He dropped the rifle.
I snatched it before it hit the ground, hands clumsy around the metal. I staggered back, clutching the rifle to my chest, and the soldier collapsed to his knees, one hand pressed to his side, breath ragged. He stared at me like I was a monster.
Maybe I was.
My stomach lurched. My mouth filled with spit. I swallowed hard and forced my feet to move.
I scrambled up the opposite slope, slipping on mud, the rifle heavy and wrong in my arms, the knife still in my fist. Behind me, the soldier wheezed one last time and then stopped breathing.
At the top of the ravine, I gasped at the horror of what was waiting for me.
Smoke curled up from our shelters in thick black ribbons. The firepit had been trampled into ash. The fish racks were splintered. Bodies lay scattered—some human, some wolf—dark shapes in the wet grass. I couldn’t make my eyes stop counting the corpses.
I saw Aunt Moira’s shawl, torn and half-burned, caught on a bush.
My legs went weak.
I pushed forward anyway, because the only way through grief is movement, and because I couldn’t let myself stop.
Then I saw my father.
He was on his knees near the birch line, one hand braced against the ground, the other clutching his side. Blood soaked his shirt. His face was gray with pain, but his eyes were open.
He looked up and saw me.
“No,” he mouthed silently, and the word hit me harder than a bullet.
I staggered toward him. “Da?—”
A crack split the air.
My father’s head jerked.
He slumped forward like a puppet with cut strings.
I made a sound I didn’t recognize. Something animal. Something broken.
I dropped the rifle and lunged, catching his shoulders, trying to hold him upright like I could force him back to life by sheer force of will.
“Da, no—no, no?—”
His eyes stared past me at the smoke-filled sky.
Someone grabbed the back of my coat and yanked hard.
I whirled, knife flashing as I drove it upward.
Griff.
I diverted the blade at the very last second.
He was covered in blood, some of it his. His face was slashed open along one cheek. His eyes were wild. Furious. Terrified.
“Tamsin!” he roared, voice cracking. “Move!”
“I can’t—” I choked, clutching at my father.
Griff grabbed me by the shoulders, shaking me once, hard. “You can. You fucking will.”
