Greta watched the gathering crowd through a carved screen. The banquet room fluttered with golden banners. Wedding guests gathered, their smiles gleeful, no doubt at the prospect of the food and drink that would follow, as these had been hungry times.

Soldiers stood at the edges of the room, weapons ready. She knew who that steel was for. She hoped Jutta had delivered the message. Even more, she hoped Hans had listened. Was anyone coming? If Albrecht thought it possible, then it must be.

She felt torn between hope and despair—despair that she had to marry Albrecht, but a flicker of hope that perhaps, somehow, she might escape. She knew she shouldn’t wish for that. But Albrecht had just shown her how he would treat her as his wife. It was worse than she’d feared.

Wearing his golden finger, now pitted with her blood, Albrecht stood next to Jutta, who wore two swords and had knives in each of her heavy leather boots. In the bright light of the banquet hall, the cloth of Albrecht’s suit looked miraculous. Liquid. Alive. It drank the light of every torch, of every candle, of the sunbeams that washed through the windows. It was blinding and beautiful and unstained.

“It’s time,” Susanna said. “Out you go.”

Greta stepped into the hall. She hoped no one could tell that she’d been weeping, that no one could tell every step gave her pain where Albrecht had violated her, insisting she remember that which she wanted desperately to forget. She walked in time with the faint strains of song from the forest. The music felt like a mercy. The more intently she listened, the more she felt like herself. This was going to be all right. She would survive.

She saw no sign of Hans. She felt relief. Also disappointment, but her relief was greater. She reached Albrecht’s side, and Jutta looked at her with pity. A bit late for that.

Albrecht flung his arms wide to welcome his guests.

“This is the day,” he said, “that this broken kingdom can be healed. I do so by taking this common-born woman as my wife.”

Greta could not force herself to smile, but she did manage to keep her tears at bay.

“It is our great good fortune that I have made this choice. As my mother was the jewel of my father’s kingdom, my bride is the same.

“This suit I wear … it was my father’s. I am proud to carry on the tradition, as will my sons. As long as there are men in our line, we will wear this suit of gold, which has no equal.”

In the brilliant light of the banquet hall, Albrecht’s clothing shimmered. But as he stepped back to her side, Greta could see something wrong with it. Where her blood had touched the cloth, the threads were like fish in a stream, wriggling and then vanishing into the deep. His clothing was unraveling. Greta’s stomach folded in on itself.

Albrecht was unaware of what was happening. He carried on with his speech, the words of which Greta could not absorb. She had attention for nothing but his suit. As the threads glistened and vanished, the weave of his clothing loosened, leaving bare skin visible in patches. Then the fabric sloughed into clots, and Albrecht looked down and stopped speaking.

No one made a sound.

The moment stretched and strained, as though time itself had been woven of the same fragile cloth. Albrecht grabbed a handful of his clothing and tugged. What remained dissolved into a powdery residue. The sword that had once hung from a golden belt at his waist clattered to the ground.

He cleared his throat. No words came out.

Slippers and boots scraped the stone floor as some guests angled to improve their views. The only thing Albrecht could do was pretend that it was intentional. That he meant to stand before his people wearing nothing but the skin he was born in. That to appear before them naked was a sign of the ultimate power.

A vein bulged in his forehead and Greta realized that to save herself, she would first have to save him. She felt the way she had the first time she’d lifted the wet guts from the belly of a dead animal. Steeling herself, she blocked the view of the guests. He grabbed her shoulders and spun her toward him, his face practically touching hers.

“Have you done this to humiliate me?”

“Of course not,” Greta whispered.

“You lie.”

“It was the blood,” she said. “Blood does that to the gold your mother made. You knew this. You have known this since the day you cut me for the first time.”

“Your blood,” he said. “You did this to me.”

“You did this to yourself.”

She slipped out of his grip and faced the crowd, now desperately hoping to spot allies. She didn’t. If she ran, she’d be stopped. Jutta, the guards, Albrecht: Anyone could overpower her. That was the way of violence. Strength won, whether it was right or not.

She could tell the crowd the truth—that he had assaulted her and that her blood had made the gold disintegrate. But who would believe her word? Who would believe that she hadn’t wanted him?

She could also tell the truth about the conflict between kingdoms. That Ursula had never been a threat. That she’d never said her queendom would be a place for weres only. But what good was truth to people hungry for lies?

As Albrecht stood, naked and enraged, laughter broke out. It spread from one person to the next until the great hall was full of the overwhelming sight of people laughing, mouths open. The sound was overwhelming.

He picked up his sword and held the sharp edge to Greta’s throat. It touched the stones of her necklace. She held her breath.

The laughter stopped.

For an awful moment, the banquet room was silent. She expected to die, to have her throat slit, for her blood to drench her feet. She braced herself. Then something burst through the door in the back of the room. A gray frenzy, snarling and leaping, pushing off the shoulders of men as he raced toward her. Hans. Hans had come. She wished he hadn’t, but now that he was here, she wanted nothing more than to flee with him. To go beyond the woods to whatever lands lay elsewhere. There had to be someplace better than this.

Albrecht pushed the blade into her neck deep enough to cut. She froze. Jutta shrugged off her cloak, kicked away her boots, and stepped out of her clothing. Then she was a horse, rearing and whinnying, her hooves crashing against the stone floor. She careened toward Hans, who held his spot, his lips curled into a wet snarl. As Jutta tried to stamp on his skull, he evaded her, but her hooves were too fast and the space too small for him to fight back.

The wedding guests backed away, and the guards approached Hans from behind, weapons drawn. He stood no chance.

He’d tried to save her, but she was going to need to save him.

“Spare him,” she said. “Spare him and I will do everything you ask of me always. I will give you sons. I will spin your gold. Whatever you want is yours.” She could hardly feel her body, as if it had already numbed itself in anticipation of the suffering to come. Albrecht was going to split her open like a log for the fire. But that felt like nothing compared to watching her brother die. Without him, she was alone in the world.

Albrecht lowered his blade. He put on Jutta’s white tunic and leather trousers and grabbed Greta’s braid. She submitted. She would always submit for the sake of Hans.

“Let my brother go,” she said as he pulled her toward a door at the north end of the hall. “Please.”

Albrecht whistled through his teeth and Jutta returned.

“Take care of the wolf,” he said. “I’ll come when I can.”

Albrecht dragged Greta by her hair out the door, into the corridor, and up into the tower, where his chambers awaited.