The Huntress turned with her usual grace and set off down the stairs. I followed, grabbing my cloak off the back of the chair. The clothes I wore inside and the clothes I wore outside were much the same, since I rarely ventured further than the courtyard, and besides most of them came from the chest at the foot of the bed, which seemed to contain only winter things. Even the red dress was cut from winter-weight wool. I pushed all thoughts of the dress out of my mind. Something about it unsettled me.

It was late afternoon, and the slanting light of the sun cast the mountain in a sheet of gold. The snow sparkled like gleaming steel, and everything had a sharpness to it, clarity like the edge of a knife framing even the shadows. The iron gate had wrought itself anew, the black stark against the white of the snow and the white of the roses, and I slipped past, careful not to let so much as a rusting flake touch my sleeve. Not that the gate showed any sign of rust. Like the rest of the castle, it defied the touch of age.

The pup peeled away from my side, scenting her brothers and sisters, and the Huntress placed a light finger on my shoulder, halting the command in my throat.

“Let her go,” she said. “She is a wolf, not a dog, and she needs to be with her own kind.”

I wanted to protest. I felt naked without the wolf, but the pack stayed behind. Apparently, wherever we were going did not offer them enough of an incentive to join us. The wind pressed my cloak against me, pushing me after her toward the shore of the lake. There was no sign of the bear, for which I was grateful––not that I would have necessarily seen it against the white of the snow. The wind picked up past the shelter of the walls. It tossed the Huntress’s hair around her face, snarling and gnashing as it tore through my furs. I shoved my hands deeper into my clothes and looked up at the walls. Clouds gathered over the lake as the wind shifted the snow in dunes and drifts. I shivered, and broke into a run to keep up with her.

“Here,” the Huntress said when we reached the middle. The surface of the lake felt different under my feet, and the wind grew even stronger. “Here” was nothing, only windswept ice, and a cold so numbing my lips might as well have belonged to a stranger.