"A wolf, Feyre? Really?"

"Did you want to go looking?" I asked, heaving the bundle of skin and meat onto the ground. Nesta made a face and stepped clear, keeping even the edge of her boots away from the runny drizzle of blood in the snow.

"Anyway," I continued as I stretched, "he was the biggest thing for miles."

I didn't mention that he had stared at me with human intelligence, nor how he'd stood between me and a herd of fleeing deer. Elain would be upset if she knew, and neither of us wanted Elain upset. She had a hard enough time eating meat as it was: knowing the wolf seemed to have sacrificed himself would put her off entirely. I hadn't minded her aversion to meat when we had been rich enough to afford vegetables at all seasons, but with winter come and coin always scarce Nesta and I had kept at her until she promised to eat whatever we managed to get on the table.

As if my thoughts had summoned her, Elain slipped out the front door to survey us, ducking easily under Nesta's arm to huddle there against the cold.

Both my sisters and I have pale blue eyes, pale skin, and light brown hair. We've thinned out from ten years of diminishing income, leaving our faces sharp. Old, much-patched clothes made Elain, at least, seem as if she was drowning in a puddle of mid brown fabric. Nesta's dress was too short, I noticed. It was the spare she and Elain shared, and I remembered Nesta saying something about repairing a torn hem this morning on my way out of the cottage.

As always, my sisters were scrupulously clean. I'd have to wash all of me and wear my own spare set of trousers and shirt before I went to bed if I didn't want Nesta scrubbing the entire cabin and dunking me into an ice bath herself.

Elain's face stayed blank as she carefully avoided the sight of the pelt and meat. "I'm glad you're back," she said. "Father missed you."

"How could he with you here?" I asked too-brightly. "But look Elain, I found some mushrooms and thistle - "

Her blank expression melted, leaving her the prettiest of us. Elain with the smile, Elain with the snowburned nose, Elain whose garden always sprouted first in spring.

Nesta, who never smiled, still softened. "I told you Feyre would try."

"And watercress," I continued. "I even managed to dig up some cattails."

"Feyre," Elain began, worry creeping in. "Feyre, how far did you go?"

Nearly to the wall, I thought, but said, "Just a little farther than usual. I'm still home in good time, right?"

"You shouldn't go so far," Nesta, who was not fooled and did not tolerate even white lies, said.

"I'll just let us all starve next time," I snapped. "Ash and bone, Nesta, I can take care of myself."

Nesta's lips pressed into a thin line, disappearing almost entirely, but she didn't reply. I shoved the plants at Elain, scooped up the remains of the wolf, and stomped around to the little cellar we'd dug after our first winter, where we'd learned the hard way that the cold might keep the meat but it didn't stop other animals from taking my kills. I hadn't been able to bag anything larger than rabbits at first, in some cobbled-together traps, but game had been more plentiful then, too.

We'd had money at the time - not a lot, but enough to survive that mistake. We'd been lucky, even if it hadn't felt that way at the time. Sometimes it even felt like a game.

The money had run out two years later, the direct result of four people who had never had to think about spending it, and suddenly I'd realized it was a game we could lose.

It was a then-sixteen-year-old Nesta who had bought the bow. She'd left with the last of her nice dresses and come back with it, three too-large threadbare dresses, and a grim expression.

She'd planned to use it herself, I think. Archery was an acceptable hobby for a young lady this far north, and Nesta had received some lessons in it before - before. She hadn't had the interest or the skill to do it long, but it was more than Elain, who had been thirteen when we lost everything, or me, who had been nine.

The fight when she'd found me using it had been ferocious, but the simple fact of the matter was that even at eleven I was better with the weapon, and I was better with mess. If I held uncured pelts Nesta could sell them to the most close-fisted widow in town, but she needed someone to hold them, and Elain cried later even if she managed at the time.

I hadn't let Nesta try to protect me then, two years after her most spectacular failure, and it galled that she still tried. I was not, after all, Elain. I was the one with the bow, the one who went out and came back, the one who could stand the cold.

I hacked off enough of the meat for a stew and some extra to eat that night before stomping back to the cabin. In the little shelter over the back door Elain and I had fought into place last winter, Nesta had laid clean clothes. As I struggled out of my old ones, swearing under my breath, Elain hurried out with a pot of steaming water and a cloth so I could wipe myself down.

I resisted the urge to ignore the water just to annoy Nesta, but it was close. The shed was cold, and the water warm, and Elain swung the door open so I could rush into the cabin and the glow of the fire before the water had a chance to turn freezing.

"Feyre!" Father called from the hearth, face lighting up when he saw me. Sitting beside him but clearly not with him, Nesta watched the fire and the pot hanging there blankly.

"Hello, Father," I said, sniffing the air. They had added water to the last of the stew, which meant Nesta and Elain hadn't eaten their full shares at least one of the nights I'd been gone. Otherwise there wouldn't be anything left to add water to. Elaine had added her mushrooms and watercress.

