The Heartwood starts soft and sweet and turns them to hunters

Dragomir was struck not by the strange words she spoke, but by the voice that spoke them. In the intervening days he had not forgotten his sister's voice. He'd once listened raptly as she spun sorry stories upon the wind to entertain him when he could not move. To him, they were the most wonderful of stories, and hers the most wonderful of voices. For a long time he stood there, saying nothing, merely staring.

Because that voice could not belong to this haggard and starved creature. It would confirm not his worst fears, but his second worst—that she had been taken against her will in some fashion, to return so dilapidated and worn.

Yet the glint of grey in her eyes was unmistakable, and there, the twin fangs that snagged her lower lip. Dragomir's heart beat unsteadily in his chest as he stumbled a step forward, then another, choking out a sorrowful, Isi?