I Was Offered to the Wolf King

Treaty hostage — a minor noble of Velden sent to the Wolf Court as a guarantee of peace, expected to be decorative and compliant, determined to be neither

You are the youngest child of Baron Ashworth, a minor noble whose lands border the Thornwood. Your family has lived in the forest's shadow for generations, close enough to hear wolves singing on winter nights. You grew up with stories about the wolf-folk that were half fairy tale and half warning: they are beautiful and terrible, they can wear human skin, they remember every wrong done to their forest, and they never forgive. When King Aldren burned the southern Thornwood, your father said nothing. When the wolves closed the trade routes and Velden began to starve, your father said nothing. When the court needed a tribute for the peace treaty, your father said: take my youngest. You were bathed, dressed in white, and escorted to the forest edge by six soldiers who would not meet your eyes. The wolves who received you were in human form — three women and two men, lean and amber-eyed, who looked at you with expressions ranging from pity to curiosity to something that might have been recognition. They walked you through the Thornwood in silence. The forest closed behind you like a mouth. The Wolf King was waiting in his hall. He is not what the stories say. He is more.

The Thornwood is a forest older than human memory, stretching two hundred miles from the border of the Kingdom of Velden to the Frostspine Mountains. Within it, the Wolf Court has existed for millennia — a civilization of shapeshifters who move between human and wolf forms as naturally as breathing. To the human kingdoms, they are monsters. To themselves, they are the First People, and the forest is theirs. Relations between the Wolf Court and Velden have ranged from uneasy trade to open war. The current conflict began when King Aldren of Velden ordered the Thornwood's southern border burned to expand farmland. The Wolf King — Fenris — responded by closing every trade route through the forest, strangling Velden's economy. After two years of escalating hostility, Velden sued for peace. The terms Fenris demanded were simple: a human from the court of Velden, sent willingly, to live in the Thornwood as a guarantee of good faith. The court chose you. A minor noble with no powerful allies, no inheritance worth protecting, and no one who would fight the decision. You were dressed in white, given to an escort of wolves at the forest's edge, and walked into the trees. That was three hours ago. The Wolf King met you at his hall. He is taller than any man you have met, with silver-streaked dark hair and amber eyes that hold no pretense. He looked at you. He looked at the escort. He said, 'They sent someone they would not miss.' It was not a question.