Isaac found me while I watched Elain talk about seeds and gardening with another merchant, whose little waxed paper packets were Elain's main joy in life. I knew this one - her name was Sara, and she sometimes tied the packets with bits of ribbon or slipped some cuttings in amongst Elain's purchases. Once Elain had brought her some pressed violets as a thank you, and Nesta hadn't even grumbled about Elain using her book to do the pressing.

Nesta kept an eye on Elain now, but less carefully than she would have with anybody else.

"Good morning, Feyre," Isaac said, and I smiled at him.

Isaac didn't gamble, didn't drink, and worked hard. Nesta approved of him even if Father, who harbored more faerietale hopes than Nesta regarding our status, wouldn't.

"He makes a living and he won't hit you," Nesta said once, and had added, "If I'm wrong, hit him back harder and come home."

Now I said, "Good morning. Doesn't the mill need you?"

"Mother spelled me," he said. "Clare told me you were in town. She said you sold her a wolfskin?"

"Nesta did," I replied. "I just bring them in. Nesta sells them."

Nesta heard her name, looked over, saw Isaac, and turned back to the little labeled bags before her. She knew something about herbs and flowers - neither of us could have avoided it, living with Elain - but she had never had a great interest in them. I frowned at her.

"You won't have to do that anymore," Isaac reminded me. "Well, Nesta can still dicker at market. Mother will be glad not to have to go-"

"I can bring her?" I demanded, standing straighter.

He blinked at me. "Of course. I have a cousin - you know the Mandrays? Thomas says he'll marry her if she's as good with numbers and haggling as people say, and we know she is."

I looked at Nesta, who I knew could hear us, but she continued to stare pointedly at the seeds.

"She can manage Thomas," Isaac added comfortably. "He's a little wild, but Nesta will settle him, Mother says."

"Nesta can manage anybody," I agreed. "And Elain-"

"Oh," he said.

The wind whispered. I ignored it.

"Oh?"

He shifted, his feet crunching in the snow, and I saw Nesta turn her head to look at him from the corner of her eye.

"We don't have room for Elain," he said.

"Of course you do," I replied. "Your house is the largest in town."

He darted a glance at Nesta, who had turned enough to stare obviously at him, and shifted again. "Elain's not much use in a mill-"

"Elain's useful everywhere."

Isaac looked away from me and Nesta and up into the sky. "My mother doesn't want her."

"Who wouldn't want Elain?" I asked blankly.

"I think that's the point," Nesta said, voice colder than the snow under our feet and sharper than the still-whispering wind. "Your future mother-in-law is jealous."

I looked at Nesta and then at Elain, who was laughing with the flower merchant. We all shared Mother's nose and Father's eyes and the same coloring, but it was true that Elain had always had something that Nesta and I lacked. I had never figured out what it was, except that maybe it had something to do with how Elain could still laugh and chatter and press flowers, and Nesta and I…

Well, I had killed someone, and Nesta had hidden the body. Maybe that was enough to keep people from being truly beautiful.

It wasn't murder, I heard Nesta say again, like a chant. He deserved it, he would have hurt you, it wasn't murder. Anyone would agree.

Nesta must not have been certain though, because she had never told even Elain.

"I can't go if Elain doesn't," I heard myself say. Nesta I could leave. Nesta could survive. Elain, with her gardening and her sweetness and her aversion to meat? Elain would starve that first winter, even if nobody tried to take advantage of the nice sister.

"Feyre!"

Elain looked up when Isaac exclaimed, and I backed away from him, towards her and her flower seeds.

"Feyre will marry you," Nesta said, smiling her bartering smile. I saw Isaac's shoulders relax. "I regret that I can't marry Thomas, but Feyre shouldn't sacrifice her happiness."

The last was said with a level stare at me.

I shook my head.

"Feyre," Isaac said, with a quick glance around to see who was there to notice the argument, "I know you love your sister, but you love me, right?"

"I can't leave Elain," I said.

"Of course you can," Elain herself said, having left her merchant friend and walking up to link arms with me.

"I know you've never been without us," Nesta said, which she must believe even though I knew it as a lie, "but you'll be happy with Isaac."

