For the Wolf by Hannah F. Whitten

Valleydan Interlude II

The book wasn’t where it was supposed to be.

Neve frowned at the paper in her hand, a reference with author name and shelf number. It was a book of poetry she was after, one written by a trader who had a rhyming system for navigating Ciani rivers. Not exactly a popular item. It was forbidden to take things completely out of the library, anyway, though Red did it all the time—

She stopped, pressed a hand against her stomach at the sudden ache. Kings, she had to stop doing that. Thinking of Red as if she were still here. It’d been only a day, but every hour felt like a dagger.

Tears burned behind her eyes, too sharp to fall.

“What if we didn’t visit with the venerable Master Matheus today?” Behind her, Raffe twisted her vacated chair, straddling the seat and folding muscular arms over the ornately carved back. “What if, instead, we did . . . literally anything else?”

Had it been anyone other than Raffe, Neve would’ve snapped at them to leave her be. As it was, the grin she cracked was half genuine, though exhaustion made the edges pull down. After her ill-fated trip to the Shrine, she hadn’t slept much. “I assume by not visiting, you mean we should skip his lecture on southern weather patterns and their effects on imports?”

Valleyda was at the very top of the continent, landlocked, with the Wilderwood to the north, the Alperan Wastes to the east, and Floriane blocking the way to the western coast. It made trading a nightmare, but that was why Valleyda was the best place to learn about it— they’d thought through to the bottom of any commerce issues one might encounter, because they’d encountered all of them.

Valleyda’s only power was in religion, in sharing a border with the Wilderwood and being locked into the Second Daughter tithe that protected the world from monsters, but it at least led to most countries being willing to offer fair prices. No one wanted to anger the Kings by cheating the kingdom that might one day provide the sacrifice to set them free, or sour the prayers they paid for from the Temple.

Still, crop scarcity would always be a fear, especially when the passes blocking Valleyda from Meducia and Alpera froze so early in the year. Neve’s marriage to Arick was mostly to lock in a sea route, making Floriane a province and providing Valleyda with unfettered access to its coastline.

The tired grin on Neve’s face became slightly harder to hold.

“Precisely what I mean,” Raffe answered. “I find I can’t summon a shred of enthusiasm for the subject of commerce at present.” The late-afternoon light through the window teased muted gold highlights along his long, elegant fingers.

Neve pressed her lips together. She spent far too much time watching Raffe’s hands.

“It’s summer,” he continued, “or as close to it as it gets around here. Forgoing one droning diatribe won’t kill my father’s business. And if it does . . . well.” A shrug. “I’m not terribly worried about it.”

Neve dropped into the chair across from him. “What if you didn’t have to worry about it at all?” She picked at the wrinkled reference paper, tearing it into a tiny snowdrift. “If you didn’t have a business to run, trade routes to learn. What if you could do anything?”

Raffe’s playful smile fell a fraction, handsome features turning introspective. “Well, there’s a question.” His gaze strayed to her hands on the table.

Warmth rushed to Neve’s cheeks. She couldn’t deny an attraction to Raffe— she didn’t think anyone could; the man was handsome as a fairy-tale prince and had the kindness and charm to go with it— but nothing could happen between them, not with her betrothal cemented. Still, that didn’t stop the want, and it didn’t stop the simple pleasure of knowing that her wanting was returned.

Raffe settled his chin on his arms, dark eyes curious as they flickered from her hands to her face. “What about you? If you could go anywhere, where would you go?”

Her answer came instantly, and it banished all the warmth his eyes had brought her, replaced it with an inexpressible ache. “I’d go find my sister.”

A line drew between Raffe’s brows. When he spoke, it was on the end of a sigh. “You did all you could for her, Neve.”

She had, and it wasn’t enough.

“It isn’t your fault.”

Then whose was it? Fate twisted one way, and Neve was born first. None of it was fair, and none of it was right, and she should’ve tried harder to change it. Should’ve done something other than beg Red to run, long after it became clear she wouldn’t.

Raffe’s hand stretched out. It hovered over hers, a moment’s hesitation, before his fingers settled across her wrist. He was warm, so warm, almost enough to call her out of the cold place she retreated to inside herself, where she could grow numb and distant. She’d spent a lot of time there, recently. Numb and hollow was better than raw and hurting.

