Her fingers were stretched long, making branch-like shadows dance across the snow. She didn’t notice him, and he hovered ten paces away, trapped in indecision. Should he speak, should he approach, should he walk away?

He settled on clearing his throat.

She startled, whipping toward him with wide, golden eyes. They were bloodshot from exhaustion, but when they found his face, they didn’t waver.

They never did.

Her nose twitched. She lowered her hands. “It … is you.”

He nodded. Words suddenly seemed impossible. Both because his throat had stopped working and because he couldn’t think of anything to say. He wished he had his Carawen cloak still. He wished he had armor.

She moved first, taking a cautious step. Then two. Her gaze, unabashed, scanned over him, and he found himself doing the same. She was not the girl he had met two months ago on a dusty road beside Veñaza City. Nor was she the Threadwitch who had broken his spine and stabbed him in the heart. She was not even the Weaverwitch who had dragged him into an Origin Well because her resolve was stronger than death’s.

He didn’t know who she was now, and he could see from the faint pinching on her brow that she felt the same. It took her four steps to reach him. “You found me,” she said.

“Always,” he replied, his voice strained. Having her so near was … not painful, but something close to it, and he had no idea how to proceed. For a month, all he’d wanted was to be with her again. Now that he had found her, he found himself lost.

He had forgotten how big she was. Not physically, but the general essence of her. She filled the entirety of this snowy space, somehow sharpening the edges of it like a lens clears sight. The sun shone brighter. The air bit colder. The scar beside her eye flickered like a real tear.

He could not stop staring at it—that scar. Or her eyes. Or her lips. They were pinker than he remembered, as were her cheeks, flushed with winter cold. And maybe with something more, although he could not find a word for it.

Her hand lifted. She reached for his face, but he caught her wrist before she could touch him, break him, shatter him like ice atop a stream. His eyes moved to the damage on her palms. Frostbite. Or burns. Or both. “You’re hurt.”

“It will heal,” she replied, but now it was her voice that was strained. Her cheeks flushed brighter. Her nose wiggled.

Then she leaned in, a quick, almost frightened movement, and pressed her lips to his jaw.