She thinks perhaps she could have loved him, if he'd only lived that long. If she'd found him in time. It would have been difficult to save his life, especially with the chest wound, but she would have tried.
He was handsome, to be sure, the few times that she met him in life. That greying black hair and moustache, the piercing blue eyes. He may not have been of witch blood, but he was wise in his own way, practical and pragmatic, talented with his hands. A man of the Arctic, right down to his daemon. They could have been happy together, perhaps, for however long he lived.
(Not long, in witch terms, but any happiness however short-lived is sweet and to be cherished.)
When she placed the preserving spell on his corpse she'd kissed his forehead, closed the staring blank eyes. He'd known death was coming, would have felt it and been certain of it. And death in battle would be the way he'd choose to go. Because while he was a man of the Arctic, he was a man of battle too, had been through his own troubles and wore the scars to show it.
In the end, however, it was not to be. The war and his duty decreed that much. It does not do to dwell on what could have been, the things that she or he should have done. (She should have flown faster, he should have sent for her sooner.) What's done is done, and her people do not need her to wish to revert it.
(Though sometimes, on cold nights, she dreams that she had been able to save him.)