For the Wolf by Hannah F. Whitten

Chapter Nine

The unchanging light made it impossible to know how much time had passed when Red woke, head fuzzy and aching. For a moment, she didn’t remember where she was. When she did, it only made the aching worse.

She sat up, middle twisting. In the chaos of the night before, she’d completely forgotten to ask about food. Now her empty stomach gnawed at her spine.

Eammon’s coat hung on the hook inside the door, thorn-slashed and muddy. Red peered at it with her lip between her teeth, then threw a wary glance at the vines pressing against the window. For now, at least, they were still.

The water in her tub was clean, but still freezing. She washed quickly, pulled on a gown— midnight blue this time— and stood in the center of her room, somewhat at a loss for what to do now.

Here was her new life, as vast and dark and featureless as the forest that held it.

No. Red shook her head. She couldn’t fall into despondency now, not when she’d lived in spite of every expectation. This new life might be strange, but she had it, and that was a miracle in itself.

She hadn’t run away, despite all of Neve’s begging. But she’d lived anyway. And she owed it to her sister to make something of that.

Another rumble of her stomach pulled her mind away from the shapeless stretch of a day she’d never expected to see. “Food,” she declared. Brows set in determination, Red wrenched open the door.

A tray sat on the mossy floor past her threshold. The toast was burnt, slathered liberally with butter, next to a mug of black coffee. Both were hot, but whoever— or whatever— had brought them was long gone. Nothing moved in the main hall but drifting dust, and the leaves at the corridor’s end didn’t stir.

Red was too hungry to care about where breakfast came from. She sat with her back against the mossy wall and ate the toast in three bites. The almost-ash crust tasted better than anything she’d ever eaten in Valleyda.

The coffee was strong, and Red sipped it slowly, wondering if whoever brought the food would return. Probably one of the other voices she’d heard talking to Eammon last night. She had a hard time imagining the Wolf cooking.

The wreckage at the end of the corridor looked different. Yesterday there’d been only flowering bushes and moss, broken rocks and roots. Now one thin, pin-straight sapling rose from the tangle, reaching almost to the ceiling.

Coffee sloshed over the lip of Red’s mug as she scrambled up, burning her fingers. The sapling stood tall and still, with no sign of shadowy corruption on its bark. Not like the tree last night, rotted and listing in a pool of spongy dark ground.

What was it Eammon said? Something about how if one of the white trees in the forest—sentinel trees, she remembered now, he’d called them sentinel trees— was infected badly enough with rot, it would leave its place, show up in the Keep?

The sentinel stood silent, thin and pale as a specter in the gloom. Not where it was supposed to be, but not an immediate threat, either. Still, the memory of them opening trunks to bare wood-shard teeth was fresh, and Red kept a wary eye on it as she rolled her now-empty mug between her hands and backed down the hall.

The foyer stood echoing and empty, dust motes dancing in seams of twilight beneath the cracked window. Other than the dust, Red was alone.

Then the door opened.

She crouched like she’d hide herself in the mossy remnants of carpet as the weathered wood swung wide, weak lavender light outlining a slight, feminine form with a cloud of curls and a curved blade in her hand. Something dripped off its sharpened edge, a mix of sap and what looked like blood.

The woman stopped, narrowing dark eyes in a brown-skinned, delicately featured face. “Redarys?”

The musical voice from last night, the one she’d heard speaking to Eammon. Apparently from a human throat. Sheepishly, Red straightened, cheeks coloring. “I . . . ah . . .” she stuttered, hands waving uselessly, halfway to a curtsy before she realized that was probably ludicrous. “Yes. That’s me.”

The other woman snorted, but she cracked the corner of a bright smile. “I figured the chances were good. I’m Lyra.” She stepped farther into the foyer, pulling a cloth from a small leather bag at her waist and scrubbing it along the bloody edge of the blade as the door closed behind her. Without the glare, the blood on her clothing was obvious, her white shirt and dark leggings nearly covered with still-wet copper, tendrils of shadowy rot, and tar-like sap.

Red made an involuntary gulping sound. “Are you all right? Kings, how are you walking?”

Lyra looked confused for a moment, then followed Red’s gaze. “Oh, that. Don’t worry, Eammon is the only one who slices himself up on the spot— he’s the Wolf, all tangled up in the Wilderwood, so it likes his blood straight from the vein. It isn’t as picky about the rest of us.” Lyra tugged a small vial from her pocket. Deep-scarlet liquid sloshed as she wiggled it in the air. “I used at least five of these,” she said, like it was an explanation of some kind. “Lots of shadow-creatures out today. I needed to come back and replenish my supply.” She grimaced, starting toward the broken archway and the sunken room beyond. “Probably change clothes, too.”

Confusion replaced Red’s alarm, drawing her brows together. She followed Lyra into the room. “That’s your blood?”

“Of course.” Lyra shrugged. “Might be Fife’s, actually. We both have the Mark, so blood from either of us will work on a shadow-creature.” She pushed open the small door at the back of the room, revealing a tiny kitchen. “Our blood can hold saplings steady for a day or so and slightly help with rotting sentinels, too, but it won’t do shit for breaches.”

Weathered-looking wooden cabinets lined the back wall, with a small woodstove in the corner and a scuffed table. Lyra went to the cabinet nearest the stove and pulled it open. Inside, rows upon rows of glass vials, all filled with blood. Deep crimson with no trace of green, not like Eammon’s.

