We had ridden back to the keep, and I had laughed in her arms as she pointed out the smaller details of her forests: prints there, a tuft of hair here, water flowing deep beneath the drifts.

I lost her when we passed beneath the shadow of the roses. I felt her stiffen, and I knew before I turned to look that she wore her other face: cold, implacable, inhuman. She helped me off the bear with hands of stone, and I walked away from her, the thrill of the hunt fading into sore muscles while she checked over the wolves for injuries. I fled to a place where she would not hear my heart breaking.

“She kissed me,” I told the dress. She kissed me, and she felt the world tilt, too.

I stared into the brass mirror I’d found in one of the empty rooms. My eyes were no longer bloodshot, and my hair, clean and combed to the best of my ability, curled in the heat from my fire. I remembered something my sister had said in the months before I left.

“Wear the red dress, Rowan.”

I had let her lace it up, hating the game, but there was nothing playful in her face when I’d turned to grumble at her. “What?”

“Trust me on this, Row. If you ever decide you do want Avery, or any other man for that matter, wear red. It’s . . . it’s your color.”

“Aspen,” I said to the empty room, “you’ll laugh, but I need you now.”

I slid into the dress. The wool was so finely woven it felt more like linen, and I laced it up as best I could with trembling fingers. The bodice was lower than anything I’d ever worn, though still modest by city standards, showing only the barest hint of cleavage, and it fitted my hips as if it had been made for me. I opened my palm and watched the rose petals ripple in some unseen breeze, wondering if by some fae trick it had been made for me, just as my room was always clean and there was always wood stacked against the hearth.

Beneath the dress I had found a pair of simple shoes, and these too fit, the leather supple and soft. I had nothing to put on my face, and I had lost all my hairpins, so I did what I could with a few braids and twists, my fingers remembering skills I’d thought they’d forgotten. When I was finished, I looked into the mirror.