He’d glimpsed no sign of Victor Corey or his men since the snow began and the roads ended. But that didn’t mean his enemies weren’t out there. Only that the wolf proved more elusive. But he could not be the wolf forever. The draught’s potency faded as the sickness increased. First it was the cramping of his muscles and a fever’s burning heat. Then it was the jaw-clamping tremors that racked him hour after endless hour, until he curled tail to nose in the shelter of a rocky outcropping and dreamt of evil words spilling like snakes from a dying Fey-blood’s mouth, waking only when dawn kissed the snow pink.

It was then that he rejoined the road, standing on a high ridge and looking down upon the muddy snow-crusted trail as it wound its way around the edge of the loch, the water an oily pewter beneath the gray sky. Behind him, three blue-veined stones stood sentinel over the valley below. The potent magic within their borders raised a ridge of fur down his back and buzzed against his brain. A chill breeze tasted of game and the sharp aromas of pine and elder and hard fern. Nothing moved below him, either east or west, but a horse’s prints left a wide, plowed trail ending in a churned muddy patch where a man had dismounted and walked into the wood to relieve himself.

A shadow passed over the snow. He looked up to see a bird high against the clouds, an eagle by the size of it. It circled and headed west. A small flock of chittering black wheeled and rippled and wheeled again, then dove for the loch.

The wind changed direction even as a horse’s soft whicker twitched the wolf’s ears. There, half hidden by a fold in the earth and a trick of the drifting snow, was a stand of four or five trees. Enough to conceal a horse and rider, a figure wrapped in a heavy woolen cloak though it was drenched from hood to hem, snow-draggled and caked with ice.

He froze as the stranger scanned the ridgeline where he hid, her scent twisting in his chest until the pain was an agony of desire and fear, relief and danger. He dare not path to her. He dare not even move, for he scented another—faint but present, like a swirl of ice across the snow.

She lifted her face to him, the hood falling from her hair. Her features were bone-white, her mouth open on a scream of warning: “Behind you!”

David leapt to the side, his paws breaking through the crust of heavy snow, his breath steaming the air. A sword, silver and glittering as ice, swept down where his head had been an instant before.

He danced away from a second strike and a third, his mind aflame with past horrors and paralyzing fear.

“Your blood is as black and tainted as your heart, St. Leger. Did the pretty little Fey-blood whore spread her legs for you? Did you take her as man or beast . . . or both? Perhaps I’ll do the same before I drive a dagger through her heart.”

David drove the past from his mind, refused its power and its pain. He would not bow to Beskin’s slimy threats. No fetters held him fast. No hostile crowds eyed him with loathing. He would not cringe and cower. He would bury his shame and his memories in the same grave as the enforcer’s body.

St. Leger sprang for the throat. Beskin parried with a slam of his sword. The snow muffled the sounds of battle while blood spattered scarlet across the white ground.

* * *

Tied hand and foot to the horse, Callista struggled with her bonds, the ropes digging into her wrists, blood leaking down over her fingers. Luckily, her extremities had gone numb hours ago. There was no pain, only a sense of impending doom with every growl and curse blowing down off the ridge, bringing with it showers of blood-speckled snow.

A swarm of crows gathered overhead, their raucous squawks and croaks scraping against her brain like nails on a slate. They must have had the same effect on Beskin’s horse. It shifted and backed and tossed its head. She clamped her knees tighter against its sides in an attempt to keep her seat on the slippery saddle. Fettered as she was by a length of cord running ankle to ankle beneath the horse’s belly, a fall would trap her between the nervous gelding’s legs.

She gritted her teeth and struggled once more, in and out, back and forth as the blood slicked hot over her hands and she forced her mind from dwelling on the Duncallans’ fate. Had Beskin killed them before he’d stolen her away in the middle of the night? Had he decided the only good Fey-blood was a dead one? Or had they managed to escape? Were they looking for her? Was help on the way?

A shelf of snow broke free and spilled in a thick cascade off the ridge, bringing with it the tumbling and rolling gray shape of an enormous wolf. The horse lifted its head in a frightened whinny, its hooves pawing at the ground as Callista tried desperately to hang on.

The wolf lay panting, a long, jagged gash upon its shoulder, blood and slaver dripping from its jaws. Beskin’s shadow speared the snow above it, his silver sword flashing against the slate-gray sky.

“David!” she screamed. “Look out!”

