Owen dropped the clamp.

“You should be more careful with that equipment,” she teased. “Treat it like a baby.”

Max whipped off his goggles, reverse raccoon mask underneath. “Cassie? Lassie!” He leaped over a sawhorse and scooped her up into a bear hug. Max! She’d missed him! She hugged him back fiercely. “Look at you, Cassie-lassie!”

Owen was frowning at her. “Cassie?” he said.

“It’s me. In the flesh. Good to see you.” She meant it. It was very good to see them, surprisingly good. She’d focused so much on her parents that she hadn’t thought about what it would be like to see the rest of her family. “Good to be home.” She threw open her arms and inhaled the smell of home: stale winter. She coughed.

“Cassie… we didn’t know if you were alive or dead, lassie,” Max said.

“Your mother always believed you lived,” Owen said.

Your mother. Cassie felt her heart stop for an instant. Bear had done it. Her mother was here. Alive and here. Cassie hadn’t realized that up until this moment, there had still been doubt, lurking. But hearing it from prosaic Owen’s lips, here in the unmagical, ordinary station… When her heartbeat resumed, it felt loud, like a timpani under her skin, and her voice sounded far away to her ears. “Where is she?”

Max grinned broadly. “Come on, Cassie-lassie.” He draped his arm around her shoulder and shepherded her out the door. “I want to see the expression on their faces when they see you.”

Cassie let herself be led. She didn’t feel her feet touching the floor. She barely saw where she was walking. Their faces, plural, when they see you. Max propelled her through the research lab to the kitchen. He released her as they entered.

There was only one person in the kitchen.

Her father was sitting at the table with his head bent over his notebook. A pot simmered on the stove behind him. For a long moment, she stared at him, feeling her insides tumble, unable to sort out what she was thinking or feeling.

After months with Bear, her six-foot-five father looked small and fragile. Gray streaked his hair, and his neck sagged beneath his mountain-man beard. She had forgotten his gray. She stared at him, trying to match this man to her memories. How had she ever found him intimidating? She wanted to cross to him and push his hair out of his eyes. He looked so… human.

Max cleared his throat, and Dad glanced up from his papers.

“Hi, Dad,” she said.

He looked stunned, as if she had dropped from the sky into the kitchen. Recovering, he shot out of his chair. The chair clattered backward to the floor behind him. In two large steps, he was in front of her. He crushed her in a hug. “Oh, my little girl,” he said.

He hadn’t called her that in years. Cassie swallowed a lump in her throat. “Where’s Mom?” The word tasted strange in her mouth.

His face split into an enormous smile. Still holding her shoulders, he called, “Gail! Gail, she’s home!” He squeezed her shoulders. “Gail!”

Cassie heard footsteps from the hall behind her. Her mother’s footsteps, running. Cassie’s back muscles tensed. The footsteps stopped at the doorway, and her father released her. But Cassie couldn’t turn around. Her feet felt glued to the linoleum. She had dreamed of this too often for too long. What are you afraid of? she challenged herself. Turn around.

No, I don’t want to.

Tough, she told herself. Turn the hell around.

Slowly, she turned—counter, cabinets, wall, Max, Owen… “Gail,” Dad said to the woman in the doorway, “this is Cassandra. Cassie, this is your mother.”

Green eyes. For a long moment, Cassie had no other coherent thought. She stared at her mother’s eyes and felt as if her brain were spinning like a coronal aurora. Cassie did have her mother’s eyes.

But the resemblance ended there, at the eyes. Gail was short compared to Cassie, maybe five-foot-five. She had black hair, not red. Instead of sharp cheekbones, she had soft baby-doll cheeks. Decked out in a red blouse and jeans, she looked nothing like Cassie, except the eyes.

“Mother,” Cassie said, testing it.

Her mother swallowed and fluttered her hands as if she weren’t sure what to do with them, as if she were surprised that she had hands. “You can call me Gail, if it makes you more comfortable,” she said, her voice quivering.

Her mother was a stranger named Gail. “Gail,” Cassie said. She had not pictured using her mother’s first name. Cassie attempted a smile. “Very punny. North Wind’s daughter. Gale.”

Her mother sparkled at her with a smile out of a Crest commercial. “It’s short for Abigail.” Inanely, Cassie wondered where her mother had found lipstick up here. It was as red as Red Delicious apples, and as inappropriate as cotton jeans in fifty-below. “Oh,” Cassie said, continuing to stare. Her mother seemed smaller than she’d been in her daydreams.

The smile faded, and Gail twisted her hands. “Could I… Would it be all right if I hugged you?”

“Maybe,” Cassie said. Was it? “Yes.”

Gail took a step toward her and awkwardly held out her arms. Cassie took a matching step forward. Her mother smelled like pine trees, like wild air. Her arms felt bony around Cassie’s back. Cassie placed her hands on her mother’s shoulder blades. She was hugging a stranger. This close, Cassie could feel the gulf of every year, of every minute.

Her mother said in a soft voice, “My baby. My little girl.”

And something inside Cassie broke. She felt it give, like a sagging spruce under the weight of a winter’s ice. All of a sudden, Cassie’s cheeks were wet. Water filled her eyes, and she couldn’t see. She buried her face in the sharp shoulder of her pine-scented mother. Her mother’s arms started to shake. “My baby, my baby.” Gail’s voice cracked. She was crying too.

Something had to happen next. Cassie had never thought beyond the first hello. But now the first moment was over and Cassie didn’t know what to say to this woman, this stranger, her mother.

Owen—Owen, of all people—came to her rescue. She hadn’t even realized that he and Max were still in the room. “How did… How did you escape?” Owen asked.

Gratefully, Cassie turned to him. “No escape. I asked to leave, and Bear brought me home.”

“Just like that?” Gail said, surprise in her voice.

Cassie thought of Bear outside the station. I love you, he’d said. “Just like that,” she lied.

“But munaqsri promises can’t be broken—,” her mother began.

“It doesn’t matter,” Dad cut her off. “She’s here now. She’s free.”

Yes, it did matter. Munaqsri promises. Her mother—Gail, she corrected—was right. Cassie had made vows, promises, to a munaqsri. He could have made her stay if he had wanted. But he had chosen to let her go, even though he loved her—or maybe, she had the sudden thought, because he loved her?

“We won’t ever let him take you again,” her father said.

“Oh, no, it’s not like that,” Cassie said quickly. “He’s not like that. We’re… friends,” she finished, for lack of a better word. Until the birth season had begun, he’d been her constant companion. They’d talked and laughed and spent every second together.

“Friends? With the monster who took you from your family? With the monster who kept you from us for months? Cassie, we thought you might be dead.”

Cassie flushed. She should have at least tried to send word. But she’d never even thought of it. It was her fault that they’d worried. “He’s not a monster,” she said. He’d said he loved her… Stop thinking about that. She was here with her mother, her mother, who was alive and here.

“What you did…,” Gail said. “It was very brave. Thank you.”

She didn’t know about “brave.” She’d liked it at the castle. She’d skated in the ballroom, designed new sculptures for the topiary garden, lost chess games. Her mother was waiting for her to speak. “I couldn’t leave you… there,” Cassie said. There, in a troll castle. It still sounded implausible. Gail fluttered her hands, obviously uncomfortable. She had a debutante’s fingers, long and slender, with pristine nails and smooth skin. For eighteen years with trolls, she did not seem the worse for wear. “What are trolls anyway?” Cassie asked—the question came out harsher than she’d intended.