"You're back late," Heldie said. Her threadbare robe was wrapped around her tight enough to cut off blood supply. It was the only thing warming her in the late hours of the night. She should be in bed beside a roaring fire.

Ryker sighed and shifted his bag of fresh game onto his other shoulder. "There was an overturned carriage not too far from here. I had to go around them to avoid being seen."

A shiver of unease straightened Heldie's spine. The boy wandering into the castle was unnerving enough. An abandoned carriage sounded like an uptick in bandits in the area. Could the two be connected?

The wards she had spent years placing around the castle walls and perfecting should have deterred anything that wasn't the three of them for miles around. Her magic swelled in her chest like a bubbling pot of water threatening to overfill. Tomorrow she'd work on strengthening them.

"Eirwen was waiting for you," Heldie said. They walked together towards the storage rooms where Ryker would spend hours butchering and setting meat to dry. Echoes of their footsteps climbed the empty walls, impeded only by the tapestries here and there.

"I promised to show her how to skin these things." He patted the bag over his shoulder.

"Is that wise?" Heldie questioned. "She shouldn't be around blood, especially not so near to her birthday." The girl was always more volatile around her birthday. It took days of preparation to build the magic that kept her calm. Already Heldie was fighting to store the deluge of magic that threatened to break free at every second.

Ryker paused in the middle of the corridor, blocking her path. "Did you ever consider showing a little more faith in her? In eight years when have you seen her act like a true blutsauger?"

"A wolf may act as a friend when you feed and shelter it, but that doesn't mean it won't turn and bite if the mood suits it," Heldie said. She pushed past him to head back to her room. She called back to him over her shoulder. "We're going out tomorrow so I can collect herbs. I'd suggest getting that done quickly so you can sleep before we leave."

The corridor stretched out ahead of her for miles. In winter, ice crept along the windows and threatened to cover the entirety of the walls. Firewood felt like it was in shorter and shorter supply every year. It was fine for Eirwen, she hardly felt the cold unless it was true ice against her skin, but Heldie and Ryker caught colds every year without fail.

This year would be different. This cure would work and the three of them would travel somewhere warmer for the winter. They'd never have to come back to this awful place. It would be just the three of them, a small cabin, somewhere the sunlight kept Eirwen warm and her cheeks flushed.

Heldie turned a corner and felt her heart leap into her throat.

Eirwen was standing in the middle of the corridor with her hand outstretched ahead of her. She inched closer with staggering footsteps. The hem of her nightgown dusted the floor behind her. Just a few steps away from Heldie, she stopped. Her brown eyes opened wide and a cry died on her lips before it could make any noise.

"Heldie?" she whispered. A thin sheen of sweat covered her face.

"I thought you'd stopped this," Heldie said. She reached out for the girl and hugged her gently. "Come along, I'll fix you something to drink."

They followed a familiar path down to the old servant's quarters where Heldie kept her dried herbs. A long wooden table took up the middle of the room to separate the heath from the rest of the room. A fresh fire burned away in no time with a heavy kettle suspended above it.

"What are you making?" Eirwen asked from her seat at the table. Sleep still covered her eyes like a soft blanket. The more she talked the more it fell from her.

"Just a kräutertee, to help you sleep," Heldie explained. "I used to make it for you when you were little, just the way my mother made it for me." She pulled down chamomile and juniper berries from among her dried herbs and laid them down on the table. Their exact smell was lost among the other herbs hung about the room. She paused with her hand hovering beside the vervain but ultimately left it where it was.

Eirwen nodded slowly. "Hopefully it's better than I remember," she said.

"Hopefully your taste has improved." Heldie covered her mouth to muffle a snort. Dry chamomile petals clung to her fingers and the pollen dusted the top of her nose. She turned back in time to catch Eirwen rolling her eyes.