Just as the sword descended, the wolf rolled up and away, its jaws clamping on Beskin’s leg, tearing through flesh and muscle, ripping in a frenzy of animal brutality, though the beast’s eyes shone pale with human hate and human desperation.

The enforcer screamed in agony, the sword falling from his hand as he grappled with the wolf, the snow a churned mess of blood and earth. A dagger aimed for the wolf’s throat was turned aside at the last minute, glancing off bone and rib instead. The animal yelped and sprang free, sides heaving, blood streaming from half a dozen wounds. It took a few shaky steps before sinking lifeless against a tree.

Callista fought the ropes, tears streaming frozen from her eyes as she cursed her helplessness. Just a bit more. A little farther.

A hot wind buffeted her face as the air around the wolf shimmered and blurred like rain streaming down a pane of glass. Raw, unfamiliar magic sizzled along her skin and flip-flopped her empty stomach. She blinked away her tears to see David lying wounded and dazed on the snow. A shimmer of light rippled across his broad shoulders and down his long legs before dispersing to mingle with the rivulets of blood sliding in ribbons and curls down the hill.

“David?” she whispered.

He rolled up and onto his feet. Eyed Beskin with revulsion. The enforcer’s leg below the knee was a mess of pulpy cartilage and bone, his face an ugly mask of horrified agony as he struggled to crawl across the snow toward his abandoned sword, dragging his mangled limb behind him. The crows thickened and wheeled, diving down to pluck at Beskin’s flesh, grabbing up gobbets of blood.

A little more. A little closer. She could feel her right wrist sliding free. The horse shimmied to one side, agitated at the scent of blood and animal and the growing cloud of crows and ravens drawn by the blood-soaked snow.

David crossed the few yards and plucked up the enforcer’s sword with a smile as cold and cruel as death. He stood over Beskin, his expression grim, his jaw jumping, muscles taut. It was like watching a stranger. The man she knew and loved had vanished behind a brutal and merciless mask of vengeance. She wanted to call out to him, speak words to pull him back from the brink of madness, but her voice caught in her lungs, her breath naught but a frosty cloud. Bending low and awkward across the horse’s shoulder, she turned her efforts to the icy-hard knots at her ankles.

“This is for Kineally and the others you’ve slaughtered.”

“Kill me, more will follow,” Beskin groaned through lips drawn back from long sharpened teeth. “Pryor’s power grows. The Duke’s time is past. The Ossine rule”—his hand whipped out to latch on David’s ankle—“now!”

He dragged David off-balance and hard into the ground, his fist driving up into his jaw with bone-crunching strength. “The curse tainted your blood. The Fey-blood polluted your mind. You’re weak.”

David struggled for the sword, but the hilt had tumbled just out of reach and Beskin’s hold was like iron. His face seemed to warp and lengthen, the shades of man and beast flickering beneath his skin as he sought to shift. As David scrabbled to reach the fallen sword, Beskin reached to his left boot. Drew free a needle-thin blade. Let it sail.

Callista shouted as her right ankle came loose, while the blade whistled past her ear to land hilt-deep in the horse’s neck. It screamed and reared before falling to the ground in a tangle of churning legs. Callista tried rolling clear of the dying gelding, left, then right, until her head exploded in a burst of red and black, and darkness took her.

* * *

David kicked and twisted free of Beskin’s grip and scrambled over the snow to where Callista lay curled at the base of a tree, the snow from its heavy branches half burying her, the dying horse thrashing as it pumped its blood onto the churned ground. He pulled her clear and felt the lump at the back of her skull. She’d survive, but he needed to get her out of the weather. Somewhere warm. Somewhere safe. A shadow speared the air above him. He looked up into the maddened eyes of an enormous bear dragging the grisly ruin of its leg behind it. Small advantage when David still faced razor claws and fangs long as daggers.

He threw himself sideways as the bear swung one giant paw down in a blow that would have scissored through flesh like a knife through butter.

He spun and darted, luring Beskin away from Callista, drawing ever closer to the fallen sword. Beskin followed, roaring his rage and pain. His breath blew hot on David’s neck as he swiped at him. Claws tore into David’s calf, dropping him to the ground. Rising up on his hind legs, the bear bellowed in triumph. Lurching with one last gasp toward the sword, David braced for the crushing, gut-ripping, claw-tipped strike. Instead, a rush of wind and feathers brushed his face.