Dawn had not yet risen from its featherbed the following morn when Einin stopped at the edge of the woods to look back at her village. In her brother Hamm’s brown shirt and britches, she blended into the darkness. She watched her hut, the front door, through which the village elders were even now entering, led by the priest.

“Caw.” The raven on the low branch just above her gave its opinion.

Her stomach clenched. “Definitely a close call.”

If premonition hadn’t awoken her in the middle of the night, she would be waking now to hard hands grabbing her.

“The priest said I was unnatural,” she told Midnight, the black bird she’d befriended in the woods when she was a child. “He’s probably right.”

She should want to give herself over to Wilm’s godly correction instead of running from it. Something about her had been wrong as far back as Einin could remember. Maybe because she’d been raised by her father and her brothers instead of a mother.

“I don’t want to spend my life standing by the kitchen fire, bowing and scraping to a husband who beats me.” She wanted to run wild and free. Be her decisions right or wrong, she wanted to be the one to make them.

Weeks ago, when the men in the village had begun talking about a sacrifice to appease the great devil in the hills, Einin knew they were likely to pick her. She had no family to protest on her behalf, nobody left. So she’d volunteered before the priest could have put forth her name. Her choice. At least, it’d been that.

Now, having made yet another choice, Einin watched her hut with tears burning her eyes. The light of the men’s torches flickered in the windows, but not for long. Soon they came pouring out, their expressions even angrier than when they’d entered.

’Twas the rope in the blacksmith’s hand that scared her the most—a length of rope long enough to tie a witch to the stake so she could be burned.

Einin wasn’t going to volunteer again. Not today. Today, she chose to live.

“I’d better get going. Try to be quiet,” she whispered to the bird.

She turned into the woods and hurried, her heart pounding as she sneaked away. If the men looked for her, they’d look for her on the road to Morganton, God willing. They had no reason to suspect that she’d head to the deep woods in the opposite direction, staying off the roads. Nevertheless, she walked as quickly as her legs could carry her, toward Upwood, the nearest village, on the other side of the hill.

Midnight flew ahead, waiting on a low branch for her to catch up, then flying ahead again, playing the game for a good while before he grew bored and disappeared.

While Einin missed the company, she did not raise her voice to call the bird back. She didn’t know who or what might hear her instead. Menacing shadows loomed over her, the trees like hungry giants bobbing their heads to see her better. Wild creatures called to each other in the night with sharp, frightful sounds. A loud call from a hooting owl overhead made her jump.

An owl hooting at dawn predicted doom, the old women of the village always said. Einin shivered. The dark woods before her scared her nearly as much as the men behind her.

The bears will be waking. The wolves never cease hunting. And the giant wild boars…

Einin drew her lungs full of cold air and pushed the beasts out of her mind. She had to, or she might not be able to put one foot in front of the other.

She kept her punishing pace until the sun came up, then reached its zenith in the sky. A small creek called from ahead. Her parched throat sent her forward.

“Caw.” The raven settled onto a low branch that hung over the water and preened.

Einin drank, then rested there on a flat rock, eating most of the food she had brought: a boiled egg, a small chunk of cheese, tossing bits to the bird, who snatched them neatly out of the air. Then she finished the heel of last week’s bread loaf. She’d never baked that round of sourdough on the sideboard the eve before. She’d been too busy worrying about the priest.

“They’re far behind me now,” she told Midnight as she finished her meager meal, tossing the bird the last crumbs. “Upwood isn’t that far. Just over the hill. I’ll be there before nightfall.”

She’d bolted from her hut in the middle of the night, running for the shelter of the forest, thinking that anything was safer at that moment than the village. Her only thought had been to grab what food was at hand and get as far away from the coming torches as possible. Upwood had seemed the best choice.

Except… Her mind fully awake now, Einin realized the impossibility of the village as her safe haven. Upwood was on the traveling priest’s circuit. So were all the other villages she knew.

She swore between her teeth. “Dratted dragon droppings.”

“Caw.” The bird finished his share of the food and tilted its head at her.

Einin looked at the forest, as if somehow she could gain strength from the familiar rocks and trees. She’d been here before, with her father and their goats. She knew most of the forest. The woods were where she’d always felt the happiest, the freest—jumping around with the goats, chasing them, then letting them chase her.

Now and then, a goat would disappear, and the whole family would try to find the lost animal. Einin never looked too hard. She liked thinking about those goats out there, living free, running wild through the endless forest, visiting distant lakes and ruins, seeing the world as she would never see it.

