Though he expected exactly what he saw beyond the door, Denisius still felt a nauseating twist in his belly, like a knife being slipped into his gut.

The room was enormous, comprising a significant amount of this level of the Tower, tall mullioned windows admitting faint light. Perhaps it had been a scriptorium or reading room. Now heaped piles of crates and discarded stacks of moldering junk filled the place, the smell of must almost overwhelming. The dust here had been greatly disturbed: much of the haphazard mess seemed to have been shoved to the sides of the room, clearing a space from the door to the broad stones before the windows. Candles were arrayed in a wide circle in crystal sticks, likely purloined from somewhere in the Tower's vast stores. A blanket had been spread in the center.

But Denisius saw little of this at first. As he stepped into the room, all he could see was the pile of fabric halfway between the doorway and the circle of candles -- a gorgeous damask dress of gold and brocaded roses. He had last seen it at a concert he had attended at one of the Chalcedony Palace's salons, when Carala had worn it. They had held hands through the second half, exchanging smiles and shy glances to the strains of airy, lilting music.

But eventually he looked away from this and saw Carala herself.

She lounged amid the candles, draped along the form of a powerfully built figure, a man with closely cropped chestnut hair and a smirking, satisfied look on his handsome features. She wore only her corset and stockings, her pale thighs on display, anything else concealed by the firm hand of her companion, kneading hungrily between her legs as his lips skated along her throat. Her midnight hair tumbled about her shoulders as her head arched back, one hand curled along the nape of this Tacen's neck. The dancing light of the candles reflected the sheen of sweat on her body. Her breath came in short, stifled gasps as Tacen's fingers worked at her secret places, the muscles of her thighs quivering, her fingers clutching, even as doubtful words escaped her trembling lips: "No, you shouldn't, please, please don't, it burns, it hurts -- "

Unaware he was doing it, Denisius lunged forward, gripping the hilt of his sword in both hands, meaning to bury it in Tacen's heart. Before he could manage it, however, Varallo Thray announced them with a furious cry: "What is the meaning of this?"

Carala shrieked and shrank back, her eyes wide in shock. Futilely she tried to cover herself as her companion turned a sneer on Thray and Denisius. He rose to his feet with a languid ease, clad only in a pair of rough breeches, not bothering to hide the jutting shape of his arousal. "I hope you have a good excuse for interrupting us."

Amazingly his tone was as casual as if he'd offered to buy them a drink at a tavern. With a smirk he lifted his fingers to his nose and inhaled, then licked them obscenely, peering over them at the Grand Chancellor. His eyes reflected the light of the candles, their mood inscrutable, his gaze moving carelessly from Thray to Denisius and his upraised blade, betraying neither concern nor fear.

"Identify yourself at once," Varallo Thray said, his tone icier than it had ever been with Denisius. "You insult the honor of the House of Marhollow and the Malachite Throne itself. If you're lucky, you'll be sent to the hangman before the torturer."

"My name is Tacen," the man replied, laughter bubbling up from his throat. "And this woman is mine, and piss for your House and piss for the Malachite Throne. Neither of you is leaving this room alive. Isn't that right, my love?"

Carala trembled, shivering all over as if seized by a fever. Slowly she turned her gaze on Denisius and moaned. "Oh gods, Deni, I'm sorry -- I -- I -- "

Tacen was laughing. Before Denisius's astonished eyes he slid his hands under the waist of his breeches and shoved them down, stepping out of them as they pooled at his ankles, brazenly naked and unashamed of the fact. The bony clutch of Thray's fingers drew him backward, but he needed little encouragement. Stripping nude was a novel strategy, he had to admit, and not one his sparring masters had ever addressed.

But after a moment he understood it wasn't the man's state of dress that had alarmed Thray -- it was the sound rumbling from his throat. The laugh was darkening, thickening, becoming a snarl. As if by instinct Thray and Denisius drew closer together while Tacen crouched to the ground. The muscles beneath in his back were rippling, knotting, undulating as if some parasite crawled beneath his flesh, waiting to burst forth.

As they watched, his eyes lightened to maddened gold -- his lips skinned back in an awful smile, his incisors visibly lengthening into fangs. A terrible reek of musk and sweat flooded the room. Silver hair chased with chestnut was sprouting from his back, thickening into fur. Before their horrified gaze hands were twisting into paws; legs into haunches; a handsome face erupting into a snout peeled back to show curving, savage fangs.

The werewolf raised its muzzle and howled, the sound filling the dusty chamber and threatening to split their eardrums, its tail lashing furiously above its hindquarters.

Denisius's sword fell from his nerveless fingers, ringing on the stones. The sight of something from childhood stories appearing before him in the flesh was bad enough.

The sight of his bride-to-be twisting into a wolf herself was much worse.

She screamed and wept, her hands tearing at her corset as nails curved into claws, her hazel eyes darkening into a feral amber, staring and terrified. Thick fur as black as her lustrous natural hair was sprouting all across her body, her delicate features becoming bestial and hungry. But even through the snout that had consumed her mouth and nose, Denisius could still see hints of the woman who was supposed to become his wife, and the terror and shame in her lupine eyes. Her body was still shapely and sleek beneath the midnight pelt, but it would never be mistaken for human. Above the otherwise pleasing curves of her backside, limned in onyx fur, a wolf's tail now whisked from side to side, its inhuman owner panting and rolling to her flank.