Elaine whispered in my ear, kindly, "Don't worry about me. It's better Nesta and Father aren't alone in the house anyway."

Feyre, the wind whispered.

"Stop it," I said just as quietly.

Come and find me.

"Feyre?" Elain asked, worried, but it was Nesta who crowded Isaac out and laid her hand against my forehead again.

"Are you sick, Feyre?" Isaac asked from behind Nesta.

"I need to go home," I said. I didn't mean the cabin - I needed the woods, where the wind made more sense.

"Let me just," Elain began, but her friend appeared with the seed packets and pressed them into her hands. The merchant named a sum and held a hand out to Nesta, who handed the money over without arguing. I assumed that meant it was a good price.

We left. Isaac called after us that he would visit soon.

My sisters kept trying to talk to me on the way home, but I ignored them. Eventually they stopped.

Come and find me, the wind insisted.

I went past the cabin and Elain's garden and didn't stop until I could throw myself into the snow beneath a barren pine and sit shivering. The dress really wasn't as warm as my trousers and coat.

A breeze tugged at my hair, pulling little bits loose to wave around my face. It didn't say anything. I rested my head against my drawn-up knees and breathed.

"Did Isaac upset you?" Elain asked quietly. I noticed that she seemed to have picked around the chunks of wolf meat when she served herself from the pot. "It really is for the best that I don't go, Feyre. You and Isaac can enjoy each other's company, and I can keep Nesta and Father from being too terrible to each other."

She hadn't heard Isaac's offer to Nesta, then. I shot at look at our eldest sister, who shook her head tightly.

"You two and your secrets," Elain snapped, and slouched against the hearth, glaring at nothing.

As if Nesta and I were a pair, and Elain was the odd one out. Sometimes Elain seemed to think so, and always I wanted to shake her for it.

Father said, "Elain, slouching and throwing a temper tantrum is unbecoming of a lady."

"We aren't ladies," Nesta said immediately, though Elain straightened automatically and smoothed the glare away.

Father ignored them both and ate his stew.

I saw Nesta consider relaxing her ramrod-straight posture to make a point, but she couldn't quite make herself. Instead she ate quickly and neatly and got up to do the dishes, snatching Father's while there was still a bite or two left in the bowl. Father sighed as if heavily put upon but said nothing else.

Elain pulled out one of Father's spare shirts and began mending a tear in the sleeve, and I started going over the fletching on my arrows. Nesta went to bed before the rest of us, but Elain and I soon followed.

Before the curtain fell behind us Elain hesitated and asked, "Could you please bank the fire before you go to bed, Father?"

"I know how to deal with fires," Father said without looking at her.

Elain looked at me and I shrugged. I would be the one who woke up first. I could rekindle it if Father didn't bank it properly. She released the curtain, and we climbed into bed beside Nesta.

Elain didn't ask again if I was alright.

Wind. Cold.

My wolf stood in front of me again, careless of the bow I aimed at him.

"Come and find me."

I tried again to put the bow down and, again, failed.

"Come and find me."

The bow creaked as I drew the string back to my ear. I had no say in the matter.

"Come and find me."

I loosed.

It was early even for me when I opened my eyes to stare at the ceiling.

I hunted often. I killed things all the time. I had even killed a man. Why did I dream about the wolf?

Beside me Elain was curled into a ball, hair falling gracefully from her braid. Nesta's hair didn't dare, where she lay on my other side. Even in sleep Nesta had perfect posture.

They weren't moving, so what had woken me? Not the dream.

A sudden banging on the door startled my sisters awake. "Feyre!" someone shouted - not, I was sure, the wind.

I scrambled out of bed for my bow where Nesta made me leave it against the hearth as Father's door opened and Nesta picked up a piece of firewood. Elain waited until I nodded to open the door.

I lowered the bow when I saw it was Isaac, winded and red-faced from a midnight run through the woods.

"What in the world," Nesta began in her capitol accent, but Isaac cut her off.

"Clare is dead." he gasped. "I was worried-"

He stopped and leaned against the door jam, panting.

"You ran all that way?" Elain asked, and gently led him inside to sit by the hearth, which Father had not banked properly. Nesta knelt to get it started again as Elain darted back into our curtained-off room.