Back in those days… Other than keeping the cottage in order, her job had been milking the nanny goats. Her brothers helped with other tasks like butchering and selling the meat. Sometimes they made kidskin gloves that a merchant carried to faraway castles. At other times, they made wineskins that never went farther than the nearest village markets. Hamm was a great maker of cheese. He said their mother used to make the fattest cheese rounds in the village, along with the best goat milk soap, but Einin couldn’t remember. She’d tried to make soap, but her mother hadn’t written down the recipe, and Einin’s soap never hardened, no matter what she did.

Her favorite part of being a goatherd’s daughter had been playing with the kids.

Her father used to laugh and say Einin was like a goat kid herself, and at times, she’d wished she were a runaway goat. Wild and free.

“Now I’ve done it,” she told the bird as they rested on the fallen log. Ran off into the woods. Yet, instead of excitement, fear filled her veins.

The creek sang behind her, the birds chirped in the trees, the forest full of life. She knew where she was, but she was more lost than she had ever been. With a painful certainty, she knew that she could never go back home again. “That was the last time I saw that hut.”

Downwood was out, and so was Upwood.

“Caw.”

“Can’t go to Morganton either.”

Aunt Rose did not, in truth, have a fever, nor would Einin know if her aunt did. It had been a year since she’d last received a message from her aunt, brought by a traveling tinker. While Einin didn’t doubt that a helping hand would be welcome in the modest house of her mother’s sister, another mouth to feed would be a burden.

“We shall survive in the woods.” She pushed to her feet, marshaling all her confidence.

Yet she couldn’t help but notice that in the deep shadows of the trees, here and there, snow still lingered. The nights were freezing. Few plants grew, the trees barely budding. She didn’t think the wild birds had laid eggs yet.

“I will start with building a lean-to.” She marched forward to gather sticks.

She worked herself breathless, but when she had her pile, she realized she had no strings to tie the sticks together. Here and there, she could see clumps of long grasses, but in the sunny spots, their leaves were too dry and brittle, while in the deep shade, wet and rotten.

“A fire, then.” She searched her bundle, but she couldn’t find her flint. Either she’d forgotten to pack it, or else she dropped it as she’d hurried through the night forest.

She had no knife to throw, no bit of wire to build a snare.

Einin blinked hard, her eyes burning as she stared reality in the face. This past winter, the whole village, everyone pulling together, barely survived the punishing cold and hunger. Attempting to eke out a living in the woods would mean nothing but slow starvation. If she didn’t freeze first.

She looked at the raven, who was hopping in a circle around her as if playing a child’s game.

“My only choices are,” she said, “either the agonizing death of being burned at the stake in the village, or the slow death of starvation in the woods, or…” She swallowed. “A swift death delivered by sharp dragon teeth.”

“Caw.”

“You’re right. A swift death would be best.”

She returned to the flat stone by the creek and slumped onto it. She needed just another moment to gather her courage. She gave a deep sigh, then lay back and stared at the sky. Midnight kicked off and rose to the air, flying circles above her.

The sun shone warmly on Einin’s face. She closed her eyes. She thought of the village, and she thought of the dragon, but soon those thoughts drifted from her. She had not slept nearly enough the night before. Anxiety had kept her awake for most of the night, until she’d bolted in panic like a rabbit. Now sleep pulled her under.

Dusk was falling by the time she woke, shivering. At first, she didn’t see Midnight anywhere, but the raven came quickly enough once Einin opened the bundle that held her meager leftovers. She shared her remaining boiled egg and the wrinkled old apple that was the last of the previous year’s harvest. She drank again from the creek and washed her face. Then she filled her lungs and turned toward the dragon’s cave.

“No sense in delaying any further.”

“Caw.”

“Just once, I wish you said something helpful. And if you could, just once, now is the time.”

“Caw,” the raven responded.

Einin shook her head and began rebraiding her hair, her locks loosened from her mad dash through the woods and then by sleep. After she finished, she straightened her clothes. Then she started out on her path, steeling her spine as she went. At least by going to the dragon, she would die with honor, having kept her word.

“Ready to pay the dragon’s price,” she muttered under her breath, and this time, the raven didn’t answer. The bird had disappeared again. Einin rubbed her arms against the chill. “Off to see the dragon, then.”

Truly, from one such as the great beast, where could she flee? Where could she hide? And if she acted the coward, the dragon might bring harm to the village. Even if the village rejected her now, the people were still the neighbors and friends she’d once loved, had grown up around. And what about the children? Einin would not see them burn in dragon fire. She kept her eyes on the darkening path and marched forward and up the hill.

