JAYNAYAH

The girl at the western border was wrapped in a warrior’s cloak when we found her.

She sat on the edge of Samantha’s examination bed with both feet tucked beneath her, as if she expected the floor to bite. Her hair hung in pale tangles around her face. One hand clutched a heel of bread, but she had not eaten it.

I knew that kind of hunger.

The kind trained to wait.

Mace stood close behind me, silent and tense, his presence warm at my back. The girl’s frightened eyes flicked to him first, then to me.

“You asked for the red wolf,” I said softly.

Her lips trembled....