Chapter Eight

A hiss escaped through my clenched teeth. Lager's cabin. The man who'd taken everything from me and would kill me without hesitation, whether there were now four fingers on his hand or not.

"How do you know?" I asked in a voice much calmer than I felt.

"I can smell him, for one," Archer said.

That sickly sweet honey scent. Wolves likely smelled it much stronger than I did.

"And for two?"

"There's a child's drawing on the desk inside the northwest window. It very clearly states all the members of the family. The Lager family."

The map we'd taken from Old Man's Den had led us right to Lager's family. Did he even know we had it?

"He's a fucking fool, then," Grady rumbled, reading my thoughts exactly. "What kind of man circles a target over their family?"

"He's new here. My baba said he came from the south and decided to settle in once he heard about our poison." I adjusted the quiver on my back and headed downhill, my muscles tensed for battle, my fingers itching to loose an arrow straight into Lager's eye. "Still, though. He’s a fucking fool."

"Whoa." Archer dodged in front of me and slipped his hand around my waist, pulling me to a stop. "His family is there, Aika."

"And what about my family?" I wrenched myself free, fury ripping up my throat. "Jade and Lee… Would he have sold his own goddamn family into slavery? He had no right. He had no right to do everything he did, and I wish I could take the bullet he shot Baba with and shoot his cock right the fuck off."

"We know," Archer said. "We know exactly how you feel, but it wasn't Lager's wife or kid who did this to you."

“Then they need to know what he's really like," I fired back.

"Don't be blinded by your vengeance," Grady told me.

"I can see it plain as day,” I shouted. “This is what you thought of me, isn't it? Baba's daughter, the poisoner. You wanted to kill me, too, didn't you? As soon as you found out what I was. How is me going to Lager’s cabin any different?"

"You're no killer," he said through gritted teeth.

"Watch me." I jerked out of Archer’s grip and slipped my way down another hill, tapping the snow with the end of my bow.

My wolves didn’t try to stop me, but I felt them nearby, always present.

My bow smacked the edge of a cabin, and I hit it softly against it until I found the door. I banged my fist against it then stepped back to nock my arrow and aim. Rage steamed from my nostrils as I waited, oblivious to any storm but the one raging inside me. I'd get the shot. I didn't need eyes to kill Lager. I needed just me.

My heart blasted into my rib cage, a familiar sensation when I was the prey. Only this time I was the predator.

The door creaked open.

The bow string bit into my raw fingertips and slicked them with blood. I held myself ready, ignoring the pain.

The door creaked wider, and the smells emanating from inside registered briefly—too sweet honey, fresh bread, and smoke from a crackling fire.

I opened my mouth to spit his name, but something attached itself to my coat by my leg and rubbed itself against me.

"Ribbons, no!" an airy, accented voice cried. Young. A little girl. "Not outside!"

I froze all the way to my bleeding fingers.

"Please, grab her!" the girl begged.

Vision clicked into my place from one of my wolves from the cover of a tree and blowing snow behind me. In front of my rigid form stood a girl, maybe five or six, with two blonde ponytails and startlingly blue eyes that were filled with tears. A cat slinked out from under my coat, a black spot amid pure white, completely oblivious to winter. The cat lurched to a stop as its vivid green eyes met my wolf's. Its fur along its back bristled even as the wind blew it sideways, and it bared its fangs, crouching to pounce.

Whirling, I dove for it and snatched it up before it could fight a losing battle. Not that my wolves would hurt it, I didn’t think, but because this cat didn’t seem to understand threats.

I thrust it toward the child awkwardly, the thing writhing in my hands like I'd set its feet on fire.

"Thanks," the girl said, tears in her voice as she took it. "Ribbons, you're a darn inbred runt for doing that."

"Gibby, what are you doing with the door o…pen?"

My vision blinked out again, but not before I glimpsed a woman with silky golden hair like her daughter's cascading over the shoulders of a long wool dress. I'd never seen anything like it with its square cut neck, belted waist, long, bell sleeves, and a slight flare from the fabric at her hips. I'd never seen anything like her. She was beautiful.

"Gibby, get away from them." Tension rang from the woman's tone and ran a corkscrew through the entire cabin. Her accent was like Lager’s, only slightly thicker.

Them. I felt their presence close in behind me, my protective wolves turned human. Sasha, too, squirming against the back of my shoulder from inside Grady’s coat.

"She saved Ribbons," the girl cried.

"Get. Away," the woman said through clenched teeth and dragged the girl behind her. 'What do you want? We don't have much given the season."

"Your husband,” I said, taking a guess. "Where is he?"

"Is—is he in some kind of trouble?"

I bit down on my tongue, sensing the little girl's eyes on me. Despite the revenge I craved, she was an innocent like I had been. Or…still was. Also like me, she hadn't chosen her father or mother.

