She remembered the taste of melting snow. It had dripped from the trees, darkening her horse’s mane and staining her breeches. Melt-water ran in rills and rivulets, stirring the dark, damp scents of soil and new growth.

Locke rode a blood-red mountain bay. His blue eyes watched her, his full lips determined. Poets sang about such boys, she thought, spurring her mare forward. There were no poets, here.

The dogs found the bear as the spring sun set the trees alight, gold spinning webs around the red and green buds. On his hind legs, the bear stood taller than two men, and winter had not wasted the muscle on his enormous frame.

“Call off the dogs,” said Brendan, his voice as close to her now as it had felt far off then.

Call them off, she willed the past, but the wish did not change history this time, either.

“No,” she’d said instead, and she remembered the feel of that cold smile. “Locke, I swear upon my life that if you bring me that bear’s heart I will be yours until my dying breath.”

Quince’s horse shifted, and the look that passed between them burned her through the years, wasted, useless, a mockery of feeling.

Of course he died.

Of course he charged, his horse’s eyes wild with fear as he raised his spear and sent it toward the beast.

His aim was true, but his arm too weak, or else the bear too strong. The claws ripped him nearly in half, and it had taken all of them to bring the creature down. Three dogs died, too, and she had pressed her fingers to their quivering flanks, their lives fluttering beneath her fingers. Her favorite licked her hand, then shuddered, and she forgot about Locke until Quince laughed.

“Look,” Quince had said, and she had.

The boy lay with his dark hair soaked in blood and his blue eyes wide with shock. His breathing came in fits, and she stood over him, her shadow blocking the sunlight from his eyes.

He said her name and fumbled in the pocket of his jacket with clumsy fingers.

“He brought you a rose,” Quince said, still laughing.

“Perhaps,” she had said, kneeling beside Locke and lifting the flower from his trembling fingers, “he should have brought a second spear instead.”

Chapter Four

Chapter Four