“I will not.”

“Will the Bear know you are free?”

“No,” he said. “Unless Midnight tells him.”

“I don’t think she will meddle so,” said Vasya. “She watches.”

In his silence this time she could hear a thought unspoken.

“Tell me,” she said.

“You needn’t go back to Moscow,” he said. “You’ve seen enough horror, and caused enough pain. The Bear will do his best to see you slain now: the worst death he can devise, especially if he finds out I remembered. He knows I would grieve.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It is our fault he is free. He must be bound again.”

“With what?” Morozko demanded. The candle leaped up with a violet flame. His eyes were the color of the fire; his outlines seemed to fade, until he was wind and night made flesh. Then he shook off the mantle of power and said, “I am winter; do you think I will have any power in summertime Moscow?”

“You needn’t make it cold in here to score a point,” said Vasya, resentfully. “We have to do something.” She took her own clothes from his hands. “Thank you for these,” she added, and went to the inner room to dress. At the threshold, she called back, “Can you even go out into the summertime world, winter-king?”

His voice behind her was reluctant. “I don’t know. Perhaps. For a little time. If we are together. The necklace is destroyed but—”

“But we don’t need it anymore,” she finished, realizing. The tie between them now—layers of passion and anger, fear and fragile hope—was stronger than any magical jewel.

Dressed, she returned to the doorway. Morozko was standing where she’d left him. “We could perhaps get to Moscow, but to what end?” he said. “If the Bear finds out we are coming, he will delight in setting a trap, so that I must watch, helpless, while you are slain. Or perhaps one where you must watch while your family suffers.”

“We will just have to be clever,” said Vasya. “We got Muscovy into this; we are going to get her out.”

“We ought to return to my own lands, come to him in winter when I am stronger. Then we’d have a chance of victory.”

“He surely knows that,” Vasya returned. “Which means that whatever he is planning, he must do it this summer.”

“It might be your undoing.”

She shook her head. “It might. But I am not going to abandon my family. Will you come with me?”

“I have said you are not alone, Vasya, and I meant it,” he said. But he sounded unhappy.

She managed the ghost of a smile. “You are not alone either. By all means, let us continue repeating it until one of us believes it.” Briskly, she managed to say without tremor, “If I go out there, will the village try to kill me?”

“No,” said Morozko, and then he smiled. “But a legend might be born.”

She flushed. But when he extended a hand, she took it.