I stopped trying to speak and flung myself on top of her, letting her arms wrap around me while I tangled my hands in her hair and pressed my lips to her cheek, then her neck, her collarbone, and the spot between her breasts where a single red rosebud lay, already fading. The sound of her beating heart filled my ears, and she tilted my face up to hers and kissed me hard. The world faded to a small round room at the top of a tower, where spring had come at last.

Epilogue

Epilogue

They say the winter rose still blooms, up there on the highest slopes, where the winter storms scour ice and snow into the shapes of beasts and the tops of the mountains scrape the stars. Some say the Huntress died that day. Others say that she lives on, stalking the snows as she always has, looking for the lost, the unwary, and the bold alike, and that the stories that came down from the mountains that spring were what they’ve always been: stories.

This is what I say. I say the Huntress still rides out, but her horn no longer calls ice down from the cold high places, and the briars that surround her keep no longer bloom in the snow. I say that her halls are no longer dark and empty, but filled with life and laughter, and that the only magic that still lingers is so old we’ve forgotten that it is magic at all.

I would know.

Avery had a change of heart once he woke from whatever spell the witch had placed on him. Perhaps he understood, at last, that we were not responsible for the choices of our fathers, or, more likely, he never quite forgot how near he came to death at my hands at the top of that tower. He returned to Aspen, and their child was born that spring, a blue-eyed, red-faced, squalling baby boy.

My father shed years like old rags when Aspen laid his grandson in his arms. This turned out to be both blessing and curse, for as soon as he recovered his strength and wits he approached me with a plan. Surely the Huntress, now that she was freed from the clutches of a curse, would be interested in opening a line of trade. The furs she could bring from the upper slopes would fetch a fortune in the city, and now that she was mortal, she would need an income. Perhaps a marriage, too, could be arranged, both for myself and for the Huntress. My father knew many wealthy men.

She did not kill him, and neither did I, but he did not suggest marriage or furs again.