“Is there really nothing I can do for him?” I asked. “Nothing?”

Aphra turned in the doorway. “Love him,” she said. “For someone who has grown up hating himself and fearing that there’s nothing for him in this world but pain, there is no greater gift. Do you understand?”

I nodded, but I didn’t say another word. Not while I tucked the blanket up around his chin, not while I brushed his hair from his face, not while I relit the fire. Lady Aphra’s words echoed in my mind, but I forced them out and focused on nothing but the way the shadows played across North’s face.

I had half of North’s story now, but I knew the other half of it wouldn’t come as easily. The secret of his pain ran deeper than I could have imagined. Who was Wayland North, I thought, and how many layers would I be forced to peel away before I actually found him?

I was fairly ravenous by the time one of the older girls brought in dinner. It was only sandwiches and milk, but I was so hungry I practically inhaled the contents of the plate. When I finished my own, I drank North’s milk as well, surprised to find it still so cool after being next to the fire.

I thought about mending the threadbare fabric of his cloaks, but the events of the day had relit my desire to complete the single one, still unfinished on the loom. North deserved so much better than his ugly, battered cloaks—I wanted something to show the story of his life as I had seen it, without the gaping holes and tears that constantly ate away at him.

As I wove near the fire, its flickering light cast moving shadows over my loom. My eyes drifted over to North, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest. It was useless—I couldn’t focus on the strands of blue that I was binding together; and I could hardly pay attention to each drop of rain I was forming around the shape of the dragon. When I looked at my hands again, the blue yarn seemed to glow in my hands.

I dropped the yarn and pushed myself away from it. The entire cloak seemed to blur in my eyes, a mass of color and light.

Falling to my knees again, I took up the spool of red thread and began blending it haphazardly with the blue. As the fire of the dragon came to life, so did the fire in the hearth. It crackled and hissed, billowing out for a moment. In his sleep, North began to mumble.

The thread fell from my lifeless fingers. I breathed in the cool air of the cabin, but the heat inside me was too much; there was little I could do but crawl toward the bedding, trembling and crying as I wrapped myself in its heavy layers.

It was only a short while before I woke again, my mind hazy with sleep and something else. The room was darker than before; the fire had died down to mere touches of warmth and light. My hands and feet felt stiff and cold. I brought my knees up to my chest and tried to rub some feeling back into my limbs.

Cold, I thought. Cold, cold, cold.

I woke several more times after that—or maybe I wasn’t even awake, I couldn’t be sure. The world around me felt like a feverish dream. Everything was slow and so, so painful. I sat up and dragged my bedding loudly across the wooden floor until it was directly in front of the fire. I picked up a log from the small pile, but it fell through my hands and thudded loudly against the floor. There was no feeling in my fingers, my palms, my arms. I braced my side against the wall and slid down, forcing my knees to stop straining and aching.

The rest was a blur of sound and agony. I must have pushed the log into the fireplace and sparked something, because the next time I woke, it was to Lady Aphra frantically calling my name and pulling me out of the fire I had started.

“Sydelle!” She was shouting. “Sydelle, wake up!”

I tried to open my eyes, to let her know how badly I hurt all over, but all I could mumble was “terrible, terrible cold” because it was all I could feel and think. Hundreds, thousands, millions of needles pricked my skin, and I let out a cry of anguish. Worse than breaking my arm, worse than falling onto fire-hot rocks. Worse than anything I had ever felt.

“Wayland!” she yelled. “Wake up!”

North’s face hovered above me, but there were black blotches floating in my vision. It wasn’t until he took my face between his hands that my sight momentarily cleared. Eyes, nose, lips, cheeks, gloves. Gloves. He had put his gloves back on.

“Syd,” he said. His voice sounded much closer, and I was beginning to feel his hand rubbing hard circles on my chest, over my heart. My eyes closed, too heavy to keep open.

“What did she have?” North demanded. “What did she eat? Drink?”

“It was just milk and a sandwich,” Lady Aphra said. “The healer is coming; it’s taking her a while to get up the hill with the storm.”

“She doesn’t have time to wait,” North said sharply. “Go get me some of the thyme and heartroot from your garden. Get my bag and find me a bloody bowl, please!”

“The snow—” Lady Aphra began. Yes, the snow, the snow. My mind clung to the word deliriously, even as my entire chest constricted with immeasurable pain, and I cried. The snow…

Something hit the ground beside my face. I felt it shake the floor, but the voice that accompanied it was much harder to distinguish.

“Pale…pulled her out…hands…”

A pair of strong arms pulled me up from the floor, though my limbs were dead weight. I was a lump of skin and bones, lifeless, freezing. Something warm wrapped around me, something red that I could sense beneath my closed eyelids.

I felt North before I heard him. That same tingling warmth that I associated with him seeped under my skin, even if just for a moment. My back was pressed against his chest, and his tall frame completely enveloped me. I felt his heart racing.