Ursula didn’t sleep well. That had become normal: nights when she was awakened in her tent by noises, by scents. She’d burst from sleep, heart quivering. She’d lie still, trying to determine whether what had made her stir was real or imagined. The rupture had happened so many times—and it was always nothing—that she’d come to think of these events as night ghosts.

This time, a troubling sound ripped her awake. She dismissed it and tried to force herself back to sleep. Just before the heaviness claimed her, she heard something, the scuff of a boot against leaves and then an unnatural stillness. She held her breath. The sound could have been someone from the camp needing to empty their bladder. But if it had been, why the conspicuous silence afterward?

Ah, well; she was awake now. If she was going to catch someone watering a tree, so be it.

She poked her nose through the flap. Another scuff—this one followed by the soft whicker of a horse. She smelled her brother. She shifted to her bear form, knocking over her tent as she did. Mist curled around her paws as she turned toward the scent. She stepped onto the frosted ground, making no attempt to muffle her movements. She wanted the whole camp awake. She chased the scent.

Albrecht stood alone outside the cottage. His golden hair shone in the moonlight. He might have brought other men with him, but she couldn’t smell any. Still, she knew to be wary. He slipped inside the door and she moved closer, her head low, every sense on alert.

What did he want? Greta and the werechildren were inside, along with their supplies. It made sense he would want the supplies. Then he could starve them out. Even he wouldn’t do more than that, though. To kill refugees? Children? That was beneath him. He’d left them in their cages on the night of his attack, after all. She could not imagine he’d ever harm the little ones.

If she followed him inside, Albrecht might turn violent, and she couldn’t risk that. Not near the children. Her best bet was to catch him when he left the cottage.

A noise behind her. The snap of a rope, the sound of scuffling, a low growl. Sabine. Ursula turned. She couldn’t see the bear anywhere. Ursula followed the noise up, up, up—and there Sabine was, suspended high between two trees, caught in a trap. Ursula pondered her next move. She could either stop Albrecht or help Sabine. She couldn’t do both. A rationale struck. If she rescued Sabine, then Sabine could help her.

Ursula reached the snare. The rope smelled of Albrecht’s hands. The control she’d developed over the years as a princess vanished. When she was like this, it was hard to remember that she even had a human aspect, one that would weigh decisions at all. When she was fully her bear self, there was only the moment she was in, and only the thing she wanted then. She wanted Sabine. Nothing else mattered.

The ropes were out of reach and Sabine dangled overhead, upside down and struggling. Ursula followed the rope down the side of the tree. Enraged, she gnawed the rope around the tree. It was hard going because the rope was lashed so tightly around the trunk. Splinters pierced her tongue and gums and still the rope held. Where was Hans? Where was Esme? Did she have to do everything herself?

Frustrated, she switched to claws. This was better. She took great gouges out of the bark. The rope frayed, and then it snapped.

Sabine crashed to the ground with a whuff. When she could breathe again, she moaned. She was still wrapped in the net, so Ursula raked at it until it dropped away. Sabine lay on her back, gasping.

Ursula took her human form. “Sabine, what hurts?”

The black bear gave a low huff. She tried to roll over, but Ursula held her in place. Sabine snarled—a protest.

Ursula let go. “Can you shift? Why aren’t you shifting—has he done something to you?”

Hans ran up, looking half asleep. Ursula grabbed his wrist. “Albrecht is here. Go after him.”

He shifted and bounded off, having picked up Albrecht’s trail. Sabine swatted Ursula away and limped after Hans. Ursula turned to follow as well, but they were too late. Albrecht had emerged with Greta over his shoulder, and he was vanishing into the woods. Hans swerved after them, a streak of gray.

Sabine wobbled and then stumbled. When Ursula reached her, Sabine was in her human form. Her right arm was broken, swollen with a most unnatural curve. She was sweating too. Ursula fell to her knees, putting a hand on Sabine’s forehead.

“What are you doing?”

“You’re hurt. Let me help.”

“You should have let me chew my way out. Now your brother has Greta. Follow him. I’ll be fine.”

“But—”

Ursula stopped protesting when she saw Sabine’s expression. Chastened, she took her bear form again and crashed through the camp. Burning with exertion and with shame, she ran, nose to the ground. The scent trail stretched in front of her, star-bright in her mind. She ran harder, confident she was faster. She could make this right.

Up ahead, a wounded horse screamed. Albrecht would now be on foot. She had him. She smelled the blood, steaming and rich with iron. Heart’s blood. A mortal wound. Hans must have opened one of the poor animal’s arteries.

She weaved through trees, pulled by the scent and the thrill of the chase. The sun had cracked the sky, swinging a low blade of light across the frosted ground. Ursula lifted her head. There was the fallen horse, dead, his neck torn open, hot blood sending curls of mist upward.

Ahead, Albrecht held a knife to Greta’s neck. Jutta, in her horse form, stood behind them. Hans snarled, approaching slowly.

Albrecht snarled back. “Come closer and she dies.”

He lifted Greta onto Jutta’s back, keeping his blade close. He mounted the horse himself, sneered, and then shot away. Hans gave chase, raking Jutta’s flank. Jutta screamed but kept running. Albrecht turned in the saddle, he pulled an arrow from his quiver, and aimed his bow.

Ursula flinched. The bow twanged. Hans howled and veered into the underbrush. Albrecht galloped ahead. Again a choice. She chose the wolf; she needed warriors more than maidens. The scent of his blood led her to a tree whose roots were drenched. She sniffed the soil around them, following the trail. The blood drops fell closer together now, and the line of them meandered, as though the boy was slowing to a stagger. The trail ended.

