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It’s a crisp winter night in the city, breaths puffing out mist. A window pushes up, and a girl looks out; she doesn’t see anything waiting in the shadows and she slides out, gingerly climbing down the windowsills and the walls. Gloved hands keep their purchase on ice-slick corners, and the girl drops heavily to the floor. There’s a bag at her waist. She looks around again, nervous, looking through the shadows for threats.
A raven stares down from atop a lamppost, and doesn’t make a sound.
The girl runs. Not away, but to, light on her feet, drawn like iron to a magnet. The raven takes flight, following.
Frost creeps around them.
She doesn’t run far before she slows, looking around again. There’s a point where she hesitates, looking around; she’s not afraid, that feeling long since numbed to nothing.
Another girl steps out, catching the other around the waist; there’s a loud yelp, and then laughter, as things settle down, as they realise it’s not an enemy, it’s who they snuck away to see.
The raven perches on a lamppost above, watching. There’s a man in the dark, winding a barbed wire whip through his hands. Metal scrapes. It’s cold.
The girls don’t notice, too bound up in each other. They laugh and they murmur, they kiss, soft and sweet. The man does nothing, waiting.
The warmth fades quickly in the cold. Other things come up. The first girl wishes they could see each other more often. The second girl is angry – she’s angry at the first girl’s family, they hate her, they’re the reason they have to meet in secret. The first girl doesn’t know how to fix it.
The second girl suggests running away together.
Metal scrapes. Frost is running along the ground. The man and the raven turn, searching, suspicious.
The girls are arguing. It’s violent, vicious, cruel. Too much too fast. They’re angry.
Silver gleams in the lamplight. The wolf steps out into the open, a massive creature woven from blades.
“Silver,” the man snaps. His voice carries in the cold. “Silver Wolf!”
None of them respond. The wolf pads across the street, patient and slow. The girls don’t see. They’re shoving at each other now, yelling, the words caught in the chill.
“I challenge you before the spirits, Silver Wolf,” the man says, stepping out and in-between. He stares it down, not unafraid, but determined to see this through. “I challenge you to history. We were once friends. I know who you were before this. You should know me. Let the one who fails to see the other for themselves be Bound and fallen before the other.”
Perhaps the wolf hesitates. It looks at him, but does not See. Everything around it is burning frost, clean ice trailing off it in patterns. “You are not Mine,” the wolf says. Its voice is scraping metal, empty of life. “You are Nothing to me. I do not Know you.” It does not stop walking, intent on its prey, on the arguing girls who see nothing beyond themselves.
“You were once Lyra Woods,” the man declares, quick and assured. “You were of the Court of Dark Fall. You were a shapeshifter.” The words are practiced, familiar, with no hesitation. “You once tried to Claim me. You fought Stella Myers as part of our Alliance. You fell to Winter after being hit by Glory’s van.” A breath. “You are the Silver Wolf of Winter. You tell the story of two girls turning on each other in pain. You take the life of one as Glamour and the other with your blades. Three facts of who you were, three facts of what you did, three facts of who you are, how do you challenge?”
The wolf is slower, now. “You are not Mine,” the wolf says. Its voice is scraping metal, empty of life. “You are Nothing to me. I do not Know you.”
“You should,” the man snaps, and he is angry. “You Knew me. Before the spirits I declare this as true; you knew my Name, what happened with my family, my Practice. You knew things addressed to me I missed, you knew how I travelled, you knew how I wanted to help save you. If there was anything more to you than Winter you would know how I’ve researched you, how I found you, how I’ve hunted you. How do you challenge?”
The wolf lifts its paw, slow like treacle. “You are not Mine,” the wolf says. Its voice is scraping metal, empty of life. “You are Nothing to me. I do not Know you.”
“Then be Bound and fall before me, for you have lost this challenge.”
And the wolf falls. The air warms, a crisp chill instead of ice, and the girls behind him hesitate in their argument, in their unmerited cruelty. They choke, shocked, seeing the world as it really was, no longer trapped unable to see anything but each other.
“Get out of here,” the raven says, now a young Inuit woman at the man’s side. “Run.”
The girls run.
The man crouches down before the wolf, still and cold. It looks at him and does not See him.
“Fuck, Silver,” he tells her. “Damn it, I told you. If you turned Fae, then I’d need to Bind you. And what do you go and do? You kill Glory and you fucking turn Fae. I know she basically brought it on herself, but… fucking hell. I liked you.”
The wolf doesn’t answer. The man sighs, unwinding the whip. He wraps it around a blade, tight and cruel, and he yanks; silver slides out of silver. The wolf doesn’t twitch as piece by piece it comes apart.
“Fuck,” the man says, looking down at the pile of blades. They gleam in the light.
He takes them all.