“The Bear is free in Rus’,” said Vasya instead. “He has set the dead to walking. We must help my cousin, help my brother. I came to get your help.”

Still Morozko said nothing. He had not drawn further away from her, but his glance had turned inward, remote, unreadable.

She added with sudden anger, “You owe us your help; you are the reason that the Bear is free in the first place. You didn’t need to bargain with him. I walked out of the pyre myself.”

A little light came into his face. “I wondered if you would. But it was still worth it. When you drew me back to Moscow, I knew then.”

“Knew what?”

“That you could be a bridge between men and chyerti. Keep us from fading, keep men from forgetting. That we weren’t doomed after all, if you lived, if you came into your power. And I had no other way to save you. I—deemed it worth the risk, whatever came after.”

“You might have trusted me to save myself.”

“You meant to die. I saw it in you.”

She flinched. “Yes,” she said softly. “I suppose I did mean to die. Solovey had fallen; he died under my hands, and—” She broke off. “But my horse would have called me foolish to give up. So, I changed my mind.”

The wild simplicity of the night was fading into endless complications. She had never imagined that he’d set his realm and his freedom at hazard purely for love of her. Part of her had wondered anyway, but of course he was king of a hidden kingdom, and he could not make his decision so. It was the power in her blood he’d wanted.

She was tired and cold and she ached.

She felt more alone than before.

Then she was angry at her own self-pity. For cold there was a remedy, and damn this new awkwardness between them. She slid again beneath the heavy, heaped-up blankets, turned her back to him. He did not move. She balled her body up on itself, trying to get warm alone.

A hand, light as a snowflake, brushed her shoulder. Tears had gathered in her eyes; she tried to blink them away. It was too much: his presence, cold and quiet, the reasonable and practical explanations, to contrast with the overwhelming memory of passion.

“No,” he said. “Do not grieve tonight, Vasya.”

“You would never have done it,” she said, not looking at him. “This—” A vague gesture took in the bathhouse, them. “If you had been able to remember who I was. You would never have saved my life if I hadn’t been—if I hadn’t been—”

His hand left her shoulder. “I tried to let you go,” he said. “Again and again I tried. Because every time I touched you—even looked at you—it drew me nearer to mortality. I was afraid. And yet, I could not.” He broke off, continued. “Perhaps if you hadn’t been what you are, I would have found it in myself to let you die. But—I heard you scream. Through all the mists of my weakness, after the fire in Moscow, I heard you. I told myself I was being practical, I told myself you were our last hope. I told myself that. But I thought of you in the fire.”