"What happened?" I asked. I didn't want to put the bow down.

"I don't know," he said. Elain returned and settled our blanket over his shoulders.

Nesta's lips thinned, and I knew she and I had the same thought: now our blanket would be damp, and probably smell like sweat.

"There's just pieces of her."

"This isn't proper conversation for the girls," Father said. I had forgotten about him. Now Isaac and Elain watched him warily, and Nesta struck flint and steel with more vigor than necessary.

"Sir," Isaac said, standing. Our blanket hit the ground. I hoped he didn't step on it. "Sir, I-"

"Good of you to warn us, Isaac," Father said. He put just enough emphasis on the name that even I knew he was chiding us. Elain ducked her head to hide a blush, and Nesta's back stiffened. "Or to warn Feyre, anyway."

"Sir," Isaac said again, back almost as stiff as Nesta's, "I hoped to do this under better circumstances, but since I'm here-"

Isaac tried his charming smile on Father, who raised his eyebrows. Isaac deflated a little and continued, "I'd like to ask Feyre to marry me, if that's acceptable to you."

Father considered, looking at the three of us. "I think Nesta has arranged it without me," he said. "My opinion clearly isn't needed."

He turned to go back to his room, but before he did he added, "It's good when a man likes more than just a pretty face."

Elain's flush deepened, and Nesta stood abruptly, but Father closed the door behind him before Nesta could say anything in Elain's or her own defense.

Isaac cleared his throat after a long, awkward silence. "Feyre?"

I didn't say anything.

"I'll talk to Mother about Elain," he said. "Look, I know she - you -" he stumbled when Nesta turned her stare on him. Elain slipped back into our curtained corner.

"I have other cousins," he finished lamely. "Look, please - here."

He held out a ring. "Whether you marry me or not," he said.

It was iron, I realized.

"Feyre's not going to be abducted by Faeries," Nesta said tartly, arms crossed.

Isaac said, "You're the one who doesn't want your sisters going to the wall. Clare-"

He closed his eyes. "Her head was in the well. The rest of her was just… everywhere."

I almost asked if the well would be usable before I realized how awful it would sound.

"I'll wear it," I said. I didn't think he would leave until I agreed, and we needed to make sure all of our doors were locked and figure out how to bar the windows if there was someone out there killing people up and tossing their heads into wells.

I put the ring on, though I didn't like putting my bow down to do it.

"I'll come out with some more iron for the doors and windows soon," Isaac promised as Nesta ushered him back out into the snow.

"We can walk you back," I said, reclaiming my bow, but he demurred and I didn't want to argue.

Nesta closed the door behind him and said, "we have some iron nails. We can put them in the doorframe."

"And keep pouches of salt and sugar on us?"

Nesta ignored my jibe, though she took it hardest when we couldn't afford salt or sugar - which was often.

"I have butterwort," Elain said quietly, peeking out from the curtain. "Or the seeds, at least, but they won't grow until it stops snowing. And there's the junipers that you get berries from-"

"I will bring back some juniper," I said, though more for the berries than the wood.

"I could plant some around the house," Elain continued. "They aren't difficult to keep alive, if you can bring me some with roots."

I should have thought of it before - junipers were useful for all sorts of things, even if I didn't think fairies were coming to murder us in our beds.

The worry on Nesta's and Elain's faces was annoying. We were grown women. Just because Nesta had read us too many fairy stories when we were small was no reason to think they were real.

But if I left, whoever had killed Clare might come here. That was a thought for tomorrow. Tonight Nesta barred the cabin door and I did my best to block the windows while Elain banked the fire properly.

We slipped back into bed, and Nesta and Elain managed to fall back asleep.

I stared at the ceiling, deciding whether I should risk sleeping late or stay up and watch the door.

Sleep, I decided, but before I really tried to do so I slipped the ring off my finger and onto Elain's.

I had the bow, I reasoned, laying back. Nesta didn't leave the house as much. It was Elain who was outside in the garden the most. If faeries were real - if - she would need it most.

I closed my eyes.

"Come and find me," the wolf said.

My bowstring twanged.