Three new saplings, eight pots of chrysanthemums, a heavy jacket, and a book on fall plants. That’s what Brand got for Seri birthday.

He probably shouldn’t have gotten her anything. It felt like he was rewarding her for her defiance, for her willfully naivety. But if Seri was going to stay for the fall, he wanted her to be comfortable.

Her grace period was up. The changes would start kicking in.

Slowly, though. Brand knew this from experience. Seri could stay through fall and still be fine, but by winter, the curse would start to hurt. So he had three more months with her. Maybe.

He’d never had a girl stay through autumn.

He shouldn’t be happy about it.

He wasn’t happy. He was miserable.

He still watched her garden and played her at chess and spoke to her at dinner and fantasized about sleeping with her and kept his hands to himself. It was torture. He shouldn’t want her, but he did. Badly.

He tried to distract himself.

He went into a tavern, one day. He saw a girl with curly hair. It might have been brown, but in the dim light, it looked black. She had eyes that shone in the candlelight. She laughed, when he flirted with her. She touched his shoulder. She probably wouldn’t sleep with him, but she might let him kiss her. Along her neck. On her lips. So hard she couldn’t breathe.

Because she didn’t know what he did to other girls.

She didn’t know he kidnapped them and held them prisoner.

Brand smiled at her and bought her a drink and told her he had to go home to his wife. He didn’t have a wife. He probably never would. That was fine. He didn’t want a wife. He didn’t want a woman to sleep with him out of obligation and raise his children with a perpetual frown on her face. He wouldn’t marry a woman who didn’t love him. All of him. The good parts and bad. The sound decisions and the mistakes.

God, he made a lot of mistakes.

Brand paced through the town. What was he going to do? He couldn’t lust after Seri all autumn. He was going to lose control. He wished he could find some other girl to obsess over, but his desires didn’t work that way. He might find a girl pretty, but it took him weeks, maybe even months to decide he wanted her. Spending one evening with a girl, no matter how pretty or charming or witty, was not going to do the trick.

If only there were other girls in the house….

Outside the tavern, a group of townsmen clinked their mugs.

“What shall we drink to now?”

“How about the health of our lord’s newly betrothed?”

“May she give him many warm nights in the cold days to come.”

Brand donned a disguise and walked over them.

“Excuse me,” he asked, “but what is the name of the lady?”

“Mistress Gretchen of Castle Aurich.”

He knew the name of the castle. It was on his list of possible places his enemy’s bloodline could be hiding. Not high on his list, but even so.

Normally, Brand didn’t kidnap girls in the autumn. He spent the colder months researching and planning. But there was nothing to plan now. The male heirs were dead, the female heirs were hidden. Only the dragon spell would tell him, and that relied on luck. Trial and error. The more girls he’d kidnapped, the closer he’d be.

So why wait?

Gretchen of Castle Aurich.

Not a powerful castle. But close. He could probably breach it tonight, without much work. It seemed like fate. And if he was very lucky, Gretchen would be beautiful and witty and charming. She would smile at him and laugh and make him forget all about Seri.