"Move your hand," Martina said from the threshold, voice hard with worry.
My fingers twitched under the thin blanket. The world tasted of iron and old cold. I forced a cough that sounded small and raw.
"She must be worse than I thought," Martina muttered. "Stay, Rosie. I'll be back with stew."
"No." My mouth made the sound a seven-year-old would make. My voice fit the body. It was small and sure. "Please."
There was a pause. Footsteps shuffled away on broken flagstones. I listened until they faded. Then I reached.
The bun was warm against my palm. The coat smelled faintly of smoke and rosemary. Whoever left them thought the town had decided to let me freeze. Whoever left them had second thoughts.
"Don't choke," Martina said before she left. "Eat slow. No running off after coin."
"I won't," I said, and my ribs tightened around the stolen warmth.
I ate like a child who had to prove she had a right to food. Bread crumbled in my mouth. My jaw worked on purpose, on reflex. I learned faces and sounds by copying them. That was the trick when you wore someone else's skin.
A window of light fell through the shrine's cracked roof and painted a line across my small hands. Dust swirled in it like a road. I let my mind slide back through a memory like a jagged map.
A cliff edge, wind that tore gloves off hands, a
