This was not the view from her window. This was inside it.

She had seen the garden a thousand times, pressed against the cold glass of her tower room, watching the servants trudge through the drifts, their breath pluming like smoke. But she had never felt the snow. Never touched it. Never stood within the silent, frozen wonderland that existed just beyond her gilded cage.

The door to the West wing had been unlocked. An oversight. A miracle. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic, frightened bird, as she took another tentative step onto the manicured path. The snow crunched beneath her thin, embroidered slippers, a sound so foreign, so delightfully real, that a giggle escaped her lips, a puff of white in the frigid air.

She was wearing only her nightgown, a thing of delicate white lace and silk, utterly unsuitable for the biting wind. But she didn't feel the cold. Not yet. All she felt was the overwhelming, dizzying intoxication of freedom. She reached out a trembling hand towards a nearby rose bush, its blooms frozen solid, each petal a tiny, perfect shard of ruby.