After they burned the body of the poor rat, Hans and Cappella hunted for a branch she could use to make a new pipe.

“What about this one?”

He handed her a branch. It was the right thickness, it was straight, and if they could cut it in half, they could hollow it out and then glue the halves together. He’d seen Albrecht make glue from the hides and hooves of animals, and they still had the frozen carcass of the horse he’d killed. The meat had been eaten, of course, and some of the bones turned to soup already. But the hooves and knees remained. They’d be perfect.

She hefted it in her palm. “It doesn’t feel right.”

“How is it supposed to feel?”

Cappella sighed. “I can’t explain it, but I’ll know it when I’m holding it.”

That, he understood. He’d known the moment he saw Cappella that they’d been made for each other. The look he’d seen on her face was the feeling he felt in his chest: joy, surprise, delight. He wished for those days again, sometimes. He wished to be the cub sprinting alongside her in the woods, feeling nothing but his feet against the earth and the brightness of the air in his lungs. He’d never feel that way again, he knew. To grow up was to set aside the lightness of childhood.

He stood next to the enormous tree that marked the spot where Greta died. He put his hand on the trunk, thinking of her. Missing her. The air was bitterly cold and hard to breathe and it made his eyes water. He felt frozen in sadness. Though there was no wind to speak of, and no leaves to rustle overhead, the branches moved. They moved; there was a moan. Then something snapped, and on the ground in front of him lay a branch.

It was perfect. The same length as her old pipe, and the right thickness, and it was beautifully straight.

He held it up. “Look at this one!”

She came over, and she was so warm beside him, bundled in her red cloak. The frosty air had turned her cheeks and lips pink, and her misty breath had hung crystals on the strands of her straight black hair around her face.

She took the stick and gauged its weight, tilting her head and nodding. She examined an end. “Huh.”

“What?” He hadn’t looked at it closely; he’d been too excited to show her.

“It’s hollow already.”

He looked through it. “Does the wood feel frozen to you?”

She laughed. “Hans, everything is frozen.” She tapped the stick. The sound it made wasn’t like any wood he’d heard. It was almost like the sound a pot made when you flicked your fingers against it, like the sound she imagined a bone would make striking another bone.

Whatever had turned the bark red might have affected the wood itself. Made it harder. Stronger.

“Do you think it will work?”

“We’ll have to carve holes and see.” She crossed her arms around herself and shivered.

“Here.” He wrapped his arms around her. “Let me warm you.”

They hadn’t been standing that way long before the sound of giggling erupted. Hans let her go and Cappella sighed.

“You littles are terrible. Every last one of you,” she said. Nicola and the fox brothers were in the front. They were always the ringleaders. But all the children were there. The other goats, the raccoons. Cappella was mortified to have had an audience for such a private moment.

“Were you kissing?” Nicola asked.

“Whatever you were doing was worse than horse soup,” Sebastian said.

“Nothing is worse than horse soup,” Simon said.

“This was worse,” Sebastian said.

“Was not,” Simon said.

They started hitting each other. The other children laughed.

“Look what we found.” Nicola held out a half-eaten honey cake.

“Where did you find that?” Cappella asked.

“Nicola!” Sebastian said. “Now they’re going to want some, and then there won’t be enough.”

“We don’t want any,” Hans said. “But we do want to know where you found it. How do you know it’s safe to eat?”

“It’s safe,” Nicola said. “We each had a bite, and nothing happened.”

“We think Sabine made them and hid them for us to find,” Simon said.

Hans supposed it was possible. “We should take this back to Sabine and Ursula, just to be sure.”

“Look!” Sebastian said. “Here’s another!” He was a few yards ahead. Nicola ran to join him.

Simon ran past them both. “And another!”

And then the children were off, following a trail of honey cakes. Hans’s stomach growled at the thought of having one. They’d served them in the castle every Moon Festival. Enormous heaps of them scenting the air so thick he could practically taste them through his memories. He might never have missed a food so much.

“Should we follow them?” Cappella asked.

Hans nodded. Hand in hand, they raced after the children. Each time they found another cake, they’d squeal. The sound pierced him to the bone. Joy. He wasn’t about to take this away from them.

When Hans and Cappella caught up to the little weres, they’d gone just past the edge of the woods. Where the trees stopped, the landscape opened to reveal an abandoned cart. It held a gingerbread house with a metal roof that reflected bits of moonlight, as sharp as teeth. The air smelled of honey, spice, flour. His mouth watered.

“Stop,” Cappella yelled.

Moonlight lit the edges of her, glazing her black-and-white hair, her fierce hand clutching the perfect stick they’d found.

“Stop,” she said again.

