But he was alive, and that was all that mattered. The wargs had missed one.

The man lifted his head as I approached, the sound of my feet crunching in the snow the only sound I made on my arrival. “Is someone there?”

Those sockets, black with dried blood, faced me, but even as I signed, I’m here, I knew it was useless. He couldn’t see. I couldn’t speak.

He sucked in a breath, and I took another cautious step. “If someone’s there, say it now,” he growled. The blood that had dried on his cheeks cracked, flaking away.

Let me help you, I said desperately. The only survivor—he had to make it. I stepped to his feet and crouched down, touching his leg with one hand.

He moved faster than I expected, heaving himself forward and slashing with the knife. I had one hand still raised, meaning to touch his hand next—but the blade cut through my palm, blood spilling down my wrist. The pain was dull at first, becoming a white-hot shock within seconds.

“Say something, damn you,” he half-shrieked as I fell back.

I pressed my hand into the snow, hoping to staunch the flow, and stared at his mutilated face, sick and desperate. He was bleeding, he would die soon, I needed someone, anyone, to get here…

I stood up shakily, knowing I could do nothing. I hadn’t been thinking clearly. If I tried to grab his hand, to show him human touch, he’d stab me before he understood I was a person, too. I needed Bane now.

My retreating steps were so loud against the silence and the man’s harsh, raspy breathing. He clutched the knife with white-knuckled hands, head twisted in my general direction.

“I hear you there,” he snarled, heaving himself up against the tree with one hand, brandishing the knife in the other. “I hear you moving about. I killed one of you already, and I’ll take another. You won’t have me, you hear? You won’t have me, you bastard dog!”

No, no, no. I didn’t move, not daring to make so much as a rustle. I couldn’t stay, and I couldn’t go.

His breath was bubbling, head wobbling to keep it straight. The same four words poured out of him in raspy, panting snarls.  “You won’t have me. You won’t have me.”

Please, Lady, ancestors, anyone, send Bane. 

But there was only me, frozen and terrified, and the man, choking on his own breath, ranting all the while.

He coughed blood, heaving for breath, and put the knife to his throat. I stepped forward in shock, meaning to stop him—but he dragged the blade across his own neck with a savagery I could barely fathom.

“Won’t have me,” he choked, blood steaming in the cold air as it sluiced over the blade, soaking into his shirt. He’d cut an artery, his heart pumping his lifeblood into the air with every beat.

I lunged at him, tearing the knife from his shivering, weakening hand, tossing it aside as I pressed my cloak to the gash in his throat. It soaked through instantly, the man’s ruined sockets glaring at me as I tried to save his life, applying pressure so hard my arms ached.

I was too late. I was the wrong one. I could do nothing to help.

Time passed meaninglessly. At some point I became aware that my hands were sticky and cold. The man had stopped breathing a long time ago.

No one had survived. If anyone else had found him, he would still be alive. What a sick joke. It was nauseating.

Why had I wanted to come at all? I couldn’t even save one life.

If it was anyone but me, I told him, you would have lived. 

I dropped the sodden edge of my cloak, giving his cold, still face one last look. Then I prised the knife from his hands, now frozen over with a frosted scarlet crust.

The cut he’d given me ached, but Wyn would fix it later. It meant less than nothing now. I stood up, leaving streaks of red across the white, and stared further into the forest as I collected my deadened thoughts.

At first my eyes didn’t see it. It was nothing but a lump of gray on a fallen log, a random but enormous knot on the branch. After a moment of puzzling over it, my mind finally forced the puzzle into shape: it was a body on the log, halfway draped over.

I didn’t pay the loudness of my steps any mind as I moved towards it. No one was left alive to hear them now.

The warg had died in the midst of a leap; it was its back leg that was hooked over the log, giving it that strange shape. The rest of the creature was sprawled in the snow on the other side. Whoever had killed it had done so with brutal efficiency. Several spears had been driven through its guts, one piercing its mouth and emerging through its spine. It was enormous, as tall as Bane and barrel-chested, but strangely spindly in the limbs, its arms and legs long and thin.

Strange how we called them wolves. It was an insult to wolves themselves. The warg’s snout was distended to an obscene length, and its wide-open jaws showed me the rows of teeth going all the way down its gullet.

So very, very many teeth. Hundreds, all the way down to its stomach. Stained red, bits of flesh caught between them.

Ate them all up! 

The round eye was frosted over, but I could see the pitch-black color, the pale pinprick of pupil frozen like a tiny moon in the center.

From a mental distance I knew I was shivering uncontrollably, both fear of the dead thing in front of me and the horror of the dead man behind me combining into total shock.

I needed to go back to the village. I needed to find Bane.

But I couldn’t turn my back on the dead warg, because… what if it was only pretending? What if it got up?

Go back to the village, I told myself, but every time I tried to force myself to move, my body stayed locked right where it was. There was a voice screaming that question in the back of my mind, loud and shrill: what if it gets up? 

I had never felt a fear like this in my life. Not even when Bane first nuzzled his fangs to my throat. Every muscle was frozen, a prey’s response to knowing a predator was before it, even if it was dead.

I couldn’t make a sound, not even a footstep. To make a sound was to die. It was a completely atavistic response, and one I was powerless against.

So I stood like a statue, watching the dead warg for any sign of movement. For the faintest rise of its chest or the blink of that pale-pupiled eye. The spears meant nothing. How could mere spears bring down a thing like this, all twisted out of shape and made of hunger?

The sound of crunching snow behind me made me flinch, clutching the knife tighter in my sweaty palm. If I could’ve made a sound I would’ve whimpered, too terrified to scream, too afraid to take my eyes from the warg.

“Cirri.” Bane’s voice, thick with combined relief and anger.

And it was only because it was him that my iron-hard muscles finally unlocked, nearly sending me to my knees again. I dropped the knife, my hands shaking.

“Why?” His arms wrapped around, warm and safe. I could finally blink, frozen tears cracking on my cheeks. “Why go into the forest?”

I heard a man call, I told him, teeth chattering. He called for help. He was alive, but for me. I killed him, Bane. It was because of me. Because I couldn’t say anything.

He looked down at the warg, still holding me tight, and I felt his chest rise as he sucked in a breath. His nostrils flexed, forked tongue flicking out to taste the air.

“Never mind that,” he said gruffly, and released me long enough to scoop the dagger from the snow. He handed it to me, and took my bloodied hand, examining the scabbed slash wound.

“I tasted your blood on the wind.” Bane tucked my trembling hand against my chest. “Come now. You can tell me while Wyn heals this.”

You didn’t tell me what they looked like, I said. I thought they were like wolves. 

He gave the dead warg—now that Bane was here, I could accept that it was truly dead, and not lying in wait—a long look. “No, they aren’t much like wolves at all, but that’s what Wargyr’s gift is. Something twisted and wrong. Something made with suffering.”