No no no no no, my mind chittered. Not now. I could not freeze to death, now that I had decided to stay. I flung my arm over my face to shield my eyes from the worst of the storm. I had two choices. I could try my luck crossing the lake in a whiteout, or I could hug the shore, which would eventually bring me to the keep. Assuming, of course, eventually occurred before I froze to death. I tried to visualize the bowl of the crater. The lake had to be at least a mile from shore to shore, but it was longer than it was wide. To go around could take hours, and it was nearly full dark.

I did not have hours, and I would not survive out here at night.

I had to get home.

At the thought, the rose stirred in my blood, nodding like a blossom toward the sun.

There.

In a way, it was a blessing that my legs refused to hold my weight for long. The wind was weaker this close to the ice, and would have knocked me over if I had dared to stand. I moved one limb at a time. Beneath me swam the Huntress’s fish, trapped in a murky twilight, fins churning slowly through the black.

The strength of the rose’s pull faded as the cold bit deeper and deeper. Strange shapes formed in the gusts, and ice gathered on my lashes, fragmenting my vision. Once, I thought I saw the Huntress astride a white horse, her head thrown back in laughter, a hawk on her wrist. Then the wall of white changed, and she was only snow.

I crawled on.

The snow parted again, and I saw my mother. The memory was piercingly real. She had my thick, wild black hair, and Aspen’s lips. I reached for her, but she looked past me, through me, and then she too was gone.

Even the wolves were made of snow. They circled me, howling, only to vanish when I turned my head. I stopped looking and kept my eyelids closed but for a sliver, to protect them from the cold. The howling grew louder and more insistent. “I’m here,” I tried to shout, but the words were ripped from my mouth by the wind.

The first time I fell flat on my chest, I struggled back up, my muscles as unpredictable as water. The second time I fell, I managed to roll over and haul myself on my elbows. The third time, I stayed down, and the cruelty of my body’s betrayal, now that I had chosen life, bit deeper than the cold.

Where was the Huntress? Where were her hounds, or her roses, or any of the other beasts that roamed her halls?