.

My mother’s insistence that I watch my figure was a tad too pervasive to forget, so eating very little was just…

easier. It’s how I’d lasted as long as I had.

And for a while after she left, I hadn’t even cared if I starved.

Until the hunger pains became too excruciating to ignore.

The excuses, all true, rattled around in my brain, but I had no desire to discuss the repercussions of admitting to any of them. Why I hadn’t done more for myself.

So I did what I knew I could do—I changed the subject. Thought of the questions I’d contemplated the night before.

“Where did you come from, Gemma?”

“Where was I?” She leveraged her weight on the front door handle to stand. She pondered, brow furrowed, while massaging her neck, undoubtedly sore from the poor position she slept in. “Before I came back here, I was bouncing back and forth between Avendrel and Wymara to—”

“No, I mean… I know your parents are gone, but are there others? How did Phillip and Elowen come to know you? Where are your people?”

“My people?” she snickered.

I crossed my arms, then uncrossed them again, fiddling, nervous.

Her expression softened upon noticing my anxiety.

“My people are your people, Ary, and I’ll tell you about them, but first, we— you ,” she emphasized, gesturing to my frail form, “need to eat. Before I bite your head off and before you wither to dust. If you’ll start some tea and the stove, I’ll fetch some more eggs from the barn if they’re there, and then I’ll take you on a hunt. ”

“I’ll go to the barn,” I offered. “I could use the fresh air.”

Gemma opened her mouth to protest but refrained as she watched me slide the tattered edges of my boots over my thin ankles. “Hurry. It’s cold. Do you want me to come with you?”

“I’ll be fine.” I paused with my hand on the doorknob and turned around to see her watching me, beautiful light-brown eyes rich with sympathy. “You’ll be here?”

“Yes.” She nodded, smiling brightly. “I promise.”

The woolen interior of my well-worn boots did little to keep me warm. I tightened my holey scarf around my neck and increased my pace, but last night’s thick layer of snow and my lingering hunger made it difficult to escape the cold as quickly as I would’ve liked.

With the handle of the basket over my arm, I inhaled the crisp air and swallowed to soothe the nauseous lumps in my belly.

The wind swirled around me as I walked. My eyes watered, but no tears fell.

With my pale, short fingers, I pinched the skin of my forearm to remind myself this was real. Someone else—Gemma—was here .

I let out a sigh of relief and trudged through the predawn darkness to the barn, eager to be back within four walls and a roof, if only to block the wind.

A gust had blown the door to the barn wide open.

It knocked against the wall in an unsettling rhythm.

With heavy feet, I moved forward until I grabbed the rusty handle and wrestled the door closed against the brutal wind.

I didn’t fasten the lock to avoid fumbling with it in the near dark on my way out—hopefully with a basket of one or two fresh eggs on my arm.

To allow in a bit more light, I opened the creaky shutters on the window nearest to the hens .

When I turned to face Daisy, I gasped. She wasn’t perched in her nest, bundled up to brace the cold as I had expected her to be. Brown and white feathers were strewn about the floor with drops of red intermingled.

Red. So much red.

My pulse pounded in my ears.

“Daisy?” I whispered, spinning around in my search.

But the trail of feathers and blood led nowhere.

“Penny?” I turned to my right. Penny wasn’t in her nest, either.

No, her nest had been demolished, and there was a large bite mark on the side of it.

Mixed with blood, two eggs were broken and splattered across the floor in a swirl of crimson and yellow, similar to the vomit threatening to erupt from my throat. “Penny, where are—”

A pair of deep-amber eyes peered at me from the corner of the barn.

They belonged to a dark shape partially hidden behind a shadow cast by the tool chest against the south wall.

Just barely, I could decipher a bird’s limp and mangled body— Penny’s body—hanging from the mouth of the creature.

The subtle drip of her blood from its mouth.

My stomach dropped. I felt a draft and wondered if her spirit was escaping through the partially open window.

Drip… drip… drip…

Penny’s lifeless form fell to the floor as the wolf lunged at me. I retreated quickly enough to kick it once in the snout, disorient it, and lunged for a garden hoe a few feet away.

“No!” I screeched, but the wolf had me cornered. All I could do was jab at its gnashing teeth. I had never seen one up close, only from afar.

Those harrowing jaws were far more terrifying when only seconds from taking my life.