Michael Carney had come to the edge of the fae wood to practice his bow before meeting a noble he intended to marry, and now a child was screaming at the sight of his face. He had crossed the marker stones only for a moment. One step past the mossy line, then back. That was all it took. The glamour clung to him like wet cloth. He felt it settle on his cheeks and jaw, pulling his features into something the mirror in the village well confirmed: a squashed nose, a crooked mouth, eyes set too close. His real face, the one that had won him free drinks and stolen glances since he was fifteen, was gone. The child ran. Her mother crossed herself and hurried after. "Charming," Michael muttered. "Truly a fine day." He had one week. In seven days the fae court would open its gates for the summer revel, and the noble he had traveled three hundred miles to court would stand on the marble steps of that distant keep, the one with the black dragon coiled around its highest tower. Michael had seen it once from the ridge road. He had also seen a portrait of the noble. Silver hair. A mouth like a cut plum. Beauty that matched his own, which was the whole point. He would not arrive looking like a boiled turnip. He asked the herb woman at the crossroads. She spat. "Border glamour," she said. "Lifts on its own. Three weeks, maybe four." "I have seven days." She looked him over and laughed. "Then you need a moonpetal. One bloom, crushed on the tongue under open sky. Burns the fae work off." "Where do they grow?" "Deep wood. Past the stones you already crossed." Michael went back at dusk. He kept his eyes on the ground and counted his steps. The flower grew in a hollow between two roots, petals shaped like slivers of moon, glowing soft purple. He reached for it. A growl stopped his hand. The wolf stepped from the ferns. Silver from muzzle to tail, taller at the shoulder than Michael stood at the chest. Its eyes were pale and steady. It did not lunge. It watched. Michael did not move. "I need the flower," he said. "One flower. For a face." The wolf tilted its head. Then it lowered its nose to the bloom, closed its teeth around the stem, and snapped it clean. It laid the flower at Michael's boot. He crushed the petals on his tongue. Cold rushed down his throat. His skin tingled and eased. He touched his jaw and felt the true line of it return. The wolf sat. It did not leave. "Thank you," Michael said, careful. He backed toward the stones. The wolf rose and followed, one pace behind, matching him step for step. When he reached the road, it was still there. Silver, patient, watching him like something owed. He had his face back. He had picked up something else.

The wolf slept at the foot of Michael's bed. He woke to its breath on his hand and remembered, all at once, that the summer revel was six days off and he could not walk into a fae court with a wolf the size of a pony at his heel. He sat up. The wolf opened one pale eye. His cat, a white and orange stray he called Storm, watched from the top of the wardrobe, tail flicking against the homey flowered wallpaper. Storm had not come down since the wolf arrived. "You cannot come with me," Michael said. "The noble will think I brought a weapon." The wolf thumped its tail once. He tried the door first. He opened it wide, stepped out, and waited. The wolf followed. He walked to the well and back. The wolf followed. He shut the wolf in the shed and got two streets away before he heard the shed door splinter. The wolf trotted up beside him, a strip of pine still caught in its teeth. The herb woman at the crossroads would know. He walked the road with the wolf beside him. She saw them coming and set down her basket. "That is not a wolf," she said. "It followed me out of the wood." She went inside her hut and came back with a dark, worn book. Two wolves were stamped on the cover in faded gold. She pressed it into his hands. "Read the third chapter," she said. "Then decide if you still want to shake it off." He read on her step. The book named them. It named the choosing, the laying of a gift at the feet, the walk across a border. It called the bond a claim, and it said the claim did not break by scolding or by locked doors. It said the wolf would take one form when the moon was right, and that form would be a woman. Michael closed the book. The wolf sat in the road and watched him with the pale, steady eyes he remembered from the fern hollow. "You have to understand," he said. His voice came out thinner than he meant. "I am going to the revel. I am going to marry someone else." The wolf did not move. He could not lose it, and he could not bring it. So he chose the third door. He walked with the wolf to the tall house at the edge of town, the pale stone mansion with the iron balconies, where a distant cousin kept kennels and a stable and asked few questions. He paid her in coin and in the truth, or most of it. He said the animal was tame. He said he would return for it after the revel. The wolf let him fasten a rope. It did not let him walk away easy. It watched him from the gate until the road turned. He went home with the book under his arm and a claim on his back he had not agreed to.

