“How can I let it end, when the price of freedom is more loss? You’ve taken everything already.”

The hallway didn’t answer.

“I will not give you my Hounds.”

The wolf at her side looked up, unused to hearing her speak aloud.

“You lost them once, and it didn’t break you,” said the silent castle.

The Huntress bared her teeth.

“I don’t have time for riddles.” She continued pacing, chafing at the pain in her back and the nagging feeling that, after all these years, she was no closer to understanding the curse than she had been when it was cast.

How could she end something she did not understand? How could she know what she couldn’t bear to lose, until she lost it?

It was all madness, like all magic, obeying rules that warped beneath the practitioner’s hand, binding itself to the fabric of the world until there was no way to remove it from the weave.

“Tell me this, at least. What does Rowan have to do with this?”

Wind gusted down the hallway, and she could have sworn she heard a hint of laughter in its high, mad sigh.

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

“Come with me,” the Huntress said, standing in the doorway of the library.

I looked up from the book open across my knees. She wore the clothes I had come to associate with her absences: leather hunting breeches; tall, fur-lined boots; leather jerkin; thick wool tunic; and the heavy bearskin cloak. Her hair hung heavy over one shoulder, loosely confined to a dark braid, and her eyes . . . I looked away.

I should never have spoken to her about Avery. Something had changed. Now, when she looked at me, she saw me, and I had the feeling what she saw no longer looked like the shaking, ragged creature she’d dragged in from the cold. Or rather, dragged into the cold.

“Come with you where?”

“I want to show you something.”

I frowned at her. Her eyes flicked up to my furrowed brow, and the corners of her mouth twitched up in something that might have been a smile.

“You have been in this library for days. Even your wolf pup is bored, and I am tired of resting. Come outside.”

I glanced at the shuttered window. Light spilled from the edges of the shutter, falling across the golden eyes of the pup. When had her eyes turned gold? I wondered. She whined softly and left off worrying the frayed edge of the carpet. Besides, it wasn’t as if I had found anything in my research. I set the book aside and stood.