For a while the only noises in the room were the soft bubbling of the water and the mortar and pestle grinding the herbs down into a powder. There was little Heldie couldn't fashion from the herbs she foraged. Everything from sachets of herbs to ward off insects to teas for digestion were stored around the room in small ceramic jars.

In the morning they'd make a trip out into the woods to collect fresh herbs and apples. Last year Heldie pinned her hopes on hawthorn berries but those only made Eirwen green in the face for days. This year she would find just the right mixture.

"What were you dreaming of?" Heldie asked.

Eirwen sighed, sorting the discarded stems of the herbs into piles of similar sizes. "Someone was calling my name."

"Was it the young man from yesterday?" Heldie met Eirwen's wide eyed stare. "He looked nice."

This made Eirwen's cheeks flush dark red. "It wasn't him, Ezekiel," she said. Her eyes dropped back to the job of sorting the sticks. By now she had them all separated and arranged into three piles. Now she moved them into crude human shaped figures. "I think it was a woman in the courtyard."

The water bubbled and splashed against the sides of the kettle. Heldie stilled in front of it with a thick hand towel wrapped around her hand. "Oh? In the courtyard?"

"Yes. She was holding out an apple to me but when I reached for it, it became a heart." Eirwen was quiet again except for the sticks sliding across the table top.

Heldie set the heavy teapot on the table wrapped in another towel. Steam curled around the cold air like tendrils of smoke. "You should have told me you were having those dreams again."

"I thought they would go away on their own." She passed her hand over the small scene she'd constructed on the table. The crude castle crumbled to bits under her fingers. "I know more happens after that but I can never remember. It feels so real sometimes."

"Just a dream, it can't hurt you," Heldie assured her. She stood from the table and plucked a sprig of the vervain to add to the mixture.

"What's that one?" Eirwen tapped one of the dried leaves that had fallen from the stick. It crumpled into a powder between her thumb and forefinger.

"Just a bit of vervain, to help you sleep deeply. We have to go out in the morning and I want you well rested." She poured the powder into the cooling tea water and recovered it to keep the heat in. Eirwen's eyes tracked her every movement like a snake watching a mouse. "Could you get yourself a cup, little snow apple?"

Eirwen scoffed at the childhood nickname but did just as she was told. Glasses clinked in the cupboard while she dug through for a properly sized cup.

With the girl facing away, Heldie pressed a hand to the burning hot side of the kettle. Her fingers ached and itched under the intense heat but she kept it there long enough to infuse the water with magic. "I'll get the honey," she said, jumping up to pull the nearly empty jar from a hidden corner. While there, she pressed her aching hand to the stone wall. The heat dissipated quickly but she knew her hand would be tender for days, only a few if she was lucky.

"I didn't know we still had honey," Eirwen practically shouted in her excitement.

"We don't, I do. You're too liberal to be trusted alone with the honey," Heldie teased. She swirled a spoonful into the bottom of Eirwen's. "Get your fingers out of there." She had to smack the back of the girl's hand to get her searching fingers out of the cup.

"It's not my fault it's so tempting," Eirwen whined.

"Try to control yourself, Eirwen," Heldie teased. "Come drink your tea and let's get you to bed."

🍎🍎🍎

The arrow left the bow and embedded itself two trees over from Eirwen's target. Birds, what few had remained after their loud foraging, took off in a squawking flock.

"You're still aiming too far left. Keep both of your eyes open, Eir," Ryker said. He took the bow from the princess and tickled her under the chin with another arrow's feathered tip.

All morning the two of them had tested Eirwen's skills with both a knife and the bow while Heldie scavenged for the first spring herbs peeking through the cold dirt. The basket nestled between her feet was barely full thanks to her need to dodge oncoming weaponry every few minutes.

"Are the two of you quite done fooling around now?" she asked them.

"It's not all fun and games, Heldie. I'll need to be able to fend for myself if something ever happens to the two of you. I can't survive off of dried berries," Eirwen said.

Ryker wrapped an arm around the girl's waist and lifted her to carry her to Heldie like a prized deer. "Just what do you think is going to happen to us?"

