The path to Calla's house had never felt so long.
People moved away from me as if I carried plague. Mothers pulled their children behind them, shielding young eyes from the sight of me. An elderly woman spat at my feet as I passed, her saliva landing on stone worn smooth.
"Die, shadow lycan!" someone shouted from a window above, and the words fell on me like stones.
I kept walking. There was nowhere else to go.
But then I heard my name, not spat like a curse, but called with something that sounded impossibly like relief.
"Maeve!"
I turned to see Freya running toward me, her copper-red hair flying behind her like a banner. There was no trace remaining of the grotesque angle I remembered from that terrible morning in the chamber.
She crashed into me with the force of genuine affection, her arms wrapping around me so tightly I could barely breathe.
For a moment, I forgot about the hunt, about the hatred in the eyes around us, about the weight of what I had done.
