Prince Aurelius Goldmane had ruled a kingdom for six years, yet he had never once set foot past the tree line of the fae forest that bordered it. He stood at the forest's edge now, holding a letter he meant to deliver by hand. The letter asked the fae sovereign to consider his suit. But men who walked into that forest without safe passage did not walk back out. Aurelius had watched two of his own scouts vanish into the trees last spring. An old waystation crouched at the border, its stone walls softened by thick moss. Aurelius pushed the door open. Inside, an old woman sat by a cold hearth, sorting dried roots into piles. She did not look up. "You want to cross," she said. It was not a question. "They all do. Then they leave their bones under the ferns." "I need to reach the sovereign," Aurelius said. "I carry no weapon. Only a letter." The woman finally looked at him. Her eyes moved to the gold in his hair, then to his soft, unmarked hands. "A letter won't buy you passage. The forest takes clever men fastest." She jerked her chin toward the corner. "But maybe you're luckier than clever." A large wolfhound rose from the shadows there. It was tall and lean, its coat brown along the back and pale down the legs. It crossed the floor and stopped an arm's length from Aurelius. Its calm eyes held his. It did not growl. It did not bow. It simply waited, as if measuring what he was. "He's not mine," the woman said. "He came out of the forest one morning and stayed. He knows the safe ground. The soft ground. He knows which paths close at dusk." She returned to her roots. "He guides the ones he chooses. He drowns the ones he doesn't. I've buried three." Aurelius knelt. He held out an open hand, palm up, the way he greeted his own hounds at home. "I mean her no harm," he told the dog. "I only want the chance to ask." The wolfhound leaned in and pressed its nose to his palm. Then it turned and walked to the door, and looked back over its shoulder. The old woman snorted. "Well. He's chosen you. Fool dog." She rose and lifted the latch. "Follow close. Step where he steps. If he stops, you stop. If he runs, you pray." Aurelius tucked the letter into his coat and stood. He followed the wolfhound out of the waystation and across the last stretch of open grass. At the tree line the dog paused, ears forward, then stepped between two trunks and onto a thin trail Aurelius had never seen from the outside. Aurelius set his boot in the print the wolfhound left. The forest closed around them, cool and green and silent. He was inside now. There was no way back but forward, toward the sovereign he had crossed a border to court.