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Part One
Winter
One
“ONCE upon a time, there lived a little country girl, the prettiest creature who was ever seen. Her mother was fond of her, and her grandmother doted on her still more. This good woman had a little red riding cloak made for her. It suited her so well that everybody called her Little Red Riding Hood.”
Charles Perrault
The Kingdom of Norland, 1455
Winslowe Castle
The sigil of the Black Wolf rose in the darkness like a waking nightmare.
Princess Blanchette Winslowe, the third of her name, edged away from the castle window and the horror it held. The charge of hundreds of men on foot—a peasant’s army—led by a single mounted figure.
The Black Wolf himself.
He’d positioned himself in the vanguard, front and center, just like in the ballads that sang his praise.
She’d often seen him seated in a place of high honor at her father’s feasts but never in his element like this.
The fighters emerged from the wood’s dense cover beyond the gates. Unified cries funneled up the battlements and shook the walls where she stood. Blanchette’s heartbeat echoed the fierce volley.
She felt the castle stir to life below her slippered feet. The volcanic rumble of voices and clanking armor exploded as squires readied men for battle and boys reached for their fathers’ swords.
Panic seized Blanchette. Her legs were rooted to the rushes, weighed with awe and terror.
How could they not have been prepared for a siege such as this?
How could Father let this happen?
How?
“Princess!” Her lady-in-waiting’s voice thrust her from the trance. Insistently tugging her arm, Elise, a girl with wide, restless eyes, fidgety hands, and mud-brown hair, said, “We are not safe here, Princess! Come this way. We must find a passage out of the castle. We must?—”
“No, Elise, no!” Blanchette resisted the pull with what could only be described as deadweight. Horror, shock, and cold shackled her in place—but most of all, a sense of devotion stilled her. “My brother, my mother… my grandmother… I must go to them. I won’t leave them here to die.”
“Then you will follow them into the grave, milady. I beg you; your father’s men shall aid them well.”
She glanced away from Elise’s pallid face and into the night again. The number of fighters had thickened, and worse, she recognized a score of the faces under the Black Wolf’s banner.
Elise’s words were true.
Many men shall aid him well, but their swords shall not sing for Father tonight.
Traitors.
Monsters.
Every one of them.
Even though she’d heard whispers of a brewing uprising, she’d never imagined a revolt like this. It’d struck as suddenly and as fiercely as lightning.
It was a nightmare come to life.
Fitting, she thought, watching the legendary Black Wolf cut through three of her father’s soldiers like a knife through butter. A turncoat army led by a turncoat knight.