Michael woke to Storm batting at his ear. The cat had come down from the wardrobe for the first time in days. The wolf was three streets away in his cousin's kennel, and already the house felt like his own again. Then he opened the letter that had come at dawn. It was from a friend in the gentry, a woman who traded gossip the way farmers traded eggs. She wrote that a rumor was moving through the summer houses. A pale wolf. A young man from town. A fae claim. She wrote that the noble he meant to court had not heard it yet, but would by nightfall if someone did not reach her first. Michael dressed before he finished reading. Five days to the revel. If the noble heard it from anyone else, she would refuse the meeting. Fae did not court men who were already bound. He knew where she was staying. Every visiting noble that season took rooms at the pale mansion on the hill, the one with iron balconies and a willow at the gate. He walked there with the book from the herb woman under his coat. He did not know yet what he would say. He only knew he had to say it first. A steward met him at the door and would not let him past the step. Michael gave his name. He said he had come on a private matter and would wait. He waited an hour on the stone bench by the willow while carriages came and went. She came out herself. She was smaller than he expected, brown-haired, tan-skinned, with bright brown eyes that fixed on him at once. She wore a fur-trimmed coat too warm for the day. A blue stone hung at her throat. She looked at him the way a person looks at a familiar dog in a strange coat. "You are the one they are all whispering about," she said. "I came to tell you myself." "You are late by an hour." She sat on the bench beside him without asking. "I heard it at breakfast. From my maid, who heard it from a groom." Michael's mouth went dry. "Then you know." "I know a wolf followed you out of the wood. I know it laid a moonpetal at your feet." She tilted her head. "I am not the noble you came to see. I am her cousin. She left for the coast this morning. She will not be at the revel." He stared at her. "Then why are you sitting with me." "Because I wanted to see the man the wolf chose." She stood and brushed off her coat. "My name is Luna Paige. Come inside. We should talk before you make it worse." She walked back up the steps without waiting. Michael sat a moment longer with the book pressing against his ribs. Then he followed her in.

Michael followed Luna into a front room with pale walls and a cold hearth. She waved him to a chair and stayed standing. The book pressed against his ribs. He set it on the table between them so she could see the wolf stamped on the cover. "I did not ask for the claim," he said. "I went in for a flower. The wolf came out with me." Luna touched the blue stone at her throat. "I believe you. That is not the trouble." "Then what is." "The trouble is that a fae claim does not care what you asked for." She almost smiled. "You are bound whether you like it or not. And I find I like the look of you anyway." He opened his mouth to answer and heard the shouting outside. A man on the drive. A dog handler's voice. Then hooves, then the thud of a large body against gravel. Luna went to the window. Her hand froze on the curtain. "There is a silver wolf on my steps," she said. Michael was already moving. He knew before he looked. The kennel was three streets away. The wolf had broken loose and found him again, the way the herb woman said it would. He reached the door before the steward could bar it. The silver wolf stood on the top step, chest heaving, a length of chain dragging from its collar. It saw him and its whole body eased. It walked past him into the hall as if it had lived there for years. Behind him, Luna laughed once, sharp and surprised. He turned, ready for the door to close in his face. She was crouched in the hall with her hand held out. The wolf pushed its head under her palm. Luna looked up at Michael with bright, delighted eyes. "So this is her," she said. "I tried to leave her at the kennels." "I can see how that went." She scratched behind the wolf's ear. The wolf leaned into her hand and closed its eyes. "You cannot keep trying to put her away, Michael. That is what the rumor smells. Not the claim. The hiding." He stood in the doorway with the afternoon light behind him. The steward was watching. Two grooms were watching from the drive. By nightfall the whole street would know a silver wolf had run three streets through town to reach him on these steps. "I will not send her back," he said. "Good." Luna stood. Her hand stayed on the wolf's shoulder. "Then we have a different problem. My cousin will hear about this at the coast within the week. So will everyone she means to marry you off to. You came here to save one courtship. You just ended it." Michael looked down at the wolf pressed warm against Luna's leg, and understood he was standing in a different house now than the one he had entered.