“They already are,” I say, my voice flat, calm, the truth I can’t soften. “But there’s ways to slow them down.”
She arches a brow. “Like?”
I pause near a break in the trees, kneel low, and scoop a handful of snow into my palm. “Wolves hunt by scent. Foxes do too. Roman’s men will follow your trail until they can’t smell you anymore. That’s where this comes in.”
She watches as I rub the snow hard against my coat, scrubbing the blood, the sweat, the wolf out of it. Then I press more into my skin, the cold biting like knives, but it numbs the air, masks what carries.
“Here,” I say, handing her a fistful.
She takes it, presses it against her arms, her throat, her wrists. She hisses at the cold but doesn’t stop, her movements sharp, precise. When she’s finished, her scent is dimmer already, just snow and pine and wind.
“Not bad,” I mutter.
“Better than letting them walk straight to us,” she answers.
We fall back into stride, the snow swallowing our steps. Hours pass in silence, broken only by the crunch of boots and the low rasp of our breath. The forest shifts as we go, the pines thinner, the ground rising into low ridges where stone juts black through the snow. Ravens gather in the trees, watching, their calls carrying across the emptiness. Mary keeps glancing up at them, her wolf uneasy.
“You believe in omens?” I ask, my tone quiet, almost mocking.
Her eyes narrow. “You don’t?”
“I stopped listening ninety years ago,” I say.
That earns me a glare, but not the sharp one. The thoughtful one. She doesn’t like when I talk about years like that, like they don’t mean anything. Maybe because hers still count.
“You always talk like you’ve lived too long,” she says finally.
I shrug. “Maybe I have.”
She doesn’t answer, but the silence between us changes. Less hostile. Heavier, but not sharp.
When the ridge grows too steep, we stop in a patch of wind-shadow where the pines bend close together. I crouch, gesture for her to do the same. “Watch.”
I drag a pine branch through the snow, sweeping our tracks until the trail is broken, the prints gone. Then I lead her along a stream half-frozen at the edges, the water thin but enough to carry scent away. She follows my movements exactly, precise and silent, her eyes sharp on every detail. When we finally climb out, the trail is gone behind us, swallowed by water and snow.
She studies me, her lips twitching. “You’re good at this.”
“Foxes survive,” I say simply.
“Wolves fight,” she replies.
That pulls a faint smile out of me despite the cold cutting through bone. “Guess we’ll see which wins.”
She smiles back, quick but real, the kind that makes the fire in her eyes warmer instead of sharper. It hits harder than it should.
We walk until night falls, the sky turning indigo, stars hidden behind veils of cloud. When we finally stop, it’s at the edge of another hollow, this one deeper, sheltered by slabs of rock angled like teeth. We build a fire with deadfall, the flames throwing long shadows across the stone.
She sits opposite me, tearing into the stale ration bar we stole, her wolf restless in the way she chews, jaw tight, shoulders stiff. I watch her for a long time, silent, until the fire crackles down and the words I’ve held back spill free.
“I haven’t had peace in ninety years,” I say.
Her head snaps up, eyes narrowing, sharp. “What do you mean?”
I stare into the fire, the flames reflected in my eyes. “Ninety years of Roman’s voice in my head. Ninety years of orders, of blood, of chains you can’t see but feel every time you breathe. Ninety years of never closing my eyes without expecting them to open in another war.”
The silence hangs heavy, the fire popping.
I look at her then, steady, unflinching. “You gave me a day of it.”
