Family dinners had never been part of Snow's life. Her father would deign now and then to have her at the dinner table, but it was not a family dinner, because she was not there as his daughter. She was there as a miniature of her mother, as an aesthetically pleasing addition to the room. He would tell her governess to put her in white, because he liked to see her black hair against it. He would have her put in black, to make her skin look lighter against that. Sometimes he'd have her dressed up as a Crow girl with her hair in two braids. Sometimes in a cattleman's hat with her gun. But she was always performing for him, even when she didn't know what exactly he wanted her to do.

And then Mrs. H had come into their lives. Snow couldn't think of a time the three of them had ever sat at table together.

She'd started the evening performing a little at least. The part of her was Miss H would never leave her completely, no matter how much she might want it to. Her table manners were the kind of effortless that came only from years and years of ingrained practice, and she said very little unless spoken to first. The only outward sign that this was nerves and not iciness was when Trinket lumbered between her and Lillith, and she'd leaned against the bear for a long moment, listening to the thundering of his huge heart.

She was less stiff after that, if still quiet.