What if Cinderella didn’t wait for the clock to strike… But ran into the dark with the wolf instead? When an aristocrat’s masquerade erupts into flame and ruin, eighteen-year-old Ashe flees the ballroom with blood on her shoes and questions burning hotter than the fire behind her. She has spent her life shackled by silks and silence, a servant in her own home, raised by a stepmother who kept secrets like knives. But this time, Ashe does not return to the hearth. She runs. At her side is a creature of fang and fury, a beast the stories insist she should fear. Together, they slip beyond the borders of polite lies and into a world laced with thorn and followed only by wolves. Ashe follows the trail not toward a crown, but toward truth, joining a ruthless culture of hunters sworn to purge the Sluaghs, hag-born horrors rotting her homeland from the inside out. But freedom demands blood, and not all monsters deserve the blade. As the hunt sharpens her and the past claws its way into the light, something ancient stirs within Ashe. Each choice fractures another fairy tale. Each victory costs more than she expects. And soon, Ashe must face the question no story ever prepares its heroine for: How much of herself is she willing to sacrifice to break the crown