Vashti

Every Michaelmas, the north forest takes a bride from the glen. Three hundred years, three hundred girls. This year the lot falls on Vashti Karim's youngest foster sister. Vashti walks in to make the forest a better offer. What meets her is Cernach — stag-crowned, half-man, older than the glen — and he does not want a bride. He wants the boundary kept, and the boundary is failing because the glen has forgotten the pact that made it. She offers a year as warden. He accepts, amused. He teaches her the forest's language, its losses, and the shape of what he gave up to become what he is. Then the minister decides she's a witch, and the torches come for the trees, and Vashti has to stand between the glen she was raised by and the forest that has kept it alive. A monster bait Scottish historical romance of old pacts, deep woods, and a warden who chooses the dark on purpose.