The Gathering Grounds reeked of smoked aurochs meat and crushed white sage, the air thick with the musk of unwashed hides and the acrid tang of burning bear fat. The clan's hunters had come from the four directions, their faces painted with ochre and charcoal, their voices a guttural chant in the Old Tongue—the language of the First People, before the Great Freeze.
Veyla crouched behind a stall of Courage Stones—red quartz carved into the shape of wolf hearts, their glow pulsing like the embers of the Sacred Fire. She wasn't here to trade.
The leather pouch at her waist—tanned with deer brains and stitched with sinew—was already heavy with stolen Dread: a black river stone, cold as the Ice Mother's breath, humming against her thigh like a distant war drum. The Wolf Clan was starving. Tonight, she needed more.
Tonight, she was after the Elders' Prize: a Courage Stone the size of a fist, its crimson light throbbing like a wounded heart.
Her bare feet, hardened by years of running on flint and frost, pressed into the damp earth. The stall-keeper—a gaunt man with ritual scars across his cheeks—turned his back, counting chipped elk bones in his hollowed gourd. His fingers, stained with ochre and woad, trembled as he whispered to the spirit bones in his pouch.
Veyla didn't hesitate. She slid forward, silent as a shadow wolf, her breath shallow. The stone was there, resting on a bed of wolf pelts, its light casting jagged shadows like broken spears on the woven branch walls.
Too easy.
Her calloused fingers, marked with the sign of the Thief Clan—a serpent coiled around a dagger—brushed the stone—
"You."
A voice, rough as flint striking iron, cut through the drums and chants. Veyla froze. The air thickened, pressing against her skin like a hunter's snare.
She turned.
A man stood behind her, his broad frame blocking the firelight. His arms were crossed, the black veins—like rotten roots—snaking up his forearms, pulsing with the rhythm of a war drum. Dravot. The Wolf Clan spoke of him in hushed tones: "The Ghost Warrior. He who walks without fear. He who stole his own brother's spirit."
But it was his eyes that made her stomach clench—pale blue, like ice over a frozen lake, fixed on her with the hunger of a starving wolf scenting blood.
"That stone," he said, his voice a growl, "is not for the likes of you, little serpent."
Veyla's pulse spiked. She clenched the Courage Stone in her fist, its heat searing her palm like a branding iron. The Wolf Clan's tales said such stones could burn a hole through the spirit. "It is now."
She bolted.
The Gathering Grounds erupted into chaos. Shouts in the Old Tongue, the clatter of overturned stalls, the snarls of the clan's guards. Veyla wove through the crowd, her heart hammering like a war drum. She could hear him behind her—his moccasined feet thudding on the packed earth, his breath steady, unafraid.
She ducked into an alley of woven willow branches, pressing her back against the rough bark. The Courage Stone burned in her grip. Why isn't he afraid?
The Wolf Clan's stories said only the dead had no fear.
A shadow shifted at the alley's end.
"Running," his voice rumbled, closer now, "only makes the hunt sweeter, little serpent."
She could smell him—leather cured in smoke and bear fat, blood, and something darker, like the scent of a storm before the Ice Mother's wrath.
Veyla bared her teeth, still stained with ochre from the morning's ritual. "Try and catch me, Ghost Warrior."
She hurled the Courage Stone at his face and ran, her feet kicking up dust and crushed herbs.
Behind her, she heard his laugh—deep, dark, amused.
And then, the shatter of stone against packed earth.
She didn't look back.
But she knew.
The Wolf Clan's warnings echoed in her skull: "Some hunts never end. Some curses never sleep."