When the monsters come, do you run or do you stand?

“What do you expect to happen? The plucky and headstrong young woman leads the reluctant old warrior, the troubled prince, the handsome stranger… and a ragtag bag of survivors against a terrible foe and somehow, through cunning and trickery, overcome overwhelming odds and unnatural powers to win the day?”

“Why not?”

“Because, my lady…” he growled, “…this isn’t that kind of a tale…”

The war would not come to The Wolf’s Tower, not in the depths of winter. That’s what the old soldiers mutter to each other around their fires and Solace believes them, because old soldiers know more about the business of war than a seventeen-year-old girl ever will.

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But Solace has the sight, like her mother who foretold her own death and her mute, troubled brother, and the sight tells her something different than the old soldiers. In its lunatic whispers, the dread stone within her warns that fire and blood are coming to consume them all.

 

When the village beyond the woods burns one bitter midwinter night, the old soldiers say it is just an accident, a lazy peasant not watching a candle, a spark from an untended fire. Men ride from the castle to help, but everyone says there is nothing to worry about, war has not come to The Wolf’s Tower…

 

Solace knows different, the fire has come as her dreams foretold and blood will follow on its heels. But no one will believe a seventeen-year girl and her mute brother, especially their father who will not hear of such things in a time when the church is eager for more witches to set upon its pyres.

But the old soldiers are right. War hasn’t come to The Wolf’s Tower in the middle of winter. Beneath a cold and bitter moon, something far worse has arrived on the winter’s breath.

 

And it is coming for her…