I angled away from the open door, my steps purposeful but not threatening, using my bow to help guide me. Archer and Grady followed, closing the door behind them.

"Your husband took something from me."

"Wh-what? There must be some mistake. He's a good man."

From the glimpses I'd seen here, I couldn't argue. They appeared healthy and warm. Even the cat that was now sniffing and padding around my boots. This woman likely didn't know what her husband had been up to in order to provide for them. Really, if I allowed myself to think it, he'd done what I tried to do—keep my family alive. I shook my head, though, because that would make us too much alike.

"Is he here?" Grady asked, his voice low.

"No. He said he'd try to get here when he could, but this weather… We're not from here, and we didn’t expect it to be like this."

"Where did he say he was going?" Archer, in that smooth way of his, made it sound as if they were old friends, a ploy to bait her in.

"Well…he said he had a business opportunity in Margin's Row but that he'd have to travel a bit to make it work."

I fished the glass jar of moonshine and wolfsbane out of my pocket and held it up. "This is the business opportunity."

"What is it?"

The jar weighted my palm with burdens of the past and future, so I tucked it away again out of sight. My wolves relaxed some when I did. "Poison."

Quiet fell, heavy with shock. The woman really had no idea who her husband was.

"Poison for whom?" she whispered.

"For us," Archer answered. "Most everyone I know is dead because of it."

"But…if he took it from you, then you made the poison. Not him. He probably didn't even know what it was."

"He knew,” I assured her. “He sold it to a man in Old Man's Den. A bad man who wants control of the Crimson Forest."

"No, he couldn't have known,” she insisted. “He would never harm anyone. He has a family."

"He shot my father. He threatened to kill me violently."

"You're lying," she fired back.

Behind her, the girl whimpered.

"Maybe so. Maybe I'm making this whole thing up because I have nothing better to do on a winter day. Or maybe I'm telling you the truth. Next time you see your husband, ask him why he only has four fingers on one of his hands."

"Four?"

"I shot one off. I'm not sorry. When I see him again, I'll do more than that." I turned toward the door, a dark smile on my lips even though this was a total waste of time coming here.

"No. Wait. Whatever he did, he didn't mean it. Please. If you…if you do something to him, my daughter and I won't survive out here." She stepped toward me and grabbed my shoulders. "I'll do anything. Please."

I'd heard that same desperation before, inside of me. I didn’t want it to, but it softened my bitterness. We were all trying to survive, weren't we? Every one of us, but some beat down others so they could survive with more. More money, more food, more land, more chances to breed inside the ruby caves. Why though? Why take when you could give? I knew why the second after I wondered. Because everyone cheated and tore each other apart to get ahead. Look at my own family. Baba knew exactly what the poison did, and yet he continued to sell it to Faust. Ama knew the poison would affect me more than her brutal words, and yet she'd forced it down my throat anyway. I wouldn't survive if I played nice. No one would. And yet…

"Maybe there is something you can do."

"Anything,” she said, her voice choked with tears.

"What kind of herbs do you have?"

"Herbs? Um, the usual. Cinnamon, ginger, rosemary… Why?”

"Those might work." They wouldn't, but I wanted to dangle a slice of hope in front of her since she might prove useful in other ways, namely luring Lager here. Besides, we had nowhere else to go for the moment. "Give us a minute outside."

We strode through the door, and now that the fire kindled by thoughts of revenge had died some, the chill shook me harder.

We entered a barn several feet from the cabin, not any warmer than outside, and piled with snow on the ground due to the door that wouldn’t close right. Horses pawed the ground from near the back. They must've been freezing. Frustration steamed out with my sigh. I doubted they had enough hay and blankets for winter.

When we were several steps inside, Archer asked, "What are you thinking, Aika?"

"I'm thinking about Sasha. She needs to heal, I need warmth, and we all need food and rest. If Lager's wife thinks it'll help her husband, she'll give all of that to us."

"How are you going to convince her that feeding us, and you, the woman who shot off his finger, will save her husband?"

"I'll do what he did. I'll lie to her. I'll tell her that if she helps me find a way to better my poison, I'll save her and her daughter from Faust's men’s next attack. We know they’ll be coming after us, but she doesn’t. We’ll make it look like we’re the good guys."

“Aren’t we?” Archer asked.

Sometimes I wondered. More specifically, I wondered about me. I might not be a killer yet, but when this was all over, I would be.

Grady sighed. “And if we don’t save them?”

Footsteps crunched toward us.

"I thought you were dead." That was Thomas’s voice, sharp as a thorn.

"Why would you think that?" Archer asked.

"Because on the way here, I found the body of a girl. Black hair like yours, Aika. About your size, too, lying face down in the snow."

Bile kicked up from my stomach and soured my tongue.

A real beauty, the stranger from the inn had said. But she escaped Margin's slave auction and ran off wearing a thin blue coat. Angered quite a few potential buyers.

Jade. What if it was Jade?