After Albrecht had reunited his kingdom and vanquished his sister, he took stock. His side had suffered losses, yes. That was a shame, a shame to see good men brought down by beasts. A shame to see productive farms reduced to ash, especially at harvest time. But they would rebuild. In the meantime, he’d dug into the treasury. A gold coin for every family who’d lost a man.

He had plenty for now, although with his mother dead, replacing them would be difficult. He would find a way, though. He would mint coins with his face on them so that people did not forget who’d given them so much.

The days passed. Jutta remained in the castle. He needed her more than his people needed horseshoes and nails. She made a decent replacement for Hans. And she’d redoubled her efforts to prove she was loyal. She’d already handed over every sword in her shop. Promised to make more if they were needed. She’d even apologized for her were nature.

Albrecht had thumped her back. “It is not necessary, my old friend, I know you know man from monster and right from wrong.”

Some weeks after the battle, after the smoke had finally cleared and the sky had stopped snowing ash, he and Jutta were eating a meal together when a visitor was announced. A farmer, it seemed, making wild claims.

“I know where your sister is,” the man said.

“My sister is dead,” Albrecht said. “I shot her.”

“Beg your pardon, Your Majesty. She lives.”

Albrecht picked up a roasted leg of chicken and tore into it. He thought best while chewing.

“I’ll tell you for a price,” the man said.

Albrecht swallowed. The man had brought knowledge, but he’d contradicted the king. And his request for money—astonishing. He blinked slowly at the farmer. Assessed him. Large. Appeared to have been well fed over the years. Not a were.

Albrecht’s curiosity won. “Where is she?”

“Not just she,” the man said. “Everyone who’s left. Near about three dozen, including children. Many weres. Goats and foxes and such.”

That was interesting. A handful of survivors was one thing. But a handful, including weres, with Ursula? That was different. It meant she was plotting. Undoubtedly intending retaliation. He could wipe all of them out. He’d have to before too long.

“Show me,” he said.

Jutta pushed her plate away.

“Not you,” he said. “You have other work to do.”

Albrecht and the farmer set out for the woods. He should’ve known Ursula was there somewhere. It’s where she always went. He’d been preoccupied distributing coins. He should have considered the possibility of her survival. Nonetheless, knowing exactly where they were would save him time and effort.

The farmer pointed at the remains of a campfire. All around, the soil was gray with ash. “This is the first place we camped. Before the queen found us. But she moved us to a place near a cottage where they have all sorts of supplies laid in. We burned the bodies of the dead there.”

If his sister had moved near Greta’s cottage, a plot between them was certain. But first, to deal with the farmer. The man had embarrassed him. He’d betrayed his queen for coin. He’d do the same to Albrecht at the first opportunity. The fool had sealed his own fate.

“I suppose you’ll still want to be paid for this,” Albrecht said.

The farmer held out his hand. “If you wouldn’t mind. I did lose quite a bit in the fighting, you see.”

Albrecht flicked his right hand toward the man, quick as a blink. His knife found its mark and the man dropped, his mouth open, as if he’d had the surprise of his life. Albrecht knelt, pulled the blade from the farmer’s heart, and wiped the blood on the dead man’s tunic.

With the toe of his boot, Albrecht nudged the man’s gaping jaw shut. The clack of his teeth was the most satisfying sound he’d heard all day.

Albrecht found the clearing near the cottage. He was glad for the forest music, which had covered his footsteps. From a distance, he studied Ursula’s sad little band of survivors. A group of werechildren sat at the black were’s knee in their animal form, along with some humans. Three little goats bouncing on springy legs. A pair of foxes that playfully bit each other’s necks. Raccoons with disturbing black hands. It was a wonder no one had yet tripped his snare. If only he’d moved it a few yards closer.

He settled in to watch and consider his approach. Most troubling, if not surprising: Hans and Greta had joined them. It hurt him viscerally to see them there. He’d given both of them everything they had; that they had no loyalty to him felt worse than his missing finger.

As far as he could tell, Ursula seemed to have made a full recovery. He was somewhat surprised that she wasn’t showing more effects of the arrows he’d sunk into her flesh, but then, she was an exceptionally large animal and those were the hardest to kill. Next time, he’d aim for her heart.

It would be difficult to eliminate this nest by himself, particularly given the presence of the second werebear and Hans. He’d need soldiers. He’d have to take his best. Anything less than a clean sweep would invite retaliation.

He’d take his time. Plan. Train men. He didn’t want to outright kill any weres, not when they might have so much to teach him about pain and its connection with life. He needed them alive before he needed them dead.

He returned alone, hands empty, heart full, mind hard at work.

Later, as Jutta fitted a steel not-finger to his stump, Albrecht thought about gold. How he’d used it to make his people love him. It had its advantages, but a leader needed more than gold to hold on to power. He considered his father’s stories. To tell a story was to seize power. To tell a story was to preserve the power that had been seized. His people needed tales to reassure them that all was well, better than ever, even though food supplies were scarcer than they should have been heading into the winter. He needed to tell these stories so they would stop believing their own eyes and instead believe the vision he was selling them for their own good.

Jutta tightened the leather straps that held the finger secure. “It is a perfect fit, I think. Does it hurt?”

“Hurt?” Albrecht shook his head. It excited him. Thrilled him. A better finger than nature could have designed. He inspected her work.

“Well done,” he said.

Jutta looked pleased, and this, in turn, pleased him.

“You are a loyal creature,” he said. “I value that. I wonder what makes you so?”

