I found the Huntress in a large room that might have been a ballroom or an audience chamber or both. Part of the stone roof had fallen through, leaving a pile of moonlit rubble, and past the rubble, through a sparse fall of snow, was a throne. I froze when I saw her sprawled across it. She looked too natural there. It was like discovering that a dependable plow horse knew how to piaffe, except that the Huntress was as far from a plow horse as any living thing could be. She was royalty, or whatever the mountain equivalent of royalty might be. I had known that, in a way, for all that she had never told me who she’d been. She could read, and hunt, and she radiated power in a way I’d only seen in those born to it. Those traits led to only a few possible conclusions. Seeing her here, though, enthroned, was different. I knew the Huntress.

I did not know this woman.

I backed away, my soft shoes soundless on the floor, ashamed suddenly of my conviction. As a rich merchant’s daughter, I had been good enough for a minor noble down on his luck or an-other wealthy merchant, but never someone like the woman wearing the Huntress’s face. The shame that had followed me ever since we’d fled the city washed over me in a hot, prickling wave.

“Rowan.”

I kept walking.

“Rowan, wait.”

Running footsteps echoed in the room, and it occurred to me through my desolate haze that this was the first time I had ever heard the Huntress’s steps make a sound. I turned in surprise, and then she was close enough for me to see her eyes. They were rimmed with red and wild, and two high dots of color stained her cheekbones. I reached for her, unthinking.

“You,” she said, as if she had only just realized who I was. “Rowan.” Her eyes dropped to the dress, then back to my face. “Rowan,” she said again, like it was the only word she knew.

“What is this room?” I asked her, still aware of the looming presence of the throne behind her. It seemed impossible that I had not discovered this place before, and at the thought the rose in my hand burned.

“My mother’s throne room.”

“Your mother.”

“Yes. My mother. It doesn’t matter now, though.”

“Doesn’t it?” I asked, my chin rising in defiance.

Her hair looked tangled, as if she had sat for hours with it balled up in her fists. “Why should it matter?”

“Because,” I said, wishing I had never laid eyes on this dress, or this room, or the woman in front of me. “Because I keep thinking I know you, and then you go and do something like this.”

“Like what?”