“Wrap another blanket around him,” I told my sisters, fear chilling my heart further. I wanted to ask him where he had found this flower, and I wanted to ask him what had happened to Avery’s father and brother and why they had not stopped to skin the white wolf, but his cheeks were flushed with fever.

I put the rose in a vase of water on the kitchen table and helped my sisters carry my father to his bed. Aspen kept sneaking cautious looks at me out of the corner of her large, doe’s eyes, and I wondered what she had seen on my face. Wondered, but did not ask, because the wounds in my palm were strangely chilled and a skin of ice had formed over the water in the vase despite the warmth of the fire.

•   •   •

I did not tell my sisters about the wolf.

I lay awake long into that night, fearing my dreams, but when they finally came I dreamt of spring. Meltwater ran down the mountains into our valley, washing away memories of winter, blood, and Avery Lockland. I walked through a newly green field and for the first time since my mother’s death I felt light.

“Rowan.” Juniper shook my shoulder. Her breath steamed in the air. I hovered in the warm green space of the dream for a moment longer.

“Father?” I asked, sitting up in a tangle of sheets as yesterday came back to me.

“Sleeping,” she said in a hushed voice. Her pale face shone in the darkness. “Listen.”

Wind battered the thatch. It rustled through the walls, worrying the chinks between stone and board and prying at the shutters. Behind the wind, carried down from the foothills by the blizzard’s wrath, came the sound of wolves. Juniper’s hand tightened on mine. “There are so many of them,” she said.

“And a door between us.” I squeezed her hand. “We will be safe.” I tucked her back into bed and lit a candle, illuminating the small room where the three of us slept. Juniper’s eyes closed in the comforting promise of the light, and Aspen slept on.

I was wide awake. Doors were made of wood, and wood was not as substantial as people gave it credit for. Wooden ships were supposed to separate people from the water, and look what had happened to my father’s fleet.

I shoved my feet into rabbit-fur slippers and crept into the kitchen. The banked coals glowed, and the sound of the wolves was louder. My rose gleamed on the table, its stem encased in a block of ice. In the darkness, with the wolves at the door, I found it harder to erase the memory of the thorns. I took my father’s sword down from the mantle and sat by the coals with the blade across my knees while my candle cast its feeble glow over the once familiar shadows of the room.