s Bannor and the children started up a rolling hill, he kicked his stallion into a gallop. Ever since they had discovered the rambling set of tracks in the snow, his urgency had been mounting along with his hopes. It had hardly surprised him that Willow’s idiot of a stepbrother had managed to lose his horse somewhere along the way. The beast had probably cantered straight back to Elsinore and was even now munching oats in the toasty warmth of the stables.

One set of tracks was too erratic to even be called footprints. But they still made Bannor’s heart surge with joy. Their shambling awkwardness could mean only one thing: Willow was alive.

He drove his horse up the hill, desperate to follow the tracks across the shallow valley before the rising wind could obliterate them. The snow was coming down harder now, and as he crested the hill, a bank of clouds shrouded the moon, throwing the valley into darkness.

Bannor reined in his horse, swearing beneath his breath. The children followed suit, flanking him on both sides.

They waited, each impatient breath a silvery puff of fog, until the moon shook off its veil, flooding the valley with an almost supernatural brilliance.

Bannor’s worst fears were realized. The wind gust-ing through the valley had swept the tracks away, leaving behind a pristine carpet of snow undefiled by human feet.

“Look, Papa!” Mary Margaret cried, pointing toward the bottom of the hill.

Bannor was forced to blink the snowflakes from his lashes before he could focus. There was something peeping out of a deep drift—a splash of color billowing against the virgin snow.

His hands tightened on the reins. Although it shivered him to the bone to imagine Willow out there without her cloak, Bannor prayed the garment had simply slipped off her shoulders, and Stefan had been either too viciously stupid or too savagely cruel to allow her to retrieve it.

“Wait here,” he commanded his children, slipping off the horse.

For once, they obeyed him without questioning.

Bannor scrambled down the hill, but his steps began to slow as he reached the floor of the valley.

As the moon ducked behind another cloud, he stretched a hand toward that billowing scrap of fabric, already anticipating the moment when he could unearth it from its grave of snow, laugh, and hold it aloft to show his children that it was nothing they should be afraid of.

The moon reappeared, bringing each detail into focus with an almost deliberate cruelty.

A single dark curl, frosted with ice; a glimpse of marble flesh; a slender foot that should have been safely encased in the doeskin slipper he carried in a pouch next to his heart.

Bannor staggered to his knees and began to claw at the snow. As he gathered Willow into his arms, a cry that mirrored his own anguish wafted down from the hillside above. Through a haze of agony, he saw Beatrix start down the hill, saw Desmond snatch her back and cradle her face to his chest.

Bannor tore the rope from Willow’s wrists and struggled to brush the snow from her face and hair, a low keening rising from deep within his throat. Time seemed to roll backward until he was no longer Bannor the Bold, Lord of Elsinore, but simply a frightened six-year-old boy who couldn’t understand why his mama wouldn’t wake up. As he gazed down upon Willow’s face, frozen forever in sweet repose, he finally understood that it was not love that had killed his mother, but the lack of it.

“Oh, God in heaven, forgive me!” he cried, snatching her to his breast. He buried his face in her cold, stiff curls, rocking back and forth. “I love you, Willow,” he whispered, tears beginning to course down his cheeks. “I loved you from the first moment I laid eyes on you, and I’ll love you until the day I die.”

Bannor pressed a fierce kiss to her icy lips, his tears pattering against her skin like a warm spring rain. He was so dazed with grief that it took him a moment to realize she was kissing him back.

A sharp cry escaped his lips as he scrambled backward, nearly dropping her. “Sweet holy Christ, I thought you were—”

“Dead?” Willow smothered a yawn in the cup of her hand, her eyelids drooping. “Don’t be silly. I was only sleeping.” She shivered. “I was so cold, then the snow covered me up and made me warm. I knew if I went to sleep that you’d come to me.” She gave him an endearingly silly grin. “You always came to me in my dreams. Ever since I was a little girl.”

Bannor smoothed the frozen curls away from her face, still unsettled by her abrupt resurrection. “And who do you think I am?”

She beamed up at him. “You’re my prince. And my husband. And the man I love.” Her smile softened as she captured his hand and brought it to bear against the curve of her belly. “And the father of my child.”

Bannor’s breath caught at the wonder of it all. Life growing beneath his hand like the most rare and precious of blooms. Life warming Willow’s skin, flushing her cheeks with rose, pulsing like the sweetest of saps through her veins.

As Bannor drew her into his arms, raining kisses upon every inch of her beautiful face, his children’s jubilant cries rang like music in his ears. He had been both right and wrong about Willow from the very beginning. Her name did suit her. But not because she was so fragile as to snap in the slightest breeze. On the contrary, she was strong and supple enough to bend with the wind instead of breaking. Her arms were generous enough to provide shelter and respite from every storm. Her grace and her courage had shot tender, yet unbreakable, roots deep into his heart.

He could not have said if it was his words, his tears, or his kiss that had awoken Willow from her enchanted slumber. He only knew that in the end, love hadn’t been his destruction, but his salvation.

“I love you,” he whispered, pressing a fierce kiss to her brow.

Willow cupped his cheek in her hand, her own eyes brimming with tenderness. “I know.”