Chapter 1

From the shadows, Suren watches her college-age unsister, Bex, leave milk on the back steps and studies her unfamily through the windows, reminding herself she belongs nowhere. She spots a spying hob and drives it off. Seeking purpose, she climbs the local wishing hawthorn where a glaistig bargains with mortals.

That night, Suren observes three wishers, including a freckled man on his third visit. The glaistig trades him glamoured leaves-as-money for a grisly debt: nightly cubes of human flesh for seven months and seven days. After he departs, Suren breaks the glaistig’s tracking charm and warns him to flee before he harms his family, continuing her quiet revenge against faerie curses.

Hungry and lonely, Suren slips into her unfamily’s house, scavenges leftovers, drinks water and the milk Bex set out, and wrestles with the urge to reveal herself. Her dread spikes when Bogdana, the storm hag who once terrorized her in the Court of Teeth, prowls the yard. To protect her unfamily, Suren bolts into the streets to draw Bogdana away.

As Bogdana closes in, Suren cuts through alleys and fences, considering a futile retreat to her booby-trapped woodland lair. Cornered, she turns to fight, baring teeth and fumbling for a small blade. A horned, goat-footed young man in golden scale mail—Prince Oak—arrives with a wary knight. They threaten the hag; Bogdana withdraws after promising to return for Suren.

Suren tries to escape, scratching Oak’s face, but he overpowers her. The knight binds her wrists, calling her the daughter of traitors. Recognizing Oak—the prince once promised to her—Suren realizes she’s been claimed, her fragile freedom ended as she’s swept back toward Elfhame’s intrigues.