Skin walker heard the villager before she saw him. He was crashing through the brush, shouting a dead man's name, an axe dragging behind him. She pressed her back against a birch and held the veil of golden flowers tight to her face. The hem of her white robe crumbled to ash where it brushed the dirt. Somewhere behind those flowers were the eyes that had killed his brother. She did not remember doing it. She never did. She only remembered a hand at her veil, and a body at dawn. If she could lift the veil herself and still draw breath, the curse would break and she could speak to a person again without burying them. The villager saw her robe. He stopped ten paces off and raised the axe. "You. Priestess. My brother went to your shrine three days ago." "Don't come closer," Skin walker said. "Please. If you touch the veil you die like he did." "Then take it off yourself. Show me the face that killed him." Her hands went to the flowers. She had tried this a hundred times alone, in the dark, and always lost her nerve. She lifted the veil an inch. Her skin met cold air. Nothing turned. She lifted it higher. The villager watched, axe shaking. She got the veil to her mouth and stopped. Her throat locked. She could not do the last of it. "Do it," he said. He stepped forward. "Stop —" A woman's voice cut across them. "He will not touch her." Avara Lorne came down the slope from the ruined temple, tall, silver hair loose. Grey stone climbed her arms past the elbow now, cracking like old plaster. She did not hurry. She placed herself between Skin walker and the axe as if stepping into a familiar doorway. "Go home," Avara told the villager. "Bury your brother. I will answer for the shrine." "She killed him." "She did." Avara held up her stone hand. "And I carry the same weight. Look at me. Come to the temple in a week if you still want blood. Not today." He looked at the cracked grey skin. He looked at Skin walker's veil. He lowered the axe an inch, then another. He spat on the ground and walked back the way he came, muttering the dead brother's name. Skin walker's knees gave. Avara caught her by the shoulder. The stone fingers were cold through the robe. "You lifted it," Avara said. "Not all the way." "You lifted it further than you ever have. I felt you try." Avara's grey eyes moved over the veil. "I have been waiting for someone who could. Come with me to the temple. There is something under the floor I cannot lift alone." Skin walker looked at the woman turning to stone in front of her, and understood the debt had already been written.