I gazed again at the mountains and the peaks above us, and as I watched a beam of sunlight broke through the clouds and fell on the keep’s tallest turret. It stained the granite red, a pale hue that tricked the eye with a parody of warmth, breathtaking against the grays and blacks and whites of winter and so untouchable I could have sobbed had the tears not threatened to freeze to my cheeks. I tried to picture what the keep had looked like when banners flew from the turrets and laughter filled the halls and the stables smelled of hay and horse while the torches spilled light out into the winter night. There was beauty there, beyond the ache of solitude. Beside me, the Huntress fell to one knee.

I suppose it is that beautiful, I thought, before I realized she was scraping the snow away from the ice beneath our feet. I thought of the stitches straining against her skin, and a sharp pain of longing shot through me, followed by fear. I remembered the dark green of the vine against her torn flesh, and the sharp pull of the rose in my palm.

“Look.”

I knelt beside her and tugged the furs more tightly around my shoulders with my good hand. She scraped the last of the snow free from the ice, and there beneath the surface swam a shoal of fish. For a moment I was back on the wharf, rough wood against the thin cloth of my summer dress, watching the few fish who dared brave the busy waters of the harbor while Sara, or sometimes my father, spoke to the men and women on the ships.

There was something different about these fish. I leaned closer, then gasped. They did not move. They were frozen, round eyes fixed on some distant hope, their scales glittering in the high, clear light of the winter sun.

“Look beneath them.”

Sure enough, past the frozen school, partially obscured by the blue-black depths, swam a second shoal. These circled lazily, dark bodies heavy with cold. I looked up to find her watching me. Eyes shouldn’t be that green, I thought, momentarily arrested. There was a question there, written somewhere between the bottomless black of iris and curl of eyelash. I opened my mouth to speak, and the wind snatched away both the words and the thoughts that formed them. Kneeling, she looked much younger, more like a girl and less like Winter herself. Kneeling, she was harder to hate, and I watched, transfixed, as a flake of snow melted on her cheek. Was I imagining the sudden flush beneath her skin, or was that just another trick of the light?

“Are they alive?” I asked.

“What do you think?”