The air is cold. The castle is empty. The fountains are freezing. Snowflakes drift down from above.

Melancholy surroundings, Robena has found, do not inspire melancholy moods. Instead they salve them. There's something about seeing the world fading, the candles guttering, and the silence heavy that reassures her. It makes her own feelings smaller by the contrast, smaller and more natural. If she's grieving she's not alone, if she's dying so is the world, and if she prays for resurrection so does every seed sheltering under the ground. Her breath surrounds her in a cloud and memories of childhood fill her and she daydreams of midwinter feasts and heavy boots and lying feverish under blankets sweating out every drop of water she drinks as a priest sits by her bedside and whispers soft words to her as she fades. 

Winter is about learning to stop expecting a miracle, and then getting one anyway.

And so it is that the moment that Constance reveals herself she is caught clean in the neck with a snowball Robena had cunningly hidden behind her back.