“A horse’s nature is to serve. To be broken, saddled, ridden.” She packed away her tools. “What’s more, I have known you since you were a little boy. I know what’s in your heart. You wish to protect us all. That’s a thing that deserves loyalty, or so I say.”

“You are rare among humans and even rarer among weres. Do you know the best way for me to get loyalty from the rest of my subjects?”

“By leading them well, I suppose. In times of war and times of peace. A good leader earns loyalty.”

Albrecht laughed. That sounded like something Ursula might say. “No.”

“Is it the metal men?”

“Not that either, although talking about those has been nearly as useful as if I’d actually built an army. Shall I let you in on the secret?”

Jutta nodded.

“As you know, I rallied my men. We had our battle. We earned our victory. But the loyalty that comes from such things is shallow. Such loyalty can be stolen with words—words that promise something better, words that question the rightness of the king. And do you know why that is?”

Jutta set down her case of tools. She kept looking at it, as though she wanted to open it up again, that she wanted a reason to do so. “Your Majesty, I do not.”

“Because of fear,” Albrecht said. “At heart, most people live their lives in fear. You should know this. You’re a prey animal.”

She nodded. Her eyes were wide enough that he could see their whites. He rather thought she’d bolt if she could.

“There is no shame. Humans are prey animals as well. Unlike insects, our bodies have no armor. We have no fangs, no claws. We cannot fly. Some among us have figured out how to be predators, how to dominate, even with these paltry bodies our mothers made us. The best way for a leader to remain on top is to harness the power of fear. If you make your people fear a threat from the outside, then there is no threat from the inside that will dismantle their loyalty. Fear is the engine of power.”

“I suppose that is true,” Jutta said.

“Of course it’s true. And do you wonder how I know this?”

Jutta swallowed and licked her lips. “I do not wonder. That is to say, I trust that you speak truth and that, perhaps, you learned the art of it from your father.”

“My father was preoccupied with other matters,” he said.

His father had thought only of who should succeed him. He’d thought of what his mother had wanted. He had not thought about how to secure the kingdom, and it had failed. Those his father had shown lenience to, Hans and Greta, had left at first opportunity, even after all the attentions and mercies Albrecht himself had paid them over the years. He’d favored them, and they left all the same. Their father had never bothered to instill them with fear, proper fear of the forest. Albrecht would not repeat that error.

The only way to keep people, Albrecht knew now, was to make them fear life without you. Once you had someone in that spot, you had them until death.

“No, Jutta. I did not learn this from my father. I learned it from those who betrayed me. Come, it’s time to head to the square. I will show you the power of fear.”

They walked in silence from the castle to the square, where his people had gathered. With Jutta behind him, he stood on the platform where the fighting cage had once sat, where he’d been humiliated by Ursula. The cage had been melted down, though the memory was lodged deep, like a shard of glass.

For the occasion he’d dressed in his father’s golden clothing, garments woven from thread his mother had made with her own two hands. When Albrecht had been a boy, he couldn’t imagine ever fitting into them. And yet, here he was, standing before his people as their undisputed king, wearing that fine clothing the likes of which no one else possessed.

He stood high enough above the crowd that he could see every face, every pair of eyes trained on him. It was everything he’d ever imagined made manifest, and all that it had cost him was a finger. It could be argued that it hadn’t even cost him that. He’d lost it in a rat trap that he hadn’t needed to pick up. But the narrative he was spinning was that his sister had severed it in a fit of vanity, so he would spin that into the truth.

And he was spinning, he realized. Just as his mother had turned grass into gold, he was turning words into weapons. It struck him then that these things were his true inheritance. His father had taught him how to find the meaning in stories; his mother had given the ability to spin words that meant exactly what he wanted his people to believe.

He was his parents’ son. He was the rightful heir to a unified kingdom. He could not be who he was without the legacies both had left him. He lifted his hands.

Mouths closed. Save for the music of the forest, there was no sound. It made his skin tingle, that absence. It was a space he could fill. Albrecht thrust his chin forth and spun words. He spun them, and with them he wove fear.

“There is an army of frissers in the woods,” he said. “Legions of beasts bent on revenge. And the most dangerous one, my sister, has lived. Against all odds, she survived the shot I sank into her back.”

The crowd gasped, a great sucking sound that Albrecht could feel. He gesticulated as he spoke, and it was like running his hands along the curves of a beautiful woman. Greta. His rage crested.

“Somehow my sister lived, and so long as she draws breath, the danger is clear.”

“Let’s kill her!” a voice shouted. “Kill the bear!”

Albrecht was not certain who started it. Nor did it matter. It could have been anyone. The important part was that the thing he’d woven had become as real as gold and just as valuable.

Soon the chant was on everyone’s lips. “Kill the bear! Kill the bear!”

The sound rose. Like a sun, like a tower. He basked in it. He marveled. He raised his hands again and the crowd fell silent.

“We will kill her,” he said. “We will, we will, we will.”

Three times, to make it truth.

“And not just her,” he said. “We’ll kill them all. Every frisser. We will end this scourge. Defeat these beasts. Keep you and those you love safe from her army.”

The crowd roared back, and it was a roar. Animalistic in the sense that Albrecht had always envied. That Ursula could make such sounds all on her own, that she had paws that ended in blades, that she was so powerful … that the throne was to be hers … it was everything he had always been denied. But here he was, the master of a much larger beast, one he’d wound with words. His face split into a smile so big it hurt.

He turned to Jutta, tapping his not-finger on her nose.

He shouted, so that she’d hear him over the crowd, “Was that not splendid?”

Jutta nodded back, red-faced. He gestured with his head so that she would know it was time for them to leave. He had plans to complete, and he needed her by his side.