Snow covered the town in thick, unmoving layers. Roads narrowed into pale tunnels between frozen trees, and most people hurried indoors long before sunset.
At the far edge of town stood a crooked wooden house that rarely drew attention.
Inside that house lived Lily Rowan, a six-year-old girl who had already learned something most children never should—
How to make herself small.
Lily moved carefully through the kitchen on a pair of worn crutches.
Her right leg ended just below the knee, replaced by a small prosthetic limb whose metal joint clicked softly with every step. She had lost the leg in a car accident years earlier—an accident that had also taken her mother.
But the physical pain was the easy part.
Continue on the next page:
