For three days Vera Pallick stood at the edge of the frozen field and watched the house. Her white parka hid her against the snow. Inside that house, someone held her daughter. Vera had seen the small shape once at a window, a hand pressed to the glass. She had not moved since. She could not walk closer. The men inside watched the field. If they saw her staring, they would take the child somewhere she could never find. So she stayed still and made herself part of the landscape. But stillness was not a plan. Every hour, the light shifted and the house stared back. At dusk, a warrior crossed the field toward her. He wore dented armor and a red scar cut down one cheek. He carried an axe loose in his hand. Vera knew him. Garrick Ironhelm had fought beside her husband, before her husband died and the child was stolen. He stopped an arm's length away and did not look at the house. "Three days," Garrick said. "You'll freeze before you free her." "If I move, they hide her," Vera said. Her voice cracked from disuse. "They watch the field." Garrick spat into the snow. "Then give them something else to watch." He raised two fingers and whistled, low and sharp. Above the treeline, a fire bird answered. Ember Ashwing dropped from the gray sky, wings burning orange against the cold. The heat rolled off her in waves. Snow hissed to water where sparks fell. Vera had heard of the fire birds. She had never stood beneath one. "She'll draw their eyes," Garrick said. "Every man in that house will run to the roof to save it from burning. You go in through the back." Vera's chest tightened. "And if they carry her out while they run?" "Then you'll be close enough to follow. Not stuck in a field like a fence post." It was the hard choice she had refused for three days. Stay hidden and safe and useless, or move and risk everything at once. She looked at the window where the small hand had pressed the glass. She chose. "Do it," she said. Garrick loosed a second whistle. Ember Ashwing folded her wings and dove. She skimmed the roof and set the thatch alight. Fire climbed fast. Inside the house, men shouted. The front door burst open. Four of them ran out, buckets swinging, faces turned up at the flames. Vera did not watch the fire. She ran. Bent low, she crossed the open snow while every eye pointed at the sky. She reached the back wall and pressed against the cold stone, breathing hard. No shout came. No one had seen her. Through a narrow window she saw a single lamp. Beneath it, a woman held her daughter tight, backing toward an inner door. The child saw Vera's face and opened her mouth to cry out. Vera had crossed the field. Now only one wall and one guard stood between her and her child.

The back door stood between Vera and her daughter. She grabbed the iron handle and pushed. It held. Locked. Behind her, buckets clattered and men shouted at the burning roof. If she stayed here fumbling, one of them would turn and see her. She pressed her shoulder to the wood and shoved again. Nothing gave. She searched the doorframe with her fingers. A gap ran along the top hinge where the wood had swelled and cracked. Vera dug her nails in and pulled. Frozen splinters bit her hands. She braced one boot against the wall and hauled with her whole weight. The hinge screamed loose. The door sagged. She wedged her fingers into the widened gap and dragged it inward. Inside, the lamp swung. The woman still gripped the child, backing toward the inner door. But she was not a woman. Her skin was packed snow, white and cracked. Red eyes burned in her face. A ragged purple scarf hung at her throat, and a pointed hat sat crooked on her head. Glaciana Frostbite bared a mouth of jagged teeth and hissed. "You should have stayed in your field," Glaciana said. Her voice cracked like ice underfoot. Beside her stood another shape of snow, taller, in a battered top hat. Twig arms jutted from his round body. Frost Blackwell smiled with the same red eyes and the same teeth. "Too late for the mother now," he said. He stepped between Vera and the child. Vera did not stop to think. She lunged past Frost and swung at Glaciana. Her fist struck packed snow. It crumbled and reformed. Glaciana laughed and shoved the girl through the inner door. "Run, Elise," she said. "Run to the cellar." The child obeyed. Vera saw her clearly for the first time. A small girl in a white snow suit, brown hair loose beneath a knit cap. Not frightened of the snow-things at all. Elise looked back at Vera with wide brown eyes, then vanished down the dark stair. Vera drove forward. Frost's twig arms raked her parka and tore it. She ducked under him and reached the stair. Cold rolled up from below. She grabbed the doorframe and looked down into black. "Elise!" she called. Her daughter's name felt strange after so long. The girl had not turned when she called it. Glaciana caught Vera's arm with fingers hard as stone. "She does not know you," the snow-woman said. "She is ours now. She forgot you in the cold." Vera ripped free and threw herself down the stair. She reached the cellar floor and found it empty. A low door stood open in the far wall, snow drifting through it into the night. The child was gone, and the snow-things had taken her out ahead. Vera had broken into the house. She had seen her daughter's face. And her daughter had run from her, into the dark, without knowing who she was.