Keeper of the Iron Gate

For six years, Sister Eirian has carried bread to the thing in the oubliette and never once looked at it. Then the king's marshal comes to empty the keep for war, and the wolf in the dark is scheduled to burn. Eirian looks. What she finds is a chained man named Cadfan, last of the Fell line, cursed by his own brother's paid witch — and a mate bond that has been quietly built out of six years of bread and silence. She walks him out through the gate she has kept her whole adult life, and takes him north to the hall his brother stole and the witch who still holds the ledger. Cadfan wants the curse reversed. Eirian wants the brother brought to trial. What they get is a choice neither of them can make alone — and a gate that needs a warden.