When Mira Kaul's parents are killed by a troll, she is forced to serve the whims of the town's prickly miller, Shem Langheart, because no one else will take in another mouth to feed. Now at age eighteen, she seems doomed to remain as a maidservant to an ungrateful guardian and his nosy son, Jarin. But one night, a riderless horse wanders out of the forest near her home. Its saddle bears the insignia of clan warriors from the north who guard Trollgate Pass. Has the pass been overrun? The miller fears an attack is coming . . . but Mira can't just leave the warrior out there in the forest to die. There are creatures born of the night that have no love for humans, and if they discover an injured man wandering the forest alone, his fate would be sealed with blood. Mira knows exactly what would happen to him, for her parents died on a night like this.