If the witches wanted a beast, she’d give them teeth and claws.She just hoped that they were ready to bleed for it.

He was wild, like her, with the kind of profile sculptors liked to cast in bronze: a fiery young god chiseled from the elements. Even in moments of icy repose, she could sense that menace clawing just beneath the surface. The knowledge of its presence drew her, even as she knew that it should have repelled.

Keep calm. You have the forest in your blood.

Humanity was a precipice and she was standing on the edge of it, staring into the wild and yawning void that encompassed all things bestial and frightening. It would be so easy to jump, to let go and fall in—but once she started falling, her fear was that she would never stop.