"Elain," I began, but stopped. They had been gifts. She could do what she wanted with them.

If it meant she didn't eat enough though, I was going to be as mad at her as I wanted.

Elain took the meat from me and added it to the pot. If she dumped it in a little quicker than necessary, no one was going to complain.

She sent a hopeful smile at Father, which he didn't notice. He never did.

Nesta glared at him and reached over to pat Elain's hand more firmly than any mother would have - Nesta had never mastered tenderness. Elain settled gracefully beside out eldest sister, leaning against her shoulder.

I stifled the flash of bitterness. Elain hadn't had to watch while the men my father owed beat him. Elain had been with Nesta, who had dragged her to the woods. Elain could still believe that Nesta would keep her safe - after all, Nesta always had.

Father patted the arm of his chair in invitation. It was the only chair in the cabin: Nesta and Elain sat on an uneven rag rug that Elain had painstakingly knotted together from scraps of this or that ruined bit of clothing. I was loathe to admit that most of the tattered clothes had been mine. My sisters had always been more careful, but then, they stayed inside more often.

I perched on the chair arm but didn't lean against my father. He couldn't protect me any more than Nesta could.

"Are you tired, Feyre?" he asked. "Maybe stay in tomorrow and rest."

Nesta refused to look our way, but Elain frowned. On her it was a prettier expression than on Nesta. Elain managed to look concerned instead of angry.

"I can't, Father," I said patiently. "Someone has to walk with Nesta."

"I can do it," Elain said.

I waited for Father to say something - maybe offer to go himself, or admit that we were all tired, that Nesta had cleaned the cabin until it glowed in the firelight, that Elain had been out tending to our sleeping garden in the cold, that both of them had to have washed and mended clothes for there to be a clean set for me to wear. Someone would have had to chop wood for the fire, since we were nearly out this morning. It wouldn't have been Father.

He said nothing.

"We can all go," Nesta said.

"Yes!" Elain exclaimed. "Feyre, you can see Isaac while I help-"

"Isaac?" Father interrupted.

Elain winced.

"He helped Feyre with snares when we were younger, Father," Nesta said, still focused on the stewpot even though stew needed little watching. Her voice held more of Father's easy capitol accent than usual, and every bit of it was laced with mockery. "Surely you remember."

Whether he was shamed for not remembering or shocked by Nesta speaking to him, Father asked no more questions.

Later, in the bed we shared in a curtained corner of the cabin, Elain whispered, "I'm sorry."

I almost didn't respond, but silence was a weapon in our family. Nesta used it against Father, I used it against Nesta, and Father used it against all of us when he wasn't pleased. I didn't like hurting Elain.

"It isn't as if he won't learn eventually," I said.

Elain curled against me. "You like him, don't you? Really?"

"Feyre is getting out," Nesta said. I couldn't see her in the dark, and I couldn't reach for her over Elain. "She'll take you with her, don't worry."

"I'll take both of you with me," I snapped. "Stop it, Nesta."

"And Father?"

I didn't have an answer, but it seemed wrong for Nesta to be asking about Father.

"Elain is easy," Nesta said. "You're sweet, Elain. You'll find a husband, and you'll help around the house."

"You'd help," Elain said, voice rising to a high pitch. We both shushed her. "You like cleaning," she insisted more quietly.

"I wouldn't help, I'd take over," Nesta replied. "Don't worry about me, Elain. I can take care of myself."

Elain curled up into a little ball, as unreassured as I was but equally unwilling to press the issue tonight.

I closed my eyes and thought of the woods. Nesta thought I went out to shame her, and Elain thought I did it out of goodness or love or whatever else. Really I did it to be alone.

I wouldn't ever be alone again when I married Isaac. The miller's wife handled the house and the business and sometimes the mill itself, in emergencies. She should handle the accounts too, but figures swam in front of my eyes and letters told me different things than they did Elain and Nesta. Even Nesta had given up on teaching me to master letters and accounts eventually.

Maybe I could hire Nesta to manage that sort of thing, I thought, and firmly turned my mind back to the forest. Thinking of Nesta wouldn't help me sleep.

Snow, I thought. The wind that pulled my hair everywhere if I didn't braid it tightly. The cold that seeped in through my coat and boots and gloves until my knuckles ached with it. Cold meant outside. Cold meant doing things. Cold meant freedom.

In my dreams I always walked the forest, but I rarely saw my kills. Now I stood looking at the wolf.

A wind blew through, knocking my hood back.

"Come and find me," the wolf said.

The bow appeared suddenly in my hands, arrow nocked and aimed.

"Come and find me," he said again.

"You're right here," I replied. I couldn't lower the bow, though I tried.

"Yes, and?" he asked, tongue lolling. Here he looked more like a dog than a wild thing, with his jaw dropped in a puppy's grin.

I wasn't hungry here. I didn't want to kill him.

"Come and find me," he said a third time.

I loosed, and the wind screamed my name.