She found him deep inside a bush, curled into a quivering heap. She tore the shrub out by its roots and threw it aside. She’d have to carry him in her human form, because he was in no shape to hold on to her back.

By the time she reached the cottage with him, he’d shifted, a sign his injury was severe, possibly mortal. She laid him down outside. The door was open and revealed the damage her brother had done to the place she loved so much … broken chairs, broken porridge bowls. She hated him, truly hated him, something she’d never thought possible.

“Sabine! I need you!”

Sabine, her broken arm in a sling, rushed to her side, handed her clothing, and felt Hans’s forehead.

“The arrow must come out,” she said. “Then we stitch the wound and try to get him to shift back. He’ll stand a better chance of healing as a wolf.” She pressed a hand against the wound.

Ursula dressed in haste. “What if he can’t?”

“There are ways. Some of us have been forced to do so many times.”

Ursula wanted to ask what Sabine meant. It wasn’t the time. She turned to one of the little weregoats, a girl who followed Sabine everywhere. “Bring me a needle and thread.”

As Sabine ran the needle through a flame, Ursula dug a knee into the soil for leverage and pulled the arrow from Hans’s chest. With the arrow came more blood. She pressed the wound to stop the flow as Sabine threaded the needle, as deftly as if her arm had not been broken.

As Ursula drew the needle through the torn flesh, Hans clutched Sabine’s hand. Ursula felt a pang of jealousy. She turned back to the wound and finished her work.

His torn skin had been neatly mended, but the sight sickened her. Every one of them was so fragile. None of them could fend off an arrow, none could fend off a blade. She and her people would have to draw blood first. It was the only way they would survive.

“Can you shift?” Sabine asked.

Hans shook his head.

“You have to try,” Sabine said.

He closed his eyes.

“Ursula, I can’t help him, not like this.” Sabine held up her broken arm.

“What do I have to do?”

“Make him feel as though he’s fighting for his life.”

Sabine was matter-of-fact about it, but there was bitter experience beneath her words. There were things about her Ursula hadn’t known, differences between them she could not comprehend. No one would have dared force Ursula to change, though Albrecht certainly tried to goad her into it.

She welcomed her rage and became her bear self, shaking off her torn clothing and nipping his thigh, not hard enough to wound, but hard enough to hurt. He snarled. She bit his other leg. Hans’s limbs sprouted hair. His jaw lengthened. His back curved and stretched into a tail and then he was the gray wolf, his wound hidden beneath fur.

As Ursula shifted back, Sabine said, “Bring water.”

The little weregoat brought a bowl, and Sabine tipped it into his open mouth. Most ran out, but his tongue moved. Sabine fed him a trickle of water, his eyelids fluttering and tail twitching.

“Where’s Greta?” Sabine wiped sweat, blood, and dust from her forehead. “Don’t tell me Albrecht got away.”

Ursula lowered her head.

“Is he going to kill her?”

Ursula swallowed. “I suspect my brother wants her alive or he would have killed her straightaway.”

Albrecht’s arrow lay next to Ursula, an angry thing sticky with blood. She scraped it clean with a thumbnail and traced the A that Jutta had engraved on it. Such vanity.

Sabine stroked Hans’s head, scratching him gently behind the ears. He was breathing evenly now. “What will he do with her?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

Ursula could imagine Albrecht doing all sorts of things with Greta, none of them pleasant, none she wanted to say aloud. She didn’t want Sabine to have to hear them. Nor did she want to speak them into existence, to acknowledge her brother’s cruelty. She felt responsible. If she hadn’t been born first, none of this would have happened. Had she not wanted to be queen … But she could not let herself complete that thought.

Sabine put a hand on her back. It was a gesture meant to console, but it was not one Ursula felt worthy to receive. Her job was to protect. She’d failed. Her job was to comfort. She didn’t know how.

“We should tell Cappella,” Sabine said.

Ursula was taken aback. Then she understood. She’d seen them wandering off together but hadn’t made the connection. She felt shame that Sabine understood her people better than she did.

She looked out over the camp. A fire was going, and pots hung over it. No one lacked clothing or shoes, and there was even a neatly folded pile of additional garments, should anyone have need. Her people deserved better than what she had to offer.

She mulled what Sabine had said earlier about being forced to shift. She’d suffered in many ways that Ursula had never realized. A feeling that had been an undercurrent for weeks, as persistent in her as music was to the forest. The kingdom had been much worse for weres than Ursula had thought.

Her failure to understand this meant she was not ready to lead. And she’d done a bad job of things so far, with this being the worst day since the war itself. She was ignorant. If Hans died, it would be her fault. Sabine had been right not to want her. She’d been right about everything.

Ursula wasn’t particularly close to the fire, but she suddenly felt unbearably hot.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes. I’m going to the stream. Watch over him. I’ll tell Cappella what happened on my way back.”

Ursula knew what she wanted. To have Greta back among her people. For Hans to be well. She wanted revenge. A better life for her people. For all of them. She knew what they needed, and she would deliver it to them. It felt impossible, far more than she was equipped to bring about. But that was what it meant to be queen.

She hoped taking a swim in her bear form would provide her the clarity she needed—and that it would help her let go of her attachment to Sabine. Ursula wasn’t worthy of her. She’d never felt so alone.