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She sighs, relieved, and wrings her hands together to loosen their tension. “You will repair your boots today.”

Abertha stares at her balefully. “I’ll consider the advice.”

“And check them every day.”

“Obviously.”

“And wrap your remaining toes, lest they blacken and break off mid-journey.”

Abertha rolls her eyes. “You need not mother me. I am capable of–”

“Of almost succumbing to infection? Of walking miles with snow in your boot?”

Abertha frowns, then looks at Hector. “Is she always so insufferable?”

Hector grins.

“If you act like an infant, I’ll treat you as such,” Dawsyn says, but Abertha is grinning at her, the amusement clear on her face.

“I cannot imagine anyone less suited to raising infants.”

“And yet, here I am, chaperoning three of them across a mountain,” Dawsyn mutters, rising to her feet. “Now, get ready. Let us see if you can walk without falling on your face.”

Dawsyn waits while Abertha mends her boot and wraps her feet. When each are done, they slowly venture from the gap in the boulders that served as their shelter.

Abertha walks unsteadily.

“It may take some getting used to,” Dawsyn says, leading her out into open air. “My grandmother cut away more than two before she died. She always said the adjustment was difficult.”

Abertha breathes deeply, her nose turned upward. “It is good to be standing at all.”

The forest before them has been reshaped, renewed. That is the beauty that follows the brutality of snowstorms – the landscape afterward is reborn. The blemishes of yesterday are buried.

“So clear,” Abertha says, staring at her surroundings. Dawsyn knows what she means. On the Ledge, a permanent mist remains. They lived among oppressive cloud. It clung to the mountain top and only ever afforded them a world of grey. Here, where the cloud does not always reach, the forest is pristine. Without the wind to shift the powder, everything is thrown into sharp relief.

“I remember your grandmother,” Abertha says now, walking cautiously forward through the snow. “She was a force to be reckoned with. Scarier even than my own mother.”

Dawsyn grins slightly. “A fitting description.”

“But she was sympathetic. I spied on her through the trees as a child. I watched her say a prayer over the Garisson brothers. They were dead in the grove. Do you remember them?”

Dawsyn remembered. Burly men with a penchant for muscling the trees from others where they saw fit.

“They were bastards and yet your grandmother still spared their souls a prayer,” Abertha says. “I never forgot that.”

Dawsyn laughs grimly, kicking snow off the toe of her boot.

“What?”

“My grandmother killed the Garrison brothers,” Dawsyn admits, shrugging her shoulders. “Whether she prayed over their everlasting souls or not seems forfeit.”

“Oh,” Abertha says, seeming to consider that for a moment. “Well, I watched my father kill a man once, and I don’t recall him imparting any words of salvation, save for a kick in the side before he stepped over the body.”

“I no longer believe in the power of prayer,” Dawsyn says, following Abertha around a copse of bushels. “If prayer had any sway, we would all be standing on newfound land on the other side of this fucking mountain. Instead, I led us to fire and brimstone.”

Abertha studies her for a moment. “Do you still believe the Queen is corralling the others into a trap?”

Dawsyn looks her in the eye. “I know she is.”