Afternoon shadows lengthened. We passed fields covered with rotting straw against the cold. As twilight sank down over us and the moon rose, a substantial village rose like illusion in the evening mist. Past clusters of thatched huts rose wood buildings with glass windows through which lamplight shone. We turned aside and rode to an ice-rimed meadow. Two cottages posed picturesquely on the bank of a stream, linked by a long enclosed walkway. Smoke rose from the chimney of one cottage. Devyn led us to the cottage with no chimney and thus no fire.

Lamps, seen through glass windows, guttered out as we approached. The door opened and men hurried out who had clearly been making everything ready for us. Their faces looked ghostly in moonlight. They made a deep courtesy.

My body ached, stiff with cold and with emotion I dared not claim.

Vai touched my arm, his forehead wrinkled with concern. “Catherine, let’s go in.”

Yet then my mother’s brother spoke. “Was there ever peace for her, before the hunter came to kill her?”

My gaze flashed to him. “They knew peace for a few short years.”

“The magister calls you Catherine. Is that the name Tara gave you?”

“Yes. She named me Catherine.”

His mouth was creased with sorrow; his weathered face held many lines, and none made me think he had ever laughed much. “Catherine,” he repeated. “Named after Hecate, the goddess of gates, who guards the threshold between the living and the dead. True it is, that the hunter sired you. But it is sure you are my sister’s, for I see Tara in every line of you. I loved her once. But she left us and she never looked back.”

“They loved me,” I said hoarsely, for I needed him to know that. I clasped the hilt of my sword in one hand and pressed the other to the locket hanging at my breast. “She was pregnant again with another child, with Daniel’s child, who would have been my brother or sister. They didn’t mean to leave me behind. They meant us to all be together.”

His words slipped into an older rhythm, as if only he and I were awake in the whole wide gloaming. “From what cloth is longing woven? Is it silver? Is it gold? Yet even fine garments wear out, while longing still clads me.”

His words caught in my heart and, on an impulse I could not control, I extended a hand toward him. He reined his pony away as if even the thought of my touch might contaminate him.

“Catherine, let them go,” said Vai, grabbing my mount’s bridle.

I was too stunned to protest as Devyn and his soldiers rode into the village for the night. Vai sent the local men away, then drew me inside the cottage and shut and latched the door.