But the children saw the gingerbread. They smelled it. And that part of them that hungered for sweet, hungered for goodness and believed in it more than in evil, clambered into the wagon. They tore bites from it. They stuffed their mouths and marveled at this house built of everything they’d dreamed of these long and hungry months.

Hans understood. He knew what wanting tasted like. “Maybe we should let them.”

Cappella inched closer. “It seems wrong. Why is that here? Where’s the driver?”

“A traveling merchant? I don’t know. Perhaps he’s gone for a walk. Or has set up camp for the night. What harm could it be? There’s no one around. We’ll keep an eye on them. They’re safe with us.”

“All right,” she said. “Let’s let them have their fun.”

They watched the children munch happily. No one came. It all seemed fine, like a bit of luck.

He turned to her. “We could have fun too.”

She tipped her face up and looked at him. Her frozen hair sparkled, and her skin looked so bright and fresh. Alive, he thought. This was what it looked like to be alive.

When she closed her eyes, he kissed her. They pressed against each other, close enough that he could feel her heartbeat. He put his hands under her cloak, feeling the curve of her waist, the rise of her breasts. He could smell her hair, her skin, the forest all over her. She pressed closer still, and he worried that she might feel how much he wanted her. But he also wanted her to know.

He knew, in some primal part of him, that this moment, this feeling, meant something. Which meant that he too wanted to live. He kissed her over and over. Tugged at her lips with his teeth. Ran his tongue along hers. Wrapped his arms around her and felt her backside. He thought he’d memorized her already, but that had been with his eyes. Now he memorized her with everything else.

Greta’s death had broken him. He still grieved. But in the midst of that, he could also feel joy. That thing he’d thought was lost forever wasn’t.

“Cappella,” he whispered.

She dropped the branch she’d been holding, and then her hands were all over him too. It felt so good he could barely stand it. But then, with a sigh, she pulled away.

“Hans. We have to watch the children.”

She was right. They pressed their foreheads together, their breath misting around their faces. He loved her. Her loved her so much. He loved her beyond the bounds of his grief, and before this moment, he’d thought that was the biggest thing in the universe.

They turned to the gingerbread wagon. She covered her mouth with her hand.

One by one, the children were being pulled inside. Animal sounds rang out; they were scared enough to shift. Hans took his wolf form just as Albrecht slid out of the cart, his face covered in a golden mask.

Hans snarled, hoping Cappella would have the sense to run. Instead she stood by his side, as if preparing to fight. He snarled at her again. Run. Please!

Albrecht whipped the horse and the cart sped forward. Hans took off after it, his feet tearing at the icy snow. The cart drew closer and Hans leapt on board, his body crashing against the cage. The impact stunned him. As soon as he could, he stood.

Ahead was the castle. Behind him, Cappella and the forest. She screamed a pitch that sent the forest into a flurry of its own.

He held on and thought about what he’d have to do. He knew he’d face Albrecht, guards, and who knew who else, and he’d have to do it alone. Think, Hans, think. He tried, but nothing came to him.

He crouched as they rumbled over the bridge, catching a glimpse of Albrecht’s metal monkeys. The air was ice, but clouds had gathered, dimming the white light of the moon. Snow was coming. Hans rattled the door of the cage. Inside, the children trembled, all in their animal forms, surrounded by a tumble of clothing. Nicola’s bleat nearly made him weep. He had to free them. He could do that and toss them one by one out of the cart. If the children were taken inside the castle, they’d be lost.

He jammed a claw inside the lock, but it broke off below the quick, and still the door didn’t come unlatched. He was breathing hard now. They’d passed through the merchants’ district and were approaching the drawbridge. He could jump into the moat and run to the woods for reinforcements, but the children would all be in the castle by then, and even if he did have the werebears with him, he doubted their chances of saving the children—certainly not all of them.

The cart passed through the portcullis and stopped in the courtyard. He heard the thud of Albrecht’s boots hitting stone. Hans held his breath, listening for footsteps. None came. He lifted his head. Too late, he turned. Albrecht had tricked him. He was perched on top of the metal roof, a roof that Hans now recognized as enormous wings.

Hans landed hard on the icy cobblestones, his paws skidding. He rolled on his back, looking for Albrecht. Hans flipped to his feet as Albrecht leapt on top of him. He collapsed, and then Albrecht clamped a collar around his neck. It was so tight that he gagged, and he knew the only way he could survive was to take his human form, a near impossibility when he was this roiled with fear.

Albrecht wrapped his thighs around Hans’s ribs, and he held a chain attached to the collar in one hand and pressed Hans’s face into the ground with the other. “Ha! Mine again, wolf. But this time I’ll be nowhere near as kind.”

