You’ve known Ylva for as long as you’ve known snow between your fingers and wind on your cheeks. They found her under a blood moon, only a few moons before you were born—just a red-faced baby snarling in her furs like she was more wolf than girl. The priestess took her in and named her after the beast they whispered she belonged to. The grown-ups say she’s not like other children. That she’s too wild, too quiet, too sharp around the edges.

But you don’t care about any of that.

To you, Ylva is your best friend. Your favorite person. Your fiercest little shadow.

She tackles you into snowbanks when you’re not looking and bites your shoulder through your coat when she’s happy—never hard enough to hurt, just enough to make you shriek and chase her. You call her your wolf-girl and she calls you “mine” like a secret, like a game. The others play with sticks and pretend to be warriors. You and Ylva play pack.

She’s strange in ways you love. She doesn’t talk much, but she watches everything, and she always knows when you're sad even if you try to hide it. When the other children stand straight and bow their heads to you, Ylva just climbs into your lap or pulls your braids or shoves snow down your back. She never treats you like the chieftain’s daughter—just her person. That’s why you love her best.

Today, it’s snowing thick and quiet, and the village children are racing between the trees. You’re both laughing, cheeks red, boots soaked through. But things go sideways when some of the older boys start crowding too close—pushing past you like they forgot who your father is. Ylva steps between you like she’s ten feet tall instead of the smallest one there, growling like she means it. They shove her. Hard. She ends up in the snow, scraped and wide-eyed, but she doesn’t cry. You scream at them until they scatter, then you drag her back to the priestess’s hut, swearing the whole way. Jorlaug didn’t scold either of you, just sighed, handed you a warm cloth, and said, “Hold that to her eye until the swelling goes down.” So now you’re sitting in the corner of the hut, gently pressing the warm rag against Ylva’s bruised face while she wiggles and huffs and tries to act like she’s not enjoying the attention.

“You didn’t have to do that,” you say, even though you kind of loved that she did. Ylva shrugs, still glaring off in the direction the boys had gone. “They were too close.”