She found me in the library the next day. I was in the middle of a hide-bound journal, half of which had been destroyed by time, water, and something that might have been blood— but the last passage I’d read lingered in my mouth.

At the head of the hunt rode the King’s huntress, a maiden unlike any I had seen in the lowlands. I did not realize, at first, that she was the King’s daughter. The women here are as hard as their men— some harder— and for all that the girl could not have been much older than sixteen, the other hunters deferred to her. She rode as though she had been born on horseback with a hawk on her wrist, and she had the kind of face men broke themselves against. The prince was no exception. I have never seen a man fall so hard or so fast.

The pup pricked her ears toward the door, ceasing her attempts to mangle the carpet long enough to alert me to the Huntress’s arrival. I clutched the book I had been reading to my chest, unsure of what to say to her after all that had passed between us the day before. She walked carefully, and there was an edge to her jaw as she bent to toss the pup a scrap of meat that suggested she, too, was aching from her wounds.

“Shouldn’t you be resting?” I asked, glad of an excuse to break the silence.

“No.”

“But your back . . .” I closed my eyes, wishing I could forget about her wounds and, more importantly, the briars.

“But your hand,” she said, taking the book from me.

I opened my eyes, catching the gentle mockery.

“Look.” She set the book down and began to unbutton her shirt. My mouth went dry, and dread mingled with something else as she slid her shoulder free. I became aware, in a way I had not been the day before, that she had been half-naked the last time I had touched her.

“Give me your hand.”

I held my good hand out to her, and she raised it to the briar that curved over her shoulder.

“Thorn. Leaf. Stem.”

I felt each as she moved my fingers over them, the thorns just scraping my palm, the leaves a soft brush of half-furled green, and the stem smooth where it lay along the red seam of the wound.

“Say it.” She moved my hand in another pass.

“Thorn, leaf, stem,” I said, naming each. I shuddered, and she tightened her grip.

“Say it again.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Thorn, leaf, stem. Ice. Snow.” She loosened her grip on my hand, and I let it fall, hesitating just once on the tip of the vine where a miniature rosebud rested like a jewel. “Be afraid of the things you can’t name. The things you can’t see. Like the lynx behind you.”