Chapter 1

BOOK ONE: WINTER'S EDGE

I heard him cry this morning when he thought I was still asleep - sobs, more like - from my immovable, crotchety, emotionally unavailable father. Or Baba as I called him. He'd cried only once before in my lifetime when my mother died, so now, I wondered if anyone else had met that same fate.

The memory of his tears pressed down on me, slumping my shoulders as I stood outside the eastern edge of our cabin. The blustery cold wind threatened to knock me over, biting into my cheeks and nose and upsetting the balance of my bow and arrow. It was only the second snowfall, still too early for the wilds to hunker down for the coming winter. Soon, they'd be scarce, though, making all the lives of those who lived in Margin's Row that much harder.

Just a single line of eight cabins, separate from the town called Margin, Margin's Row was the first line of defense for the wilds who wandered out of the Crimson Forest. A blessing for the townsfolk; a curse for us, especially since six of the eight houses in Margin's Row were empty. Some in Margin's Row had moved away. Some had gone into the Crimson Forest and had never come out.

"Don't you start this again, Hellbreath," Baba hissed from the front of the cabin.

The tension seeping from him gathered in a knot inside my chest. Since this morning, he'd barely said a word to me, which was normal, but he seemed agitated. Now, his footsteps were clipped as he tried to saddle Hellbreath. 

From the sound of her hooves crunching over the snow, she wasn't having it. Like me, she had a stubborn streak.

I smiled into the wind, then froze at a snap from the forest. I spun to aim, noting Baba's sudden silence. He'd heard it, too, no doubt, but why was he so jumpy?

I released a slow breath, feeling the steam rise up my face, and listened to the sounds of the forest, which were both familiar and dangerous.

After a moment, Baba began arguing with Hellbreath again. I'd offered to saddle her myself since I was the only one she listened to, offered to go with him like I sometimes did, even offered to go myself so he could sort out whatever was troubling him.

"No," he'd snapped, louder than normal.

Useless. So useless and broken...

I squeezed my eyes closed and focused on the feel of the taut bowstrings, how the ash arrow rubbed against my fingers. The crisp smell of winter filled my lungs, and I breathed it in deeply, willing it to freeze into my soul to make me not so useless and broken. I'd been doing that for years, and it hadn't worked yet.

A squirrel chittered around the same spot I'd heard the snap. Bracing myself against the wind, I let the arrow fly toward the sound. And missed. It thwacked into a rotten tree trunk instead. The squirrel had taken off, and now the forest held silent. Unnaturally so, like it was bracing against something too. 

Then another sound barreled toward the other side of the house. A carriage, I realized, rickety and loud and coming from the opposite end of Margin's Row.

"Shit." Baba tromped toward the edge of the house where I still stood with my bow. "Aika, to the Crawfords'. Now."

"Why?"

But he didn't answer. He was already racing toward Hellbreath. The tension in his movements and his quick breaths strangled the knot he'd put in my chest.

The carriage came faster, hurtling toward us from where the edge of the forest wasn't quite as thick.

"Baba?" I called.

Footsteps sounded as he rounded the corner of the cabin to where I hunted. He grabbed my hand roughly and shoved a wrapped package into it, the worn cloth fibers damp from his sweat and the fresh snow.

"Take this and go to the Crawfords'," he hissed. "Don't come out until they're gone. Now go."

"Till who's gone?" But he was already striding away again. I followed, my legs trembling all the way to the soles of my boots. "Baba?"

"Hey there!" he shouted, sounding chipper and friendly when he was anything but, and turned the corner of the cabin.

I stopped, just behind the wooden cover of the east wall, my bedroom located on the other side. The sharp wind whistled through the cracks at night and kept me awake, making me imagine that an unholy wild had slinked out of the forest and was lurking outside my house. Kind of like now. 

The noise of the carriage didn't lessen. It didn't slow.

"Aika," Baba gritted out, less than two feet away from me. "Go."

"Who do you see - "

A loud pop cracked the air like a whip. Warmth sprayed across my face and onto the snow around my boots in a violent splatter. Then a sickening thud sounded.

I jumped back and slammed my hand over my mouth. Bile kicked at the back of my throat, and the cutting wind brought tears to my eyes. 

I swallowed thickly and tried to draw a breath. What had just happened?

"Baba," I tried to say, but nothing came out.

Baba. My dad.

Silence, as absolute as the panic taking root inside me. I clamped my teeth down on it, anchoring myself to the side of the cottage, and listened. The carriage had stopped. The wilds in the Crimson Forest were quiet, too, as if they were watching what would happen next.

Wiping at my face, I took a step backward along the side of the house, my heart pinched and barely beating. A part of me wanted to rush forward, though, to see that Baba was all right, but the air felt too tense. I didn't trust it.

"Seems you have a delivery, Kane Song!" a male voice shouted, the accent strange and foreign to my ears.

I jumped at the sound of it. I squeezed my bow and the package tight, backing away along the side of the cabin, away from the voice that hijacked my spine and rattled it to its base.

"How about you give it to me, and I'll deliver it for you," the man said. "It's the least I can do."

A bubbly groan carried on the wind, gruesome and wrong, like the sound of dying. Baba. He was still alive.