Night lay heavy over the east room on Red Tide Castle's third floor.
The warm underfloor heating kept the cold at bay.
Yet Sif curled up even tighter on the bed.
Wrapped in a thick blanket, she stared up at the ceiling, her cheeks faintly flushed and her deep blue eyes bright with bewilderment.
Who would ever like a southern barbarian! she inwardly fumed. Despicable, shameless, always smiling like some sly fox...
But no matter how often she warned herself, she could not drive his image from her mind.
Again and again, she recalled the unhurried gentleness he showed when speaking quietly with others.
The way he had been so careful yet confident when taming Cold Fang.
And that one time...
He had looked up and smiled at her, the sly curve at the corners of his eyes making her heart skip a beat.
"Damn it..." Sif abruptly sat up and hurled her pillow to the floor, her short silver-white hair falling messily around her face.
"Damn you, Louis...!"
She cursed under her breath, her voice trembling slightly.
The sight of Louis collapsing that day, and the helplessness of waiting outside his door, stabbed at her nerves again and again.
Sif instinctively reached toward her chest, her fingertips brushing the cold silver pendant.
It was the only keepsake her mother had left her.
Memories came flooding back.
On that distant night, firelight had illuminated her mother's face as she sat in a fur-covered chair, teasingly recounting stories of her youth with Sif's father.
"When a woman of the Cold Moon Tribe falls for someone, she hunts him down. Like a Tundra Wolf, she bites and never lets go."
"You think your father could have won me over? Ha! I kissed him first. He jumped like a frightened deer, his face