Zofia was taught the old ways: sweep ash across the threshold, set out bread and salt, never name what wanders. She names him anyway. Winter answers with a pale-eyed stranger who crosses her door as if it were a promise-guest, then guardian, then hunger made handsome. The village mutters; iron glints. At the river's edge, the reed-women hiss that ash binds tighter than prayer. In the bone-crone's hut, a knife of flint and ash waits to sever his shadow.
Between fire and snow, Zofia must choose the law of the hearth or the mercy of the blade-unmake what she called, or welcome it and feed it with her own blood. He learns to kneel to her "no." She learns that love is appetite with a vow. Ash becomes not a fence but a line of welcome, and the door remembers every word.
A complete romance. Can be read as a standalone.
