9

The woman’s fingers tightened on me. “Wolves?”

“Yes.”

She cursed under her breath and tried to sit up. I caught her shoulder before she could tear the wound open again.

“You cannot move,” I whispered.

“Neither can you, if they find you.”

The footsteps came closer. Leaves crushed under boots. A man’s voice carried through the trees.

“She could not have gone far.”

Another answered, irritated. “Alpha wants proof this time. He said if we come back without a body, we can join her in the dirt.”

Fear climbed up my throat.

The woman looked at the compass again. “Give me that.”

I backed away without meaning to. “No.”

“Girl.”

“No.”

“If they find you with it, they will follow the trail it leaves.”

“It does not leave a trail.”

“It brought you to me, did it not?”

I looked down at the compass. The needle had changed. It no longer pointed north. It pointed at the woman on the ground.

My mouth went dry.

The guards were closer now. I could hear the low growl under one of their voices, the sound of a wolf near the surface.

The woman held out her hand. It trembled from weakness, but her eyes did not leave mine. “Listen to me. I cannot carry you, and you cannot outrun them. Give me the compass, or they will smell what your mother hid in it.”

“It is all I have left of her,” I said.

“I know.”

“You do not know anything.”

“I know enough to tell you she did not put that in your hand so you could die holding it.”

Crack!

A branch snapped nearby.

The woman’s hand stayed open. “I will give it back when I can.”

“You swear?”

Her mouth tightened. “I swear I will keep it from them.”

That was not the same thing.

But the guards were almost there, and my mother’s compass sat cold and heavy in my palm, no longer pointing toward escape, but toward a wounded stranger who looked at me as if my life mattered for reasons she did not have the strength to explain.

I placed it in her hand.

Her fingers closed around it at once. The silver burned faintly against her skin, not with fire, but with a pale light that seeped between her knuckles. She hissed through her teeth and pressed the compass to the wound at her side.

“What are you doing?” I whispered.

“Making them see what they need to see.”

The first guard stepped into the clearing.

He saw me immediately. “There.”

I stood too fast and nearly fell. The woman grabbed my ankle before I could run.

“Down,” she said.

“I cannot just...”

“Down.”

Something pulled at my knees. I dropped beside her as the guard lunged forward. The second came through the trees behind him, sword already drawn. I reached for a stone because there was nothing else, but the woman lifted the compass with a bloody hand.

The needle spun.

For one terrifying second, I saw two versions of the clearing at once. In one, I was on the ground beside the wounded woman. In the other, I was running toward the river beyond the trees, stumbling, bleeding, easy to catch.

The guards saw the second one.

“Move!” one shouted.

They ran past us.

I pressed both hands over my mouth. The woman’s grip dug into my ankle, keeping me still. Sweat shone across her forehead, and blood had started leaking through the cloth I tied around her.

The sounds moved away. “There she is!”

I turned my head, but the woman pulled me back. “Do not look too closely,” she whispered. “It looks back.”

I did not understand her. Then I heard myself scream.

Not the scream trapped in my throat. Not a memory. My voice, somewhere beyond the trees, sharp with pain.

My skin went cold.

The guards shouted again. Water crashed. Something heavy struck the riverbank. A wolf snarled, then cursed.

I shook my head slowly. “What did you do?”

The woman’s eyes were half-closed now. “Gave them a dead girl.”

There was another splash, louder this time. Then silence. A few moments later, the guards came back through the trees. 

I stopped breathing.

Their clothes were wet. Blood streaked their sleeves and hands. One of them wiped his mouth, his eyes dull and strange, as if he had woken from a dream and did not like the taste of it.

“She went under,” he muttered.

The other looked toward the fallen trunk, toward us, but his gaze slid over the place where we lay. For a second, I thought he saw me. His eyes narrowed, and his nostrils flared.

The woman pressed the compass harder against her wound.

The guard blinked. “River took her,” he said.

They walked away.

I did not move until their footsteps disappeared completely. Even then, my body refused to understand that I was still alive. My hands shook so badly I had to press them into the dirt.

The woman let go of my ankle. “You can breathe now,” she said.

I dragged air into my lungs, and it hurt. Everything hurt. “They will tell them I am dead.”

“If they want to keep their heads, yes.”

I looked toward the river, though I could not see it through the trees. Somewhere out there, a version of me had died with my blood on the guards’ hands. Victoria would smile. Alpha Andre would accept it. Dominic would hear it.

I waited for that thought to break me.

It did not.

The woman shifted beside me and made a low sound of pain. I turned back to her. Her face had gone gray.

“You need help,” I said.

“So do you.”

I looked down at myself. My dress was torn, my knees were muddy, and my arms were streaked with blood that was not all mine. “I am not going back.”

“I did not say you were.”

“Then where do I go?”

She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, she looked past me, toward the north. “There is a woman. Nora. She owns a house near the lower roads into the capital.”

“A house?”

“Not the kind you are hoping for.” I stared at her. “It means she is not kind.”

“Then why would you send me to her?”

“Because kind people are watched.” She swallowed, and her voice thinned. “Nora is useful, she owes me.”

I did not like any of those words.

The woman saw it on my face. “She will not love you. She will not save you the way girls in stories are saved. But she will hide you if I tell her to.”

I glanced toward the path the guards had taken. “And what will she want from me?”

“Work.”

I almost laughed, but there was no humor in me. “I already had that.”

“No,” the woman said, and for the first time, her voice sharpened. “You had wolves. Nora is not a wolf.”

I sat back on my heels and wiped my face with my sleeve. The fabric came away dirty. “I do not want another master.”

The woman looked at me for a long time. The exhaustion in her face made her seem older and younger at once.

I looked at her hand. The compass was still there, the silver chain tangled around her fingers. I reached for it before I could stop myself.

She closed her fist.

My chest tightened. “That belongs to my mother.”

“Yes.”

“Give it to me.”

“If you carry it, others will find you.”

“Then break whatever is inside it.”

“I cannot. Not like this. Not tonight.” She pressed her lips together as if speaking hurt more than the wound. “And I need it to close your trail.”

“My trail?”

“Your blood. Your eyes. The bond you broke. The compass tied all of it together when it woke.” Her gaze flicked to my face. “You lit up half the forest when you crossed the border.”

I stared at her, unable to make sense of half of it. “I do not have magic.”

“You have something people will call magic when they want a reason to kill you.”

I looked down at my hands. They were scratched, bruised, human hands. Nothing glowed under my skin. No power moved in my bones. I had spent my life being accused of something I could not even use.

“My mother told me to follow it,” I said. “She told me, when I was old enough, to follow where it pointed.”

“And you did.” The woman’s voice softened, not much, but enough for me to hear it. “It brought you out.”

“It brought me to you. Why?”