“You have to stop blaming yourself, Neve. She made a choice. The least we can do is honor it.” He paused, swallowed. “Honor her memory.”

Memory. The word slashed her open. “She isn’t dead, Raffe.”

She thought of what the red-haired priestess in the Shrine had told her, what had happened to Red when she crossed into the Wilderwood. Tangled in the forest, bound to it. It’d been at the back of Neve’s mind all day— her sister threaded with vines, fodder for a ravenous wood.

But alive.

And hadn’t part of her known that? She would’ve felt it if Red died. There would’ve been something, some sort of absence, and Neve still felt horribly whole.

Raffe didn’t dispute her. Still, there was nothing like faith in his eyes, and the thought of trying to explain it to him, to put the thing into words, was exhausting.

So Neve pulled in a deep breath, measured it so it wouldn’t shudder. “The gardens,” she said, pasting on a smile. “Not exactly exciting, but it’s somewhere to go.”

“Better than lessons.” Raffe stood, gallantly offered his arm. “Will Arick be joining us?”

He said it lightly, but there was worry in his tone. Neve’s pasted smile fell. “No.” She threaded her arm through his. “Honestly, I’m not sure where Arick is.” She hadn’t seen him since they returned from the Wilderwood, the three of them packed into one black carriage, lost in separate silences. Neve remembered thinking that was the only thing redeeming in the whole day, the whole year. If they had to lose Red, at least they could sit with the loss together, find a way to hold it together.

But then Arick slunk off to lick his wounds alone.

Raffe sighed. “Me either.”

She squeezed his arm, unspoken comfort. Then the two of them drifted through the library doors out into a sun-filled hall.

Neve wasn’t exactly sure why she’d suggested the gardens. She and the red-haired priestess had cleared the mess she’d made, and she’d assured Neve no one would notice. Still, it was probably wise for Neve to keep a wide berth of the Shrine, at least for a few days. But she felt drawn out there, like probing a bruise to see how badly she could make it hurt.

As they turned the corner, the glass double doors to the gardens opened, emitting a procession of white-robed Order priestesses.

Most of them had left by now. After the midnight vigils, when it became clear the Kings weren’t returning, the priestesses who’d traveled to see Red’s sacrifice departed, back to their own less revered Temples. Neve had seen them file out of the Shrine that morning, after she’d woken from scant hours of broken sleep, the remnants of scarlet candles in their hands as the sun blushed the sky.

The vigil stopped at sunrise and it was now well past noon, but this group of priestesses had the dark-circled eyes of people just released from prayer. There weren’t many of them, fewer than twenty arranged in double lines. At their front, a tall, thin woman with ember-colored hair.

The priestess from last night. Her odd branch-shard necklace was nowhere to be seen.

Neve didn’t recognize all the faces with her— some of them didn’t hail from Valleyda, must’ve stayed behind when the rest of their sisters departed. The fact made a vague, unformed disquiet coil in her chest.

The red-haired priestess’s eyes flickered over her, but she showed no sign of recognition. Instead she turned and spoke with one of the other sisters behind her, too low for Neve to hear, before walking away down a different branching corridor.

Relief made her stomach swoop, though she wasn’t quite sure why. Still, Neve frowned after the redhead. The only thing down that hallway was another door into the gardens, and hadn’t she just come from there?

The rest of the priestesses walked slowly past them, and Neve moved on instinct. She grabbed the closest one’s arm in a grip tight enough to bruise.

“Neve,” Raffe whispered.

To her credit, the priestess showed no emotion other than a widening of her eyes. “Highness?”

“What were you doing out there?” Neve had no patience for pleasantries, not today. “The vigils are over. Clearly, the Kings aren’t returning.”

Halfway to blasphemy, but again, all she got was a slight widening of eyes. “The official vigils are over, yes,” the priestess conceded. “But a small number of us have kept up our prayers.”

“Why?” It was nearly a snarl. “Why keep praying to something that doesn’t hear you? Your gods aren’t coming back.”

Oh, she was fully heretical now, but Neve couldn’t bring herself to care. Beside her, Raffe stood rock-still.

