Her hand tightened around mine at the last word and I looked at the ground, not wanting to meet her eyes. Without meaning to, I could see the firm line of muscle on her stomach, and below that the slight curve of her hips. She was as lean as her wolves, but in the firelight that leanness had turned into something far more dangerous.

It is magic, just like the lock at the top of the stairs. Just like the roses. Magic, not feeling.

“Rowan.” She said my name again. I knew with devastating certainty that what I saw in her eyes in that moment would haunt me the rest of my life, no matter what else passed between us, no matter how deep my hatred, no matter how many years and leagues separated me from this place.

“Turn,” I told her. The needle slipped in my hand and I caught it, staring at the bright tip. Leaves rustled. The quiet space I’d found in the snowdrift crept in and I stared at my palm. It remained unblemished, but there was an odd feeling, like building pressure, where the thorn had pierced me. Ignoring it, I placed my hand over the longest of her gashes, trying to count the number of stitches I would have to brave to finish what I’d started, and feeling foolish and fearful and all too aware of the unreal rustling that never strayed far from the edges of hearing.

My palm itched.

My palm burned.

Something in me moved and then a white-hot lance of pain shot out of my hand and into her shoulder. The Huntress threw back her head in agony and I tried to pull my hand away, but it was bound to her by a snaking vine of thorns.

“Don’t. Move,” she gasped.

As if I could move.

As if any of this were possible, or even within the realm of reason. The thin, green shoot sprouted thorns as it grew into her flesh, long and curving and black where they pierced her skin, and then they tightened, a mockery of my efforts to sew her up.

Then it was over.

I lifted my hand slowly, staring at the small, red dot of blood at the center and trying not to look at the tangle of briars on her back. Her breathing steadied. I clung to the sound, my eyes transfixed by the impossibility of what they had just seen.

“Rowan.”

I looked up from my hand. The Huntress stared at me with a horror I felt mirrored in my bones. A strange sound filled the kitchen, a high thin chattering that stopped, for a moment, when I bit my tongue, blossoming into pain and copper in my mouth as my teeth resumed their chatter. At least the sound drove out the rustling leaves.