"What if something happens to you, like mother and papa?"

"Nothing is going to happen to us, silly snow apple," Heldie said. The herbs forgotten, she stood to pull Eirwen into a tight hug. She caught Ryker's eye over the top of her head. It took effort not to flinch away from his cold stare. Instead she held Eirwen at arm's length and smiled at her. "Now, why don't you go find some good apples for me to bake."

"Oh, Heldie not again," she whined.

"What's wrong with my baking?"

"It always tastes weird," she said.

Heldie gasped and shoved Eirwen towards the cluster of apple trees. "Be gone with you, ungrateful whelp," she said between laughs.

Eirwen wrinkled her nose at her stepmother and ran off, giggling as she went.

They waited until she was a bit away before speaking in hushed voices. "She's going to put it together one of these days," Ryker warned her.

"She'll never know. Why would she ever think I would do something like that?"

"You thought the same thing about her father and look how that turned out." He moved around the area to collect the wayward arrows littering the ground. "You could have at least come up with something better than an assassin with a heart of gold. Any other would have taken care of the girl at the same time as her parents."

A twig snapped and they both looked over their shoulders in the direction Eirwen had gone. They could just barely see the top of her dark head as she reached for apples on the low hanging branches.

"If that day ever comes, and it won't, I'll tell her the full truth of what her mother was and how she enthralled her father. I saved her life and that's the bottom line," Heldie whispered. She grabbed her basket and rifled through the bunches or wild garlic, mustard, and chamomile. Good herbs but not quite right.

There, tucked between the roots of an old tree, Heldie spotted the last cluster of hawthorn berries leftover from winter. They were seldom around this far into spring and so she had never attempted to use them. She pulled her small knife free from its sheath and stripped the small withering bush of all its berries. The ones already crushed berries stained her fingers a light reddish-pink.

"What did you find?"

Eirwen's voice in her ear sent Hedlie's heart racing. "Something to calm my nerves after you've shredded them." She flicked one of the crushed berries at Eirwen and chuckled at the mark it left across the girl's cheek. "Did you find the apples?"

"Of course I did. I find them every year, don't I?" Eirwen held out her full basket of bright red apples for inspection. "No worms or anything, I checked."

"Well done," Heldie said. She looped her basket over her arm to rest in the crook of her elbow. The blended smell of the herbs rising up to her wasn't unpleasant but it toed the line of overwhelming. The drying room often had the same effect on her.

"Heading back?" Ryker called from across the clearing. A pheasant and two wood pigeons hung from an arrow in his hand. He held it up for them to see more clearly. "I have dinner."

Back at the castle, Heldie stopped Eirwen in the courtyard while Ryker continued on ahead. "Did you sleep well last night?"

"Fine, why? Was I sleepwalking again?" Eirwen sighed. "Do you remember when I used to do that? You kept threatening to tie a bell around my ankle so you could find me." She popped onto her tiptoes for a second to kiss Heldie's cheek. "Too bad for you I'm a better hider than you are a seeker." She ran to catch up to Ryker, dropping two apples on her way.

Heldie let her run ahead, stopping to pick up the fallen apples and place them in her own basket. She kept one in her hand, marveling at how natural it looked.

In the first winter Heldie spent in the castle, Eirwen had been clear about how much she loved apples. There was no use explaining seasons and why the girl couldn't have apples all year long. She simply knew she wasn't getting what she wanted. Then her mother had died and the only way to bring a smile to her face some days was with the dried apples the servants took to keeping around.

Through trial and error Heldie found a way to grow trees that produced apples in spring when Eirwen could have them for her birthday. The trick was the magic that she'd infused into the trees day by day to bring them to flower and then to full fruit. Pools of her magic rested in the roots. Every year she replenished it to keep the cluster of trees healthy.

Heldie bit into the apple and savored the sweet taste. Eirwen wouldn't be able to taste the herb mixture over it.