One moment she was beside me, and the next the air was cold and empty and she was gone, her long stride taking her out of the kitchen and into the keep. I rose, hoping the pup did not choose that moment to defecate, and scrambled for the stairs. She moved with a speed that was impossible to follow at a walk, and so I ran, my footsteps ringing against the stone until the sound forced me to slow. The last I saw of her was a flash of bright silver as she mounted another flight of stairs. I stopped at the bottom, panting. This was the other tower, the one with the candle that burned against all logic, and the stairs climbed up into darkness. I sat at the foot, the pup mewling from the unexpected abuse, and did not follow.

Her skin burned where the girl’s fingers had touched her.

Burned, and the cold did little to ease the pain of it.

The door was locked behind her, and the window was open, the ghost lamp burning near the sill. The roses bloomed around it in a white lake, save for the rose that ran through her veins, red as the blood of the wolves she could not save, redder than the blood of the men who’d died to avenge them.

How many years had it been since someone had touched her like that, thoughtlessly, without fear? How many winters had passed outside of this one while she paced the snows? How many springs?

The girl’s face floated before her.

She had a half-tamed, feral look to her. It was hard to picture her in a city somewhere, her hair brushed smooth and her eyes calm. The girl had too much of the mountain in her to thrive anywhere else, and yet . . .

The Huntress recognized that look. She had seen it in her own eyes, the last time she had looked in a mirror, however many lost springs ago that had been. Reckless, hungry, wild. A wolf in a cage.

She knew a thing or two about cages.

Freedom will bring you no joy, because the price of freedom will be the loss of one you cannot bear to lose.

“No more,” she said. A breath of wind rustled the rose vines, and she thought she heard the witch’s laughter. “No more memories. No more words.”

A rose for a rose, whispered the vines.

“What do you know of loss?” she asked the witch. “Who were you to judge me?”

The wind sighed.

The Huntress closed her hand around the nearest vine, willing the past to stay where she had left it, bleeding out in a bed of green spring moss.