The dreams of spring came every night now, and every night I failed to reach the body in the meadow.

“I’m sorry for waking you.”

Juniper shrugged, then pushed past me.

“Catch your breath,” I warned her. “You’ll need it.”

Ahead of us rose a forbidding stretch of white wasteland that I remembered from my descent. Far up it, clinging to the white like little black ants, struggled a line of tiny figures. I knew from my time with the Huntress that distances in the mountains were deceiving. Avery and the rest of the villagers could be a day ahead of us or more. They had the luxury of taking turns breaking trail, and more food besides. I squinted. They were moving carefully, and with good reason. It was no coincidence that I remembered that stretch.

“Look.” I pointed, and Juniper followed the line of my hand in time to see a wall of white break away from the cliff, sending up a cloud of snow and setting off a rumble that we could hear from here. The figures were far enough away to escape unharmed, but an avalanche was a bad sign. If one part of the slope was unsteady, the rest could be, too, and half a mountain of snow had just filled the small valley between us and the trail. Juniper took a step toward me, forgetting her anger in fear.

“Are we safe here?” she asked. Plumes of snow were still rising into the sky.

“We’re not safe anywhere out here. That’s why you should go home. I shouldn’t have let you come.”

“You don’t get to let me do anything.”

“We’re never going to catch up with them in time. Go back and tell Aspen we failed.”

“No.”

“You know what we’ll find if we’re too late, don’t you?” I asked her. “Death. You don’t know what she’s capable of. What her beasts are capable of.”

“Or maybe we’ll find her body, and the bodies of her beasts. You don’t know what the Locklands are capable of, either.”

I flinched at the cold fury in her voice, and at the images her words conjured.

“Or we’ll be lost out here and die of cold and hunger,” I said. “We’ll have to go miles out of our way now, and we could lose their trail entirely. Nobody will find our bodies, I promise you that, except the crows and foxes.”

“You should never have come home.” Her words echoed Aspen’s.

“You’re right. It was so stupid of me to want to save my father. I’m a terrible, terrible person for daring to think that I could bring one bit of good into this goddamned awful world.”

“Go on. Feel sorry for yourself. I tried that for a while too after you were taken prisoner.” Juniper crossed her arms over her chest, sneering the last word.