Of Iron and Apple-Blossom

Wren Cauldwell is a blacksmith's apprentice, and her job is iron — wards, nails, locks, the things that keep the fae out of the mountain pass. So when a fae knight turns up at her door asking, not demanding, asking her to unmake what her ancestors built, she tells him no. Then her master dies, and the tithe falls on her forge alone. Coldran offers a trade: her craft for his protection. One spring. No lies. He is not what the village says he is. His people are dying behind her iron, exiled from their own green country. Working beside him, Wren begins to hear what no smith has heard in three hundred years: her own songs can heal as easily as wound. And some walls are built to keep people in.