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As quickly as Misha had embraced her, she was pulling away stiffly, hazel eyes glued to the floor. Iryana let her go.

“I—” Misha stammered, eyes blown wide. Then she ran out of the room.

Iryana looked over to Hadima, swallowing. Her older sister smiled apologetically, but it did nothing to soothe the freshly opened wound inside Iryana.

“I missed you,” Hadima said, pulling Iryana into a hug of her own. “Misha did too.”

Iryana couldn’t tell if her sister was just trying to cheer her up. “It’s okay. She needs her space.”

Hadima nodded, but she didn’t look convinced. She seemed to shake that away and instead pulled on an excited smile. “I want to hear all about your trip.”

Iryana nearly groaned.

“Not until she greets the rest of us!” Tonhald ordered, cutting in to pull Iryana into another warm hug. In her ear he softly said, “Misha will come around.”

Iryana nodded awkwardly as he released her.

She pushed her worries away as she greeted the rest of her clan. Let herself turn her attention to them. To the duties she had been falling behind on.

It was an adjustment being back in the main house, though she appreciated her warm quilts and the soft mattress beneath her while she slept. Far preferable to the thin blanket between her and the frozen ground while they were camping. Yet on her first night back in her own bed, Iryana found herself lying awake early in the morning, unable to fall back asleep.

She squeezed her eyes shut, pushed away her worries and thoughts, and waited. And waited. And waited. With a groan of frustration, Iryana gave up.

She slid out of bed, wrapped a warm shawl around her wool nightgown and slipped her feet into fur-lined slippers. Carrying a small candle, she padded out of the room and into the dark hallway. The faint sound of someone snoring and of someone up with baby Anara down the hall were the only noises to be heard.

She found herself in the smaller hall and classroom, running her fingers along the worn wood of the tables and chairs.

In the corner of the room, Iryana lingered as her gaze fell upon a painting. The surface was creased with folds from when it had likely been stashed away in the corner of a trunk or bag when her clan fled Klees. She felt a strong connection to that painting. She too had been folded smaller and smaller to survive, and now that she was unfolding herself, the creases were still there.

Fighting off those morose thoughts, knowing she would never get back to sleep if she let her mind go down that path, Iryana concentrated on the scene depicted in the painting instead.

There was a warrior wearing the insignia of Noshtiz, a metal-forged greatsword swinging over his head. Instead of armor, he wore only a simple pair of brown pants, exposed and vulnerable. There were no forging tattoos on his body, because it was before the time of wells and forging tattoos. According to legend, the gods chose their own champions and forged them themselves. Small purple brush strokes marked a sigil on his chest, right over his heart. That was how the gods supposedly marked and bonded their magic with their champions.

Iryana’s hand slid up her arm until it was clutching her shoulder over her forging tattoos.

She couldn’t help but wonder what the gods demanded of those champions to reward them with those sigils. Did they have to strip their hearts open for them like Istrins did for their tattoos now, or were the gods powerful enough to get past their defenses? Maybe it had been worse for the champions; maybe those sigils went far deeper than the tattoos—piercing the very essence of who they were and gifting it to the gods with their obedience.

It hardly mattered now, Iryana decided, walking back toward the center of the room and lowering herself onto one of the chairs. Misha’s chair.

The cold from the wood seeped through her nightgown. The fireplace in the room was mere embers, waiting to be built back up once morning arrived. Clutching her shawl tighter, Iryana hugged herself.

Misha was the reason she couldn’t sleep.

Her sister had held her, squeezed her with a relief that Iryana knew meant her sister still loved her. Still wanted her safe and at home. Misha clearly hadn’t forgiven her yet though, even seemed frustrated with herself for revealing she still cared at all. For opening herself up. Like Misha was just waiting to be hurt again and didn’t want to make it worse.

Trying to survive that guilt, that shame, while keeping herself open to her sister was increasingly painful. It felt like walking into a flurry of arrows, unshielded and unarmored.

Iryana knew she deserved the pain, and she refused to guard herself from it. Taking every blow was about all she could do for Misha now.

She refused to turn her back on her little sister again.

The full moon a few nights later brought the first heavy snow. It drove the village indoors, the wind blowing fiercely as it unleashed the snow. By morning, the storm had passed, leaving the valley quiet and covered with a pristine blanket of white.

Snowstorms were a brief reprieve from dakii activity, but as soon as they were over, the beasts would be back to their relentless search for people. So, the clan woke early, hours from sunrise, to sweep the doorways and around the gates enough for them to open, and then the watches began again. Even in early winter, they were up far longer than the sun, but they took advantage of the light as much as they could.

While the post was fairly isolated from the valley below, and the dakii that could be hunting there, they still had to be careful about being too noisy. It was one of the reasons they were so careful with the dogs when they were at the post during winter, keeping them far from the wall and the rest of the village whenever possible.

The ground was frozen solid, the larger rivers freezing over but the ice not yet thick enough to walk on, but they had somehow filled their winter stores in time. And now, with the heavy snow, they could prepare the sleds and the sled dogs for the trip to the Cavta Post.