Three more years passed. The queen died. The king fell ill. The grief and sickness faded his golden lion’s mane to one of silver. But he seemed made of hooves and leather, and he still looked as though a boulder could fall on him and split into gravel. It would take more than a single sickness to snuff such a flame.

Even so, Ursula could smell his death coming. She worked harder still to be worthy of the crown.

Albrecht had not done the same. If anything, Ursula believed, he’d lost interest in all but his mechanical devices. He and his apprentice, Hans, had set up something like a smithy in the castle. All day long, they pounded metal. They made levers and gears. They assembled monstrosities.

The smithy meant the air outside Albrecht’s rooms always felt hot, even in summer. Ursula had no idea how he stood it and why he didn’t just use Jutta’s forge. But she supposed it was easier for him and less of a bother for Jutta if he took his building elsewhere. And of course, he would never take Hans out of the castle.

It was strange, their relationship. Albrecht had always hated weres—and now he had one at his side like a second shadow. She wondered how Hans was faring with the arrangement, but there was something in his eyes that made her not want to press.

She feared him, she supposed. His size, his silence, that wary look, as though something inside him was coiled and ready to spring.

In addition to the smithy, Albrecht had taken over their mother’s former needlework room, the one with a hidden staircase to the dungeon below. Ursula wasn’t allowed inside. Albrecht had promised Father it was for the security of the castle, and he’d also waved away Ursula’s plea that she ought to know of everything security related.

“That is a man’s concern,” her father had said.

“But I am to rule,” Ursula replied. “Is it not also my concern?”

“Your brother will always tend to your safety.”

Harvest season arrived, and with it another Moon Festival.

Ursula felt alive with excitement. She and Sabine had seen each other regularly in the woods for the past eleven years. A lifetime, it felt like. But today would be the first time that Ursula would see Sabine perform in the fighting cage. There were many types of performances the werefolk put on, but this was the match between weres that everyone talked about, and Sabine was finally old enough to compete—and had beaten many other weres on the Row for this spot.

Sabine and Ursula had practiced for years, with Ursula sharing everything her own combat instructors had taught her. They moved together so effortlessly it often felt to Ursula as though they were halves to a single whole. Even so, on the morning of the festival, Ursula was nervous. She wanted Sabine to win. To be adored by the crowd.

If Sabine won, she’d have money enough for everything she needed. That had always been an issue between them—Ursula’s desire to give things to Sabine, and Sabine’s refusal to accept anything more than that dress and those shoes, both of which she’d long outgrown.

“If we are to be friends, Ursula, we must be equals.” She’d said it so many times that it had become a joke between them. But it was never really funny. The closer Ursula got to the crown, the greater the tension between them. Sabine hated that Ursula was going to be queen. Sometimes Sabine even said their friendship would end—must end—when Ursula took the throne. But Ursula had never believed it. Nothing could end a friendship such as theirs. She wished Sabine could be more open-minded, would try harder to understand how difficult Ursula’s life was, how much better she planned to rule over her people.

That morning, Ursula dressed with care as she had to for public appearances. She couldn’t stand the trappings of royalty: the uncomfortable gowns, the stiff hairstyles. Since her mother’s death, she’d developed her own solution to the problem of looking like a queen without feeling like a trussed fowl: a long tunic over finely worked leather leggings and high boots. They weren’t the sturdy ones she wanted—boots like Jutta’s, decorated with metal. But they were better than cloth slippers that flew off the moment she tried to run. Even Sabine thought those were silly now.

Ursula wore her hair in two braids, and they looked rather wonderful, she thought, beneath her simple gold crown. No one else dressed quite this way, and if anything, that reinforced the notion that she was both the queen and that she would be sensible and fair. Sabine was wrong. There could be justice with Ursula as the head of a queendom.

Her father wasn’t well enough to stay for the entire festival; at breakfast he’d asked Ursula and Albrecht to represent the family.

“You’ll watch the fights, will you not?”

“Of course, Father,” Ursula said.

“Excellent,” the king said. “I do love to watch the frissers clawing away at each other. So amusing.”

Ursula bit her tongue. Since the queen’s death, her father had used the slur without hesitation.

“Did you hear about the change to the fight this year?” Albrecht flipped a gold coin over his knuckles as he held a roasted goose leg in his other hand.

Ursula shot him a look. She had not.

“This time, it’s not were on were. It’s were on human. Best fighter wins the largest prize ever offered.”

“Who’s offering it? What’s the prize?” she asked. That, she should also know. Sabine was the top fighter. This would affect her.

“I believe it’s gold.” Albrecht laughed.

He was obviously making a joke at her expense, and all she could do to ruin his fun was ignore it. She spread butter and honey on a slice of bread and pretended to be engrossed in the pleasures of eating. She could find out from someone else what was happening.

“Don’t eat too much, Ursula,” her father said. “You are getting very large.” He coughed into his napkin.

She chewed the bite in her mouth and swallowed. Her father meant to help her with these comments. It was true that she was large. She was also very strong. Were she a man, these qualities would be celebrated. This was the endless struggle she felt. She was too much and never enough for her father and for the kingdom as a whole.

Albrecht eyed her and sank his teeth into the goose leg. Its skin crackled; his lips glistened with juice. It was so Albrecht to pick the piece of meat that looked most as it did when it was still attached to an animal.

She stood and curtsied. “Be well, Father, brother. I have much to do to prepare for the day.”

She needed to find out more about the fight with the prize attached. It was one thing for Sabine to best a were. It would be another thing for her to best a man. Ursula could not let that happen. She’d die first.