The priestess smiled mildly, as if the First Daughter of Valleyda wasn’t seconds from clapping hands around her throat. “Perhaps not. The Wilderwood holds them fast.” A pause. “Help may be required for it to let them go.”

Words from last night slithered in Neve’s mind, like pieces of a dream. The Wilderwood is only as strong as we let it be.

Confusion cooled her anger, made her clenching fingers fall open. Unfazed, the priestess inclined her head, a movement echoed by the others behind her. Then they glided away.

“Well, that will end poorly.” Raffe ran a nervous hand over his mouth. “She’s going to tell the High Priestess—”

“She won’t.” Neve knew it. The same way she knew the redheaded priestess wouldn’t tell anyone she’d wrecked the Shrine. Something about that branch-shard necklace, the way they spoke of the Wilderwood almost as an enemy rather than a holy site, told her that nothing about this would ever reach Zophia’s ears.

Raffe looked at her through narrowed eyes but remained silent.

Gently, Neve pulled her arm from his and walked to the double glass doors of the garden. She didn’t look to see if Raffe followed, but she heard the clip of his boots across the floor, heard him shut the doors behind her.

When they were outside, Raffe took a deep breath, rubbing a hand over his close-shorn hair. “Listen. I know you’re upset—”

“They sacrificed her.” Neve turned, chin tilted. Raffe was closer than she’d thought, his full lips only inches away. Her breath felt like a razor. “They sacrificed her for nothing.”

“Maybe it wasn’t for nothing, even without the Kings returning.” He said it carefully, a blade to carve a silver lining. “The tale of the monsters, before Kaldenore—”

“It’s horseshit, Raffe. If the monsters were real, we would’ve seen them that night.”

No need to clarify which night. The night of rocks and matches and a Wilderwood impervious to both. The night of the men that followed them, that were horribly slain by . . . by something.

Neve didn’t actually remember most of it, after the thieves arrived. She’d passed out when one of them hit her in the temple with a dagger hilt, and hadn’t woken up until they were back in the capital and under heavy guard.

But Red remembered. And Red thought it was her fault.

Guilt iced her spine, guilt and cold certainty. Whatever had happened, whatever Neve couldn’t remember, was part of what drove her sister into the Wilderwood.

“It was for nothing,” she repeated softly.

This time, Raffe had no response.

Neve walked down the path, trailing her fingers over the blooming hedges, letting the points of sharp leaves catch her skin. One pricked hard enough to bring a bead of blood to her fingertip.

Behind her, a sigh. Raffe’s footsteps echoed on the stone as he walked away.

She closed her eyes against early-summer sun, the light illuminating veins and capillaries, making her vision look veiled in blood.

“What about a bargain?” The voice was hushed and hoarse, like the speaker hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in a week. There was something familiar in it, but it was too quiet to be sure.

The voice came from beside her, hidden in a bower of wide pink blooms— clearly, this conversation wasn’t meant to be overheard.

But Neve didn’t move.

“Impossible.” This second voice was brusque, vowels clipped and precise. Also familiar. “The Wilderwood has twisted, its power has grown weak. It will no longer accept paltry things like teeth and nail clippings. Not even blood, if it’s not from a fresh wound.”

There was something leading in the tone. As if meaning hid behind the words, things implied rather than spoken.

That tone locked the familiarity into place. The red-haired priestess.

“No,” the priestess continued. “A dead sacrifice will no longer do. It would require more, if it could be accomplished at all, a heavier price both in the bargaining and in the aftermath. Our prayers have told us so.” A pause, then, cadenced like a litany: “Blood that has been used in bargains with things beneath is blood that can open doors.”

Neve’s brow furrowed, but the other voice sounded too distraught to try to puzzle out the cryptic nonsense. “There has to be a way.”

“If there is, dear boy,” the priestess murmured, “you must be prepared to give, and keep giving.” A pause. “The Kings take much, but they give much in return. Serving them brings opportunity to your door. I know.”

A rustle as someone stood from the bench hidden in the blooms. Cursing silently, Neve spun away, tried to make it seem like she’d been absorbed in examining a flower bed on the other side of the path.

From the corner of her eye, a flash of white. “Do come to me with any further questions,” the priestess said. “Our prayers this morning, after our less dedicated sisters left, proved most . . . insightful.”

