Rowan Greenbriar pressed a poultice to the fae prince's side and prayed the bleeding would stop. She had found him at dawn, slumped against her twisted cottage door, silver blood soaking the roots. Her mother had taught her every healing herb in these woods. None of them had prepared her for a dying prince. She ground crushed yarrow into his wound and worked the way she worked every sickness. Keep him alive. That was the whole goal now. The door banged open. A pixie darted in, wings beating fast, her small face white with fear. "It's coming," the pixie gasped. "The thing that struck him down. It smells his blood. It's following the trail here." Rowan's stomach dropped. She looked at the red smear across her floor, at the stained roots outside. The prince had left a path straight to her door. Whatever hunted him would walk it right to them both. She grabbed her mother's salt jar and a bundle of dried rowan branches. "Help me," she told the pixie. "We cover the blood. We break the trail." They scrubbed the doorstep while the woods went silent. No birds. No wind. Rowan's hands shook as she poured salt in a ring around the cottage. Salt could hide a scent. Her mother swore by it. But the prince had bled across half the forest, and she could not scrub the whole forest. Something heavy moved through the trees. Branches snapped. The pixie shot up to the rafters and hid. Then a dark shape burst from the brush, and Rowan raised the salt jar like a weapon. It was not the hunter. It was Theron Greenleaf, her oldest friend, an arrow already notched to his bow. He had watched over her since her mother passed, and he moved through these woods like he owned every leaf. His eyes found the blood trail, then found her. "You led it here," he said. Not angry. Afraid for her. "I tracked the same trail. So did it." He pointed his arrow back the way he came. "It's close." Rowan made her choice fast. "The blood is what it follows. We burn the trail." Theron understood at once. He struck flint, and Rowan laid the dried rowan branches along the bloody path. The branches caught. Flames raced down the trail, eating the scent, filling the air with bitter smoke. The heavy steps stopped. Something snarled past the smoke, confused, circling. Then it turned and crashed away into the dark. Rowan dropped to her knees, shaking. The hunter was gone. For now. But the fire had burned the only thing that hid her cottage. The salt ring was broken. The smoke would clear by morning. And inside, the prince still bled, still breathing but weaker, drawing that creature back the moment the air turned clean. "It will return," Theron said. "And next time it will know exactly where to look."

The smoke still hung thin over the roots when Rowan faced the truth. The fire had saved them once. It had also stripped away every ward her mother set around the cottage. The salt ring was broken. The old marks carved into the door meant nothing now. Inside, the prince breathed slow and shallow. When the air cleared, the hunter would smell him and walk straight through the open dark. "We need new wards," Rowan said. "Before dawn. Before it comes back." Theron lowered his bow. "I know the forest. I don't know your mother's craft." He said it plainly, no shame in it. He had guarded her for years, but the warding had always been hers. Rowan dug through her mother's shelves. Salt was gone. Rowan branches were ash. Her hands closed on an old jar of iron filings and a coil of red thread. Not enough. Her mother's strongest wards needed heartwood from a living tree, burned fresh, the ash pressed into the doorframe. "The oldest oak," Theron said. "A quarter mile out. But something sleeps in its roots." They ran. The oak rose black against the stars. At its base curled a small dragon, coal-black, its fur thick as a cat's. It lifted its round head and blinked at them, calm as a dog by a fire. Rowan froze, jar in hand. "It won't let you cut the tree," Theron whispered. Rowan knelt. All her life, the woods had come to her for help. She tried the oldest trick she knew. She held out her open palm and spoke low, the way her mother gentled sick things. The dragon sniffed her fingers. Then it breathed a soft curl of flame onto the dead branch she offered. The branch caught. Rowan nearly wept. She did not need to cut the living oak. She needed its fire. She gathered a bundle of fallen heartwood, and the little dragon lit each piece without being asked. Theron watched, bow forgotten. They carried the burning wood back cupped against the wind. Rowan ground the warm ash into iron filings. She pressed the mix along the doorframe, the windowsills, the twisted roots. She bound red thread across the threshold and spoke her mother's words over every knot. The cottage seemed to settle, the hollow bark drawing tight. By the time the sky grayed, the wards held. Rowan felt it like a held breath. The hunter could circle the cottage now, but it could not cross. The dragon padded inside and curled beside the sleeping prince, warming him. Rowan sagged against the wall, spent. Then Theron spoke from the window. "Rowan." His voice had changed. "Someone's coming up the path. On foot. In armor." She looked out. A man climbed toward the cottage, steel plate catching the first light, a red cross on his chest. Not the hunter. Worse, maybe. A knight of the realm, walking straight to her warded door.

The knight stopped at the broken salt ring. Rowan watched him through the window. The new wards held, but they only stopped the hunter. They did nothing for the smell of fae blood soaking the rags inside. When the hunter circled back, it would track the scent straight through her walls. The fire had masked nothing. It had only bought time, and the time was gone. "I have to kill the scent," Rowan whispered. "The blood. I have nothing to cover it." Her mother's shelves were bare of the strong herbs. She needed something green and living and sharp enough to drown the smell of a wound. Theron crouched beside her, bow across his knees. For years he had guarded her door. He knew the forest the way she knew her jars. "Wolfsbane grows by the stream," he said. "It burns the nose. But the knight is standing on the path." A fist struck the door. "Open up." The voice was flat and tired. "Sir Aldric Brightblade. I'm hunting a bandit, not a witch." He did not knock again. He waited. Rowan's heart slammed. A knight at her door, a hunter in the trees, and a dying prince between them. She made a choice. She opened the door. Aldric looked past her, straight at the rags. His jaw tightened. He did not reach for his sword. "Someone's bleeding in there." "My brother," Rowan lied. "Fever. I need herbs from the stream. Let me pass." Aldric studied her face. He had the look of a man who had been fooled before and hated it. "I don't help liars," he said. Then his eyes moved to the dark fur curled by the sick bed, to the small dragon warming the stranger. Something in him shifted. "But I won't stand between a healer and her stream. Go. I'll watch the path." Rowan ran. Theron ran beside her, naming the plants before she saw them. They tore wolfsbane from the wet bank by the fistful, roots and all. The sap stung her palms. The smell flooded her nose, bitter and clean. They raced back. Rowan crushed the leaves into a paste and packed it over the prince's wound, thick and raw. She smeared the bruised stems along the doorframe and the sill. The sharp reek swallowed every trace of blood. The little dragon sneezed and turned its head away. "That's good," Theron said. He breathed deep and found nothing but wolfsbane. "The hunter can't follow a scent that isn't there." Rowan sagged against the wall, hands raw and green. The scent was masked. The wound was dressed. For the first time, the prince might truly heal. Aldric stood in the open doorway. He had not left. "Your brother," he said, slow, "has pointed ears." He looked at her, then at the fae prince, then back. "I don't care who he is. But the thing in the woods does. And it's coming."