Then the beast that had called itself Tacen rose up to its full height, and Denisius remembered he had more pressing concerns.

It was taller than it had been as a man, taller than either Denisius or Thray, and it loomed as it advanced on them, its eyes growing wilder and wilder as its tongue lathed its chops. Under the growls, it was still laughing. It reared back, preparing to lunge.

Denisius decided he was not going to die cowering and unarmed. His chances against a creature such as this might be pitiable, but he was determined when he met the gods (very shortly, in all likelihood) he would be able to tell them he had at least tried. And even through the animal features that had consumed Carala's visage, he could see her anguish and he knew Varallo Thray had been right. Her will was not her own. In some way she had been deceived, perhaps even coerced. It was too late for him to save her, intended husband or not. But he would die in the attempt.

Shoving Thray to one side, the Chancellor tumbling into a stack of rotting bolts of cloth, Denisius cried out and hurled himself backward, seizing his sword along the way, out of breath as he struggled to regain his feet. Hopefully Thray would use the time to escape. Denisius had no great affection for him, but the man had been trying to help him and the princess both, in his own fashion.

The werewolf bared its fangs in a furious growl, no longer laughing, clearly enraged by even a modest attempt by its prey to defend itself.

At that moment two shadows burst into the room from behind him, one tall and lithe and bearing a sword, the other short and squat and flashing a dagger in each hand. Denisius found himself pushed out of the way, all the wind knocked from him as he went sprawling alongside Varallo Thray, who was slowly getting his bearings.

Working in tandem, kicking crates and junk into the floor to foul the werewolf's advantage of mobility, Vos and Quilla had the beast cornered, moving in a rough triangle. Quilla crouched in a knife fighter's stance with his chin tucked to protect his throat, while Vos struck a more military pose, ready to strike with the snakelike darts that were the trademark of his former company.

The werewolf's eyes darted from side to side, its nostrils flaring, taking the measure of each of them. Denisius stared, gasping as he tried to get his breath back, consumed in a dizzying mixture of relief and terror. Vos and Quilla might actually be able to deal with this thing, unless the she-wolf that had been the Princess Carala decided to fight on the side of her lover. Still she shivered and whimpered on the stones, either in horror at what she had become or simply because she had yet to adjust to this new shape.

At last the werewolf leapt with a triumphant howl, its body streaking like a gray arrow as it hurled itself at Quilla. The shorter manservant grinned, slashing his blades at the oncoming rush of fur and muscle, bright hot wolf blood splashing his face as his knives bit deep through the beast's hide. But the blows did nothing to slow the creature's momentum. Quilla was still grinning as a mighty paw swiped his head from his shoulders, a fountain of blood spraying from his severed neck, bathing the wolf's snout and torso. His knives slashed in a failing rhythm before his body twitched and collapsed to the floor.

Vos had served with Quilla for three years and liked the man well enough (despite his snoring and fondness for cheating at cards), but he wasted no time in seizing the advantage offered by the werewolf's exposed flank. Silently he sprang, thrusting his blade into the wolf's side, baring his teeth in a wolfish sneer of his own as the beast howled and yipped in agony. The sword plunged deep into the wolf's guts and lungs over and over again. A man would have surely keeled over dead or dying from such an assault. But Vos knew well the differences between man and werebeast, and did not break off his attack.

It twisted and panted, its paws seeking his throat -- stymied by an upthrust arm, the mailed coat beneath Vos's frayed traveling clothes blunting the attack. They struggled back and forth, crashing into the stacked crates and towers of debris, sending them thundering to the ground. The wolf's claws opened the side of Vos's face, blood flowing in a veil, but not deep enough to be mortal. Vos rolled away, springing back to his feet and slicing at the wolf's back, flaying it open along the left shoulder blade. Red muscle glistened beneat the pelt. It cried out in agony and fell to all fours, knocking some of the candles asprawl, flames beginning to smolder in the junk strewn across the room.

The she-wolf shrank back against the wall, the rising fires reflected in her bewildered eyes.

Desperate now, as far from laughing as it could be, the werewolf lunged at Vos from all fours, meaning to take him down as if he were a deer or hare, perhaps in the extremity of its pain forgetting this was no prey animal but an armed warrior who had, apparently, dealt with creatures of its ilk before. Vos dropped with a pantherish grace, his sword thrusting upward in a blaze of steel streaked with crimson -- its point passing through the wolf's jaws, puncturing the roof of its mouth and stabbing deep into its skull.

Blood showered from its throat, its ears, the corners of its eyes as it shuddered and died. Vos grimaced and hurled the carcass backward, wiping his blade on his breeches before he attended to the blood pouring from his face. Varallo Thray stumbled forward, festooned with dust and cobwebs, stamping his feet on the burning wreckage before the fires could spread. Wordlessly he gazed from the trembling she-wolf now huddled on all fours to Vos as the warrior mopped the blood from his cheek.

"You'll need stitches," the Grand Chancellor remarked.

"Later," Vos replied, advancing on the remaining wolf. She cowered, whimpering, her eyes rolling from one man to the other, trapped and terrified.