Bile rose in the back of my throat, and I held my hand as far away from my body as I could, as if by distancing myself I could deny the thing that lived within me. Gray crowded the corners of the room, gathering like snow clouds.

“No,” I tried to say, but the noise I made was hardly human. I backed away from the Huntress, no longer seeing her, seeing only the red dot at the center of my palm while my other hand scrabbled behind me until it found what it was looking for. I raised the knife I used to chop vegetables and brought it down into the soft meat of my hand, feeling nothing and seeing only the vine, black in the firelight, snaking up the Huntress’s back. I raised the knife again, searching, convinced that if I could find it, if I could pluck the thorn from my poor, violated flesh, I would wake up and this would all have been a nightmare.

She stopped me as I raised the knife for another blow. I strained against her, blood flowing down my wrist, my screams flaying my abused throat until the warmth of her bare shoulder pressed against my mouth and the knife clattered to the floor as she pulled me hard against her, trapping my wounded hand between us as my screams subsided into sobs.

“I want to go home,” I whispered into the shadow of the Huntress’s neck when the sobs, too, faded. She stroked my hair and did not answer, but I heard her thoughts as clearly as if she’d spoken them into my ear.

She could never let me go, now, even if she wanted to.

Another sob shook me. When it passed, I felt the weight of her chin resting on my head, and I gradually became aware of the heat of her body, real and solid, a barrier between me and the roses on her back and the ice lodged somewhere deep within me. My heartbeat slowed to match hers.

I shivered when she pulled away at last, feeling newly exposed, as if the Huntress, terrible as she was, had held off something more terrible still. I must have made a sound, a whimper or some other pathetic animal plea, because her hand went to my cheek with a tenderness I had only ever seen her show to her wolves. I leaned against it. She might have brought me here, but she had not handed me the rose.

“If I had known what he would do, I would never have let your father live,” she said, her tone gentle. “It is death to pluck them. The rest of your village knows that.”

“Then why didn’t you kill him?”

She gave me a sad little smile. “When I found him again, I thought I might. And then I saw you.”