She tried not to think of the very strong likelihood that by morning, the dragon would be picking her bones out of his fearsome teeth. Every night since she’d met him, in her dreams she’d seen nothing but the death that awaited her in his black eyes.

It had to be near the middle of the night by the time she reached the end of the faint trail. Then she walked past the last outcropping of rocks, and the dark mouth of the dragon’s cave opened menacingly before her. Her knees weakened at the sight. She thought she heard the flapping of wings high above, but if the raven was there, it didn’t call out.

Einin’s feet wouldn’t move forward. The urge to flee washed over her, stronger than ever, but she held her ground. She did not turn back, not even when the sound of sharp talons on stone reached her, and, in the very next moment, the dragon appeared.

Fly, Midnight, fly, and don’t come back. You don’t want to see what happens next.

The beast was as frightening as Einin remembered. More so, even. The moon was full, and for the first time, Einin could fully see him. The inside of the cave had been dim.

His blue-black scales glinted in the moonlight, as did his curved fangs. He appeared rounder. Must have fed since. Einin shuddered at the thought. He’d feed once again before the night was over. She shuddered again, unable to stop herself.

He was twice her height, and twice as long as he was tall, not counting the snaking spiked tail. He kept his great wings folded, and she had no desire to see them spread. He looked beastly and stark, his obsidian eyes fixed on her, his attention holding her immobile. She couldn’t run now if she tried, couldn’t move a muscle.

“So you came.” His deep, rumbling voice filled the clearing before the cave and reached inside her to surround her trembling heart.

A long moment passed before she could gather herself enough to draw her shoulders straight and hold out her hands to the side to show that she brought no weapons this time. “I’m here to fulfill our bargain. I’m here to slake the dragon’s hunger. Of my own will.”

Her voice did not shake, and that provided her with some small consolation on the eve of her death. Mayhap her father would be proud of her. He’d always called her a strong lass, and not with disapproval as many other fathers would have.

She wasn’t brave long, however. The dragon’s lips curled back, and she blanched. A smile was a fearsome sight on a full-grown dragon. For certain, she would have happily gone her whole life without seeing such a smile. She hadn’t realized he had quite that many wicked teeth.

She could barely squeeze out the words, “May I have a last wish?”

The beast stared at her with a speculative gleam in those all-seeing eyes. “What would you wish for, Einin of Downwood?”

“That you make it quick.”

“Such I cannot promise.” His lips curled back once again.

Ack, those teeth! Another shudder ran through her. In fact, once she started, she couldn’t stop shivering.

He looked up at the full moon that slipped under clouds as gauzy as a funeral shroud.

“Wait here.” And with that, he pulled back into his cave, disappearing into the shadows.

Cowardice pushed Einin to run. Honor made her stay. She squared her shoulders and prepared herself for the imminent bloody violence.

I chose this.

Not the stake and fire in the village.

Not the slow starvation in the hills.

I chose.

She had a choice, which meant she was free. She would die, but she would die free. The thought gave her courage, even if it couldn’t stop her shivering.

The man striding forth from the cave a few minutes later startled her.

She blinked hard at him, taking a quick step backwards. Where did he come from, so sudden like, in the middle of the night?

He stood a full head taller than she did, as wide in the arms and shoulders as a blacksmith. He wore black leather, reinforced with dragon scales in the front. His hair was the dark silk of the night, his teeth gleaming white as he flashed a predatory smile. His eyes, the color of a moonless midnight, traveled over her.

Unfamiliar sensations suffused Einin’s limbs, the invisible flames that licked her unexpectedly in the cool night surprising her. Even her shivering stopped.

The black knight stepped closer while surprise still rooted Einin to the spot. He had a slightly smoky scent, not unpleasant, similar to her father’s when in winter he used to smoke their hams and sausages and bacon. The knight’s features were rough and scarred. His eyes seemed immeasurably old, belying the obvious virility of his body.

He stood very close now, closer than was proper. Yet Einin could not protest, even had she found her voice, being the village wench that she was and he obviously a knight.

A knight as powerful as he… Hope unfurled inside her chest. “My lord, Sir Knight—” She wasn’t sure how to address him. She’d never had the occasion to address a man of such high station. “What have you done to the dragon?”

A smile curved up his sinful lips, lips such as were made to make maidens weep. “I’m one and the same. And I have a powerful hunger to slake.”

Einin was too stunned to move. She could do naught but stare at the dark fires that burned in the man’s eyes.

“I am the dragon Draknart,” he said as he reached for her. “And you are mine, Einin of Downwood, by your own promise.”