Description

In Devil’s Gambit, Hector, a badger healer, returns to the small town of Rannai, where his fondest memories took root. He still cherishes the mischievous but welcoming wolves, the stories they shared, the lush forest east of town, and the mist that greeted each sunrise. Above all, he remembers Cadgan—a wolf slightly younger and smaller than himself, whose unapologetic troublemaking left Hector with a tangle of emotions. Nine years have passed since those teenage days, and the Rannai Hector knew has changed under a new duke’s rule. Cadgan, too, is far from the wolf of his memories: now a mountain of a man, he has become cold and distant. Returning to a place so dear to him means confronting the gulf between the past Hector treasures and the people and town he finds before him. As Hector takes up his work as a healer and rekindles a long-forgotten passion, his homecoming takes on an unsettling edge. Love is not the only presence stirring in Rannai. Beneath the trees, roots move with his every step, hinting at something beyond the memories that drew him back.