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snake. Beautiful in a plain way, like a barren tree against a dark sky. Her long hair was captured in a braid that hung over her shoulder. Her thin face was edged with freckles. Her eyes were dark, and I couldn’t discern their color. Those eyes fixed on me now as she considered my question with utter seriousness.
    “We had a dog once,” she said, choosing her words as if she were arguing for something. Arguing with me or with herself, I didn’t know which.
    I listened. I licked my lip and tasted blood.
    “It was a pitiful little thing with half a tail and button-black eyes,” she continued. “It chased the chickens and made a nuisance of itself, and once it got lost in the forest and we couldn’t find it. Eventually, it came back with one leg dragging. It was shivering and sick. We don’t have time to take care of sick pets, but my mother nursed that little thing back from the brink of death. I asked her why, and she said life was precious. She said we couldn’t forget that.”
    I saw it all in my mind’s eye. I saw her, a little girl with eyes just as fierce, and a puppy, wriggly and small, with a drooping tail and wet nose. I saw the puppy in the snow and a little girl with eyes full of hope. Something in my chest ached.
    “Did it live?” I asked.
    “She,” the girl said, and her face lightened as if she’d just uncovered a fact long-forgotten. “I remember—it was a female. Snowball. She died of old age last winter.”
    How harsh was this world that she forgot so easily a dog that had only died a year ago? I shivered, and as I shivered, pain shot across my back like fire.
    The girl saw it, too. She stepped closer. “Take off your shirt.”
    I looked at her, startled by the command.
    Her face creased with an expression that appeared to be exasperation. “I’ve just told you—I’m not letting you die. You’re weak with fever, and I need to tend to that wound. Take off your shirt.”
    I did as she commanded without a word. She crept closer to me, so close I could feel her warmth. I stared at the barn floor as she studied my back. I heard the swish of water as she retrieved the bucket and mixed the herbs in it, then the dribble of droplets as she withdrew a rag.
    “This will help.” She pressed the hot herbal water to my back, and I hissed in pain as heat met the injuries. Streaks of fire shot across my skin and down my arms. I panted, holding in a scream.
    When she’d finished, I crawled the few steps to my straw bed and collapsed. She dropped my shirt beside me and picked up the basket, setting it by my head.
    “There’s food in the basket for you,” she said. “I’ll bring you more in the morning. Stew, if we have it.” She grabbed the dirty rags and turned to go.
    “I’m sorry,” I said.
    She stopped.
    “For—for jumping you like that,” I continued. “I thought you wanted to hurt me.”
    Her shoulders were stiff, but she didn’t leave. She didn’t say anything, either.
    The silence swelled, thickened. I stared at her back, and I saw her strength, her determination, written in every line of her body. Admiration rose in me.
    “What’s your name?”
    Did she flinch? I couldn’t be sure. At first I thought she wasn’t going to reply, and then, so quietly I almost missed it, she said, “Lia.”
    “Lia.” I repeated the name. It was simple, plain, and sharp on the tongue. There was a beauty to it, the same kind of stark beauty that haunted this wilderness. “My family called me Gabe.”
    She didn’t respond. She went out into the snow, and I heard the door lock behind her.
     
     
    THEN
     
     
    THE PRISON WAS cold. Hallways pressed in close. The walls squeezed tight around me. My chest constricted as doors clanged shut behind me and the exit vanished, and panic scrambled in my lungs and ran up my throat in words.
    “No, no, no,” I gasped. “Please.”
    Nobody listened.
    Two guards escorted me through the labyrinth of stone. One strode ahead, whistling tunelessly. The other