Winter broke slowly, the way it always did in this part of the world—a thaw that lasted weeks, with days of rain and grey skies and mud, and then, suddenly, the first crocuses. Mira watched them emerge from the mud outside the shelter—the small purple and yellow flowers pushing up through the mess of last year's leaves, impossibly delicate, impossibly persistent. She had read about spring in books, had studied it as a botanical phenomenon, the way she had once studied the Thornwood's seasonal s...