This chapter arrives Friday. Until then, a taste of what is coming:

Tomas turns the fairy tale into a weapon: a stolen red dress hung in the north traps, and word spread through the village that the Wolf has taken Wrenna. Iron, dogs, and old cruelties mobilize. Furious at being made the bait in other men's story, Wrenna goes into the Blackpine at night to warn Kael — and finds him already bleeding from a snare.

She frees him with her hands in his blood, and what follows in the hunters' own blind is desperate, tender, and possessive. The chapter ends with Kael scenting iron on the wind: 'They are not coming for me anymore. They are coming for you.'