“I dyed it myself, with the help of servants, but I gathered the herbs for the dye.”

Elinore wasn’t certain, but she thought the ogre smiled around his mouth full of tusks. “Go forward, girl, if you have the courage. Go back, if you have not, but whatever brought you to us is still waiting for you on the other side of the bridge.”

She nodded. “The Earl of Chillswoth,” she said.

“I do not know that name.”

“If I fail your aunt’s test, will she really, truly eat me alive?”

The ogre nodded. “She will. She has. She likes her meat fresh and wriggling.”

Elinore shuddered, and swallowed hard enough that it hurt her throat. Was marriage to the earl truly a fate worse than that?

She remembered his hands on her. The moment in the dance when he had not just brushed her breast, but held it, caressed it. Her father would have had any of the young nobles beaten for such liberties, or at least thrown out of the banquet. She remembered how her skin had crawled, and her very being had shrunk from the touch, and the look in his eyes. Was it a fate worse than death? Perhaps not, but Elinore had come to die rather than marry the earl. She would do it. Even if the death were horrible, it would last only moments, and then she would be free. Marriage to that man could last years. She shuddered again, but not from fear of what lay behind the door.