"I apologize," he says immediately, looking up to meet her eyes, steady again as he can feel the truth in what she's saying, he has gone and concerned her by being so evasive with this. "I don't mean to make you nervous. It's nothing worth being nervous for. Alice saw...you. I'm sure of it. In a vision, before they all bolted, she had a vision of a woman with," his eyes shift to her hair again and his fingers flex as if he wants to reach out again, "red hair, a mortal who would keep me fed, and who I'd keep warm."

He looks at the fire, roaring now, burning through the birch logs he'd brought back and split earlier that day. It makes good firewood, a dry paper birch, he'd remembered that. There'd been a time, after all, when he'd needed a fire to stay warm.

"She didn't know anything more, couldn't see anything, but she said I—" He looks back at her and falters. No, he can't say it straight out, he can't quote her. It's too new, this slender thing forming, it's too brittle to risk her slamming herself behind her walls again and shattering it. "She said she saw me bringing this woman back with me." Now the corner of his mouth pulls up in a little smile. "I've been racking my brain, but you seem to fit that description awfully neatly."