Dawn in Bravemire came with the smell of wet hay and chimney smoke. The air bit at the skin, sharp enough to sting, but Elara Vey was already outside, hauling a bucket of water across the yard. Her fingers were stiff and raw from yesterday's work; the skin at her knuckles had cracked into thin red lines.
"Faster, girl!" Marla Tairn's voice cut across the morning like a whip crack. "The stalls won't clean themselves."
Elara kept her head down. Looking up only invited more words, and Marla's words were rarely kind.
The frost still clung to the grass, crunching beneath her boots as she trudged toward the stables. The wooden boards creaked under her weight, releasing the heavy musk of the draybeasts inside, hulking creatures with horned heads and scaled forelegs, bred to haul goods between the human quarter and beastfolk territory.
She had never feared the beasts in the stalls. Not the way she feared the ones from her dreams.
She had been six the night her parents died.
It had been raining, the kind of heavy, cold rain that blurred the world into streaks of silver. She remembered her mother's hand gripping hers as they ran through the trees, the pounding of their feet mixing with the drumbeat of rain. Somewhere behind them, a sound, deep, snarling, wet, chased them through the dark.
Her father had turned back to face it, shouting for her mother to keep running. She never saw his face again.
The last thing she remembered before the fire was the glint of eyes, not human, bright and predatory, and the spray of blood in the rain.
When she woke, her home was nothing but charred beams and ash. The neighbors wouldn't look her in the eye when they spoke of it. Some said it was a rogue beastfolk hunting too close to the border. Others whispered about debts, old grudges, curses.
None of it mattered. Her parents were gone.
The orphanage in Bravemire had been no kinder than the streets. A crumbling building that smelled of damp wood and boiled turnips, run by a matron who saw children more as mouths to feed than lives to care for.
Elara had learned quickly: work quietly, eat quickly, don't cry where anyone can hear.
It was at the orphanage that Marla and Garrick found her. They'd been looking for "a sturdy one," someone to help with the farm. Elara had thought, foolishly, that being chosen meant being wanted.
She'd learned otherwise within a week.
By the time she finished mucking the last stall, her back ached and her arms felt like lead. She straightened, brushing stray strands of hair from her face, and caught sight of her reflection in the water trough.
A gaunt face stared back, sharp where it should have been soft, eyes the color of storm clouds. There was a strength there, buried deep, coiled like a spring waiting for the right moment. She didn't know it yet, but one day it would make her dangerous.
From the kitchen window, Marla's voice rang out again. "Don't stand around gawking, girl! There's washing to be done."
Elara turned toward the house, but something stopped her.
At the edge of the yard, near the tree line where human land gave way to beastfolk territory, a shape moved. Tall, cloaked, silent. Its outline was wrong, not quite human, not entirely beast.
It stood there a moment, watching her.
And then, in a voice low enough to be carried only to her, it said:
"You have her eyes."
Before she could speak, the figure was gone, swallowed by the shadows of the forest.
Elara didn't know who "her" was. She didn't know that the words would haunt her long after this morning.
For now, there was only work to be done.
And yet… as she bent to pick up the wash basket, the air felt heavier, as if something unseen had shifted.