**I have failed,** Yellow-Eyes howled, filled with his mother's despair.**Her people do not hunt and do not have children. My children see only each other and chafe to be free of their weaker, elfin kin-and I grow old. I can no longer hold my family together, so I shall let it fall asunder and pass my spear to the strongest of my first-born.**

No one had marked the spear beside him until he flung it

across the fire pit into the ground at his silver-haired daughter's feet. They all gasped, but none more loudly than she did herself, recoiling from the stout wood as if it were a venom-snake looming over her in the night.

**Find your name, kitling,** he sent to her alone.

She didn't, though she did take up the spear and hold it firmly through Threetoe's menacing glower. The dark hunter looked away. He sent no thoughts or images to her. He didn't need to; his posture said everything: how long can you hold it, first-born-if Yellow-Eyes truly leaves.

They watched her, her father most of all. She felt the stirring of leadership deep within her but it could not rise far enough to reach her thoughts and actions. Shivers of anxiety radiated out from her spine. The wolf-song told her to surrender Timmorn's spear to Threetoe and become his favorite, but, as little as she was prepared to succeed her father, she was even less inclined to turn her neck to Threetoe. There were murmurings, sent and spoken, as she marched out of the firelight, but no one stood to challenge her.

Timmorn's speech had shocked them but not as much as their realization, shortly after dawn the next morning, that he had made good his promise. The hunt, led by Threetoe, spread into the forest, searching for Timmorn's scent. They returned at high-sun. He had vanished without a trace. His trail entered the stream at the edge of the camp and had not emerged either at the rocks which marked its source or the downstream waterfall.