Blackpine Forest, Siberia – Late Autumn, 1386

  The snare was empty. Again.

  Dragomir crouched low in the frozen underbrush, his thick fingers rough and calloused from years of work brushing over the frayed rope. Three days. Three damn days without a catch.

  He let out a breath that fogged in front of him, dragging a hand down his face, his palm catching on the tangled thicket of his beard. His father's voice echoed in his mind, the way it always did when luck ran thin: 'Even the hares mock us now.'

  A sharp wind tore through the pines, tugging at the heavy bear-fur cloak draped over his broad shoulders. It smelled of frost-brittle leaves and something sharper. Metallic. Raw.

  Blood.

  Dragomir froze, the chill of the air forgotten. Trappers knew the scent of blood the way wolves knew weakness. And this... this was fresh.

  Keeping low, he moved toward the scent, each step silent, practiced. He didn't want to be seen until he knew if this was prey or threat.

  Finally, through the gloom, he spotted a young woman crumpled beneath the shelter of a fallen tree. Her blue sarafan was torn and stained dark at the thigh, where a sword's edge had bitten deep. Blood seeped through the worn linen, sluggish but insistent. Her lip was split, her right eye swollen shut and her headscarf hung loose, revealing the single braid of an unwed girl, now half-unraveled and tangled with twigs like a snared bird's wing.

  He opened his mouth, ready to call out, to offer help but then his gaze caught something.

  The pouch tied to her belt, was embroidered with signs both holy and forbidden: a cross, yes, but also symbols of the Old Gods, the largest being the spiral of Mokosh, protector of women and children.

  Dragomir sucked in a breath. Znaharka. Folk healer. Witch, to most.

  His stomach turned. The villages he traded with were sick with plague fear already; even talking to a znaharka could damn a man now. Dragomir thought of his father's ruined hands, and his twisted knees. How much longer could the old man last without him to bring home meat, skins, and firewood?

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  The trapper winced at his decision and shifted backward, meaning to slip away unseen.

  A branch cracked.

  The young woman jerked upright, and in a heartbeat, a sickle flashed in her hand, sharp as a tiger's claw.

  "Don't come closer!" she hissed, voice raw with panic.

  Dragomir raised his hands, the thick furs of his cloak falling back to reveal scarred forearms. "I'm not—"

  She lunged.

  He dodged, but not fast enough. Pain bloomed as the sickle grazed his arm. Instinct took over. He caught her wrist, gripping harder than intended. She snarled, kneeing toward his groin. He twisted, but his boot snagged on a root and they crashed to the ground in a snarl of limbs and curses.

  The trapper landed on top of her, his palm pressing hard against her breast. A tremor ran through him.

  Marfa's laugh caught as his hands tore her shift laces, her skin baring like dawn—

  "You bloody dog!" the young woman snapped, wriggling beneath him, her knee wrenching free under the bunched folds of her sarafan. She slammed it into his ribs. He jolted with a grunt, lost balance, and his head cracked against a birch trunk. White stars burst behind his eyes.

  When he blinked back the world, she was on top of him, sickle at his throat, her russet braid dangling like a noose beside his cheek.

  "Who sent you?" she snapped, the blade pressing into his skin. A bead of blood slid down his neck, warm in the freezing air. "Grigory? The priest?"

  "What? No—just... checking traps—"

  "Liar!" Her grip tightened, tendons standing stark as wire. "You know who I am, that's why you shook like a gutted hare when you groped me!" Her face contorted, split lip peeling back from teeth, the whites of her eyes glinting. "Afraid I'd curse your blood? Burn your soul to ash—"

  In the distance, a man's shout broke through the trees and her head jerked toward the sound.

  The trapper seized the moment.

  Shoving her hard, he rolled them over. The znaharka hit the ground with a thud, skirts riding up. Dragomir stumbled to his feet and stilled. The sprawl of her legs, the way the blood darkened the linen—just like hers had.

  For one awful heartbeat, the forest twisted, dragging him ten years back to Marfa's blood soaking the bed. Her screams. The midwife's hands, slick and useless.

  Too much blood.

  The child won't come.

  Dragomir, hold her down!

  "No," the trapper growled under his breath, snapping himself free of the memory.

  He grabbed the woman's elbow and hauled her upright. She yelped in protest, but he didn't slow down.

  "My hut. Half an hour run to the north," he ground out. "You can hide there."

  She dug in her heels. "Why help me?"

  Another shout, closer now. Boots pounding the forest floor.

  Dragomir didn't think. Didn't hesitate. "Not help," he half-lied, the words rough. "Debt. My old man, you help him, we're even."

  Before she could argue, he lifted her up and ran through the trees, heart hammering.

  He had left one woman to die in the woods.

  He wouldn't leave another.