Prologue

The roses, sprawling indolently against the yew hedges covered in snow, were the colour of fresh blood. The traveller, his hands numbed by the cold despite thick gloves, reached out and twisted a particularly blowsy specimen from its stem. He had barely a moment to appreciate the blossom's malevolent beauty before he was bludgeoned in the head and tackled to cold, hard earth. He found himself pinned by the claws of some creature. A wolf, he thought dizzily, as the claws sank like knives into his arms. Pain wracked through his frame.

"I will kill thee," snarled the wolf-creature. "I will kill thee."

The traveller gasped in terror as he felt the creature's hot breath on his face. The nearness of the creature, it could speak, the roses blooming in winter — it was wrong all of it. He had only intended to bring a rose back for his youngest child. It was a cruel joke. His ships had sunk, he had lost everything. He could not give his creditors the gold that was promised; he could not give his children the riches he had promised; he had promised a rose to his youngest, but of course, that was another promise he could not keep.

"Kill me," said the traveller, with his heart in his mouth. It was both a wish and a lie. "I am better off dead."

The creature snarled waspishly. "And did I, without reserve, feed thee from my table and clothe thee that thou might die?" 

The traveller whimpered. He could not help the fear that shuddered through his veins. He wanted to die, but he wanted to live, and he could not think through the pain in his head and in his body.

"Thou hast taken my food and my clothing and stolen my rose, so clearly thou wills to live. Tell me, what wouldst thou give me if I let thee live?" The claws sank deeper into his flesh.

"Anything," said the traveller, trembling. "Anything, so long as you let me live. I have four children who survive me yet. The rose was for my youngest. My sweetest and youngest."

"Anything, thou sayest. And yet ... hast thou a wife?"

"None. She passed many winters ago."

"And the ages of thy children?"

"Between sixteen and thirty."

"Not so young that thou might not spare them, then." Said the creature in a tone that was almost mocking. The traveller kept his eyes resolutely shut. He could not bear to see what manner of creature held him.

"It is decided." The creature announced. The traveller heard the decisive swish of a tail swiping snow from the earth. "Give me thy youngest and I will let thee live."

"NO!" The merchant opened his eyes and looked straight into the sharp, many-toothed mouth of the creature. He felt his heart seize. "Please," he begged, "not the youngest." There were hot tears running down his face now. "ANYTHING, BUT NOT MY YOUNGEST."

"Very well," said the creature's cruel, grinning mouth. "Any one of thy children will do. Send them alone by the fifteenth of the month and all shall be well. If not, I shall most assuredly find and kill you."

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Chapter 1

The traveller had fainted. 

Adira frowned and retracted her claws, then carefully wiped them on the tattered military cloak she kept wrapped around her. The traveller bled into the soil from which the roses grew. Every month, she spilled an offering of blood in the garden, and the damned roses bloomed and sustained the magic that kept the castle looking as it did a hundred years ago.

It was a strange thing, mused Adira, how frightened men were of death. Anyone could have killed her these past one hundred years and she would have welcomed them with open arms — after first having had a little fun, of course. She had all the instincts of a predator, having been turned into something resembling a wolf by a curse she had no hope of breaking. As it was, she got by with bullying and threatening the men and women who stumbled in and scrambled out of the gates of Thornwald.

They invariably sent her their children.

The first few times, Adira had hoped the parents would come back to fight her, but the curse magic only made them remember the fear. No one ever thought to return with their children to kill her.

Little Gertrude Plum was the first child sent to Adira. Gertrude was eight when she came to Thornwald, sixteen when she left Thornwald, and eighty-three when she passed away after a long and successful career as a dancer in the royal ballet corps. Then came Michael Weaver, Lucas Pith, Rosemary Stein, Lilith Hugh, and all the others whose names Adira kept in her head. She did not let herself forget, even though she knew they all had forgotten her. 

It was a side effect of the curse. Once you left Thornwald, the mind only remembered the last event that had happened in Thornwald. And because she didn't want to scare anyone whose parents hadn't even bothered to bargain to keep them, she appeared to the children masked and cloaked until the day they left, and no one was the wiser.

Adira bound the unconscious traveller's wounds, packed his saddlebags with gold and jewellery from a dozen dead courtiers, and sent him home on his horse when she judged him at least half awake. "Remember," she said, tapping his cheek with a sharp nail. The traveller flinched. "The fifteenth of the month or else."

She was a beast. She was cruel and she was kind and she had been waiting for death for a hundred years.