Chapter 3

"I don't know how to repay you," I said, my voice thick with gratitude.

My limbs were still heavy. The tea was stronger than I thought. I tried to lift my arm to shake her hand, but it wouldn't move.

"Relax," Vera said, moving around the table. "The paralysis needs a moment to settle fully."

I froze. "Paralysis?"

"Birch tea," she said, her voice still holding that terrible, gentle comfort. "Mixed with wolfsbane and paralytic nightshade. It keeps the canvas steady. It’s very difficult to carve a moving subject."

A cold knot formed in my stomach, colder than the blizzard outside. "What are you talking about? You saved me."

"I preserved you," Vera corrected. She walked to the shelves and pulled down a large, pristine white bone. It wasn't from a whale. It wasn't from a mammoth.

It was a human femur. My size.

"The hunters outside," Vera said, returning to the table. She ran her hand over the smooth surface of the bone. "They paid a heavy price to track you here. They offered their own blood to the wind just to find your scent. That is a powerful currency, Jax."

"They were monsters," I stammered, my tongue feeling thick and heavy in my mouth. "They wanted to kill me just because I left!"

"Because you left?" Vera stopped. She looked at me, and for the first time, the grandmotherly warmth was gone. In its place was a vacuum. A ruthless, impartial void.

"My ivory hears the truth, little wolf," she whispered. "You didn't just leave. You sold the coordinates of the nursery den to the hunters for a bag of silver. Seven pups died because you wanted to buy a ticket to the city."

I stopped breathing. "I... I had to survive. It was just business."

"And this," Vera said, picking up the silver knife, "is just art."

She approached the furs. She didn't look angry. She looked focused. Inspired.

"I saved you from them because their teeth are messy," Vera explained, looming over me. "They would have torn you apart in anger. There is no lesson in that. No balance."

She reached out and ripped my shirt open, exposing my chest.

"But here," she touched the tip of the cold silver knife to the skin over my sternum. "Here, we can make it mean something. We can carve the names of the seven pups into your ribs. We can etch their memory into your marrow."

"No," I whimpered, tears leaking from my eyes. I couldn't move. I couldn't fight. "Please. I learned my lesson. I'll go back. I'll fix it."

"You can't fix a shattered pot, Jax," Vera said softly. "But you can use the shards to make a mosaic."

She pressed the knife down.

It burned. It burned hotter than the freezing wind. I tried to scream, but the tea had paralyzed my throat. All I could do was watch.

"Don't worry," Vera whispered, her eyes alight with a terrifying creativity. "I’m going to take my time. I’m going to make you beautiful."

The knife slid through my skin and scraped against my breastbone. *Skritch. Skritch.*

It was the same sound she had made with the others. The sound of justice. The sound of karma collecting its due.

As the darkness encroached on the edges of my vision, I realized the terrible truth. I wasn't the guest in the Ivory Atelier. I never was.

I was the scrimshaw. And the carving had just begun.