Hans couldn’t breathe. His nose scraped against the gritty ice. He wouldn’t survive much longer without taking his human form. He imagined hands and feet. Bare shoulders. Small teeth and a tongue that could make words. He imagined becoming naked and defenseless in one last bid to live.

He felt the change coming. Felt the king struggling on top of him, pulling the chain. And then Hans did it. He shifted. He could breathe. Not well, because the king was still sitting on him. He was freezing, so cold he burned. But he was alive. The children were alive, and Albrecht didn’t have Cappella. There was cause for hope.

Albrecht lifted him by the neck, and then Hans was standing, unclothed and shoeless in the courtyard. It was snowing now, and guards had come. His skin was gooseflesh.

“Take the children to the dungeon,” he said. “Be careful that none should escape. There are already enough rats in the castle.”

Holding the chain like a leash, Albrecht dragged Hans inside, through long corridors, and up the tower stairs and to a darkened room nearly as cold as outside. There was the click of a flint and then a lamp was lit. But Hans already knew where he was.

The window in Albrecht’s workshop was no more. It was a jagged mouth of glass and splintered wood, and through it came curls of frosty air. The worktable stood in front of the gaping window. Hans smelled blood. Not fresh. Vestiges that made him want to vomit. It was Greta’s.

“I suppose you think I intend to put you in the chair.” Albrecht jerked the chain and Hans tripped.

Hans said nothing. He was on his knees now, terrified, trying to think of how he could fight off Albrecht. He’d submitted to torture before. He’d withstood pain to protect his sister. He knew what Albrecht wanted from him. He focused on his breathing, trying to keep calm and be ready for a chance to run.

“We won’t be using the chair this time,” Albrecht said. “I have something else in mind.” He led him to the worktable. Leather restraints hung from each side.

“Up you go.” Albrecht jerked the chain.

Hans looked out the window, his teeth chattering. It was too dark to see the woods, but they were there all the same. So was Cappella, his reason to fight.

“I said up.” Albrecht jerked again, and Hans nearly shifted. He sat on the table, looking for something, anything that might help. Albrecht slipped on a finger.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

Hans ignored the question.

“It’s my own design. It’s full of poison.”

“Let me go,” Hans said.

“That’s all you’ve got?” Albrecht asked.

Hans kicked him in the groin, and Albrecht bent in two. Hans leapt off the table, but Albrecht had not released the chain. He jerked it, and Hans hit the stone floor.

Albrecht stood over him. His poison finger shot forward. Hans felt the burn of metal in his skin, and then a strange warmth coursing through him. His tongue thickened and his vision turned hazy.

The forest went silent, as if it were holding its breath in anticipation of something deeply awful. In the silence, Hans could hear everything else. The sound of Albrecht’s shoes on the stone. His ragged breathing through his mask. His own heart pounding.

Hans was numb. He couldn’t move. Keeping his eyes open, staying conscious, took every bit of strength.

“Do you remember the rat experiments?” Albrecht asked. “Of course you do. I remember the way you used to tend the poor creature afterward. You thought I didn’t know, but I did. You always were a soft one.

“You hurt me when you left me, Hans. Both you and your sister. Now that I have you back, I’m going to use you. It’s what I should have done a long time ago. I’m going to cut you open. I’m going to watch you become the wolf. And then I’m going to understand what pain can really do. It’s a teacher, Hans. The best one. And your pain is going to teach me everything I need to know to build my metal men. How to make them live.”

Hans felt his body being lifted to the table. He could hear his limbs being arranged. Could hear the tightening of leather. Could smell the wood of the table. Could feel the sting of tears that he could not stop.

Albrecht pulled a chair in front of Hans and sat, leaning forward on his elbows, as if they were two old friends facing each other over a table laid with food, about to reminisce over something shared, something sweet.

“Everything I’ve wanted since I was a boy, I have. I am king. My people are safe. I am on the cusp of making clockwork men. My soldiers will end the insurgents who threaten us all, my sister among them. And they will raze the forest itself, which has become a monstrous thing all on its own. It can eat a man, Hans. Did you know that? Did you know that place you ran to, that place that you love so much, that place that you call home, is evil?”

The timbre of his voice changed as he spoke. Hans understood the content of what the king was saying. But the horror of it felt distant, muted. He had to make his own tongue bleed to hold on to consciousness.

“Once I’ve cut you open, once I’ve understood what animates you, the secret to your life, I’ll move on to the children in the dungeon. They’ll become my first soldiers.

“I knew you’d follow the cart,” Albrecht said. “I’m so glad you did. It would have been so difficult to put you in the cage, and I would have hated to shoot something as useful as you twice.”

Then Albrecht slipped on a different finger, this one equipped with a pair of blades. That was the last thing Hans remembered before the poison won.