A disheveled-looking boy stepped out from behind her. “I will. Thank you, Kiri.”

Neve froze, fingers on a wide yellow bloom.

Arick.

The priestess— Kiri, she finally knew her name now— looked once at Neve. Her smile was cold as she dipped a nod and glided back toward the castle.

If he was surprised by her presence, he didn’t show it. Arick ran a hand through hair that looked like it hadn’t been combed in a week. “Neve.”

“Arick.” A stone-heavy second of quiet. “We’ve been worried about you.”

The worry was well earned, it seemed. His face was pale and drawn, hollows carved beneath his green eyes. He jerked his head toward the flowering trees and disappeared.

Neve cast a look around before ducking beneath the boughs, though it was ridiculous to fear being caught— he would be her Consort, after all. Cementing that sea route for Valleydan trade through Floriane.

A dull ache started in her temples.

Neve pushed aside pink blooms, revealing Arick already sitting on the bench beneath the arbor. The wan look of him, waxen skin and shadowed eyes, was incongruous against the backdrop of flowers.

He said nothing as she settled beside him, the bench so small she couldn’t help the press of their legs. They’d been easy friends before sixteen and betrothal, and even after, when Red was still here, a buffer between them and the inevitable future. Now she didn’t know how to act.

She shifted on the bench. “How are you?”

“Not well.”

“Me either.”

Silence bloomed around them. No words felt right. All she and Arick had in common was grief, and how could you build a conversation on that, much less a life?

“I tried.” Arick leaned forward, running both hands through his already-wild hair. “The night of the ball, I tried to get her to run.”

“We all tried. She wouldn’t listen.”

“There has to be a way to get her back.”

Neve chewed her lip, thinking back over the conversation she’d overheard. Thinking of who he’d been having it with, and of ruined shrines and bark shards. “Arick,” she said carefully, “I don’t want you to do anything foolish.”

“More foolish than running to the Wilderwood to throw rocks at the trees?” There was a ghost of levity in his voice.

She smiled to hear it, though it was a tired, faded thing. “I suppose I’m not one to talk.” In more ways than he knew.

Arick’s shoulders slumped, the momentary lightness gone as soon as it had come. “I’m going to find a way to bring her home.”

Neve glanced at him sidelong. She knew he loved Red. But she also knew Red didn’t love him and never had. She’d certainly cared for him, but her sister hadn’t wanted to shatter any more lives than she had to when she crossed into the trees. And though Arick’s feelings went deeper, he’d seemed to understand. Neve had expected his mourning, but she’d expected it to pass quickly. Arick was resilient.

“I know you thought I’d get over it,” Arick said, as if her thoughts were something he could see in the air above her head.

“That makes me sound cruel,” she murmured.

“I don’t mean it that way. I just mean . . .” A sigh. “Things have gone easily for me, Neve. Mostly because I’ve let them. I’ve never fought for anything, never taken a path that offered any great resistance, because I wanted things to be easy.” His teeth gnashed on the word. “But I can’t just let this go. If there’s anything worth fighting for, it’s her. And not even because I love her. Just because . . . because it isn’t right. She deserves a life, too.”

The sliver of hope in Neve’s chest was a splinter, small and mean and terribly bright, sharpening her grief to a razor-edge. She didn’t know how to articulate it, not with all the added complications of her and Arick and Raffe and the tangled threads connecting them, priestesses with strange necklaces and ruined white trees in a stone room.

“Good,” she replied, because it was the closest thing she could shape that barbed hope into.

He looked at her, nearly surprised, then relief softened the tendons in his neck. Like he’d been waiting for her benediction. “I’ll be gone for a while,” Arick said. “Didn’t want you to worry.”

“Back to Floriane?”

No answer. After a moment, Arick stood. He offered his hand.

Neve took it, let him help her up, though her brow stayed furrowed. Arick’s green eyes searched hers, lips twisted. Then he pressed a quick kiss to her forehead.

“I’ll be back soon,” he whispered. “I’ll find a way to save her, Neve.” He slipped out of the flowered trees.

Neve stood beneath the boughs for a long time, skin tingling where his lips had brushed. A slow, vague guilt closed crushing hands around her throat, like she’d unknowingly passed down some kind of sentencing.

But Red was alive. And they had to find a way to save her.