Red sank into one of the chairs at the table, her thoughts snaring, knotted as old thread. Last night, when Eammon fought the corpse-bone-forest-thing . . . shadow-creature, monster of legend, Kings, it’s all real . . . his blood had been what finally brought it down. Apparently, Lyra— and Fife, whoever that was, presumably the other voice she’d heard— could use their blood to fight shadow-creatures, too.

But when Red bled in the Wilderwood, it attacked her. Those white trees became predators. Was it because she was a Second Daughter, something about her blood and the bargain it was tangled with making the forest treat her differently?

And who were Fife and Lyra, anyway? The myths didn’t mention anyone else living in the Wilderwood.

“You said you have a Mark?” Her question interrupted the clink of vials as Lyra stuck handfuls of them in her bag.

“Anyone who’s bargained with the Wilderwood has one.” Lyra paused in her packing to push up her sleeve. There, in the same place as Red’s— a tiny ring of root, just beneath the skin. It was smaller than Red’s Mark, the tendrils not reaching quite so far, but unmistakably the same.

Lyra tugged her sleeve back down. “A tiny piece of the Wilderwood. That’s why my blood and Fife’s work against shadow-creatures— the power of the forest cancels out the power of the Shadowlands.”

“And the Wolf’s blood, too?”

“The Wolf’s blood, certainly.” A laugh, but rueful. Lyra grabbed one more vial, then closed the cabinet, clipping the bag to her belt as she moved toward the door. “Though his piece of the Wilderwood could never be called tiny.”

As strange as the idea of bleeding into vials was, there was comfort in it, relief. Eammon wanted her to learn to use the magic the forest had saddled her with, seemed to think that would keep the sentinel trees in check. But surely it wasn’t the only solution when magic and blood ran so congruently here. Her not bleeding where the trees could taste it was his first rule, but maybe it would be different if the blood came from a vial instead of a vein.

And Red would rather bleed goblets full than try to use that damn magic.

“So is there a knife around?” she asked. “Something I can use to bleed into—”

“No.” Lyra spun away from the door, dark eyes narrowed. “I mean, I don’t . . . I’m not . . .” Lyra stopped, sighed. “Ask Eammon. He’ll know.” She pulled her shirt out from her middle, made a face. “I’ve really got to go change. I’ll see you around.”

Red watched her go, still slumped over the scuffed table. Again, that sense of untetheredness, of unreality, of not being sure what to do or how to move.

Books. The thought was a beacon, something to cling to. I brought books.

Too bad she’d left them in the library. Red didn’t know what hours Eammon kept— the unchanging twilight made night and day unclear— but it seemed safe to assume he’d be there.

Ask Eammon, Lyra had said. But Eammon would just talk about using magic again, turning that piece of the forest coiled around her bones toward her will.

A deep breath, squared shoulders. If he asked her about it, she’d tell him she hadn’t decided yet. She would find her books and retreat to her room and try to numb her mind for a few hours before she had to think about any of this again.

The wood-shard candles in the library were all lit with their strange, flickerless flames, illuminating the stacks in strobing light and shadow. Red closed the door behind her as soundlessly as possible. The same mug perched on the same stack of books near the door, empty this time. She eyed it for a moment before purposefully untangling her hands from her skirt and striding between the shelves.

There was no sign of the Wolf himself, but his clutter remained. One book left open amid a sea of papers and pens, another stack piled by the desk, left in shadow by the wood-shard candle.

Red crept toward the desk cautiously. Eammon would be none too pleased to see her paging through his notes, but curiosity overrode her unease. She peered at the scribbled-over paper.

It looked like . . . a shopping list? Things like bread and cheese were scrawled in slanting, messy handwriting, some crossed out. Ask Asheyla about boots was written near the bottom, and, ink still gleaming, new coat.

She grimaced. Her attention turned from the list to the open book.

The visible page was a table of contents. No title, but she recognized some of the chapter names— “The Great Plague,” “A Taxonomy of Lesser Beasts,” “Rites of the Old Ones.” It was tempting to sit and flip through, but Eammon’s things looked as though he’d left in a hurry. He could be back any moment.

Red turned to resume her search, but the stack of books by the desk caught her eye. Something about them seemed strange, the proportions wrong. She took a step closer, then reared back.

Legendssat at the top of the stack, the book she’d smeared with her blood the day before. And the Wilderwood had half consumed it.

Thin, snaking roots wormed their way in through the cracks in the stone wall, slithering out to latch onto the spot of blood on the cover. They stretched through the canvas, through the pages, seeping down the rest of the stack like it was the soil they were planted in.

Cursing hoarsely, Red stumbled away. But the roots were still, as if momentarily satisfied, and her heart slowly migrated back behind her ribs.

Her books. That’s why she was here. Her books, not the one she’d inadvertently marked with blood, another thing lost to this cursed, encroaching forest.

The leather bag was on the other side of the desk, hidden just outside the ring of unflickering candlelight. Red looped the strap over her shoulder, hurrying to the door.

She crouched before she pushed it open to riffle through the bag. After all that running on her twentieth birthday, she wasn’t sure if all her books had made it. One, in particular, she wanted to make sure hadn’t been lost.

A sigh of relief as her fingers closed over the familiar leather binding. Red pulled it from the bag, running her palm over the flaking gilt. A book of poems. The only gift she could ever remember receiving from her mother.

She’d been ten, already a voracious reader. It was days past her birthday when Isla entered her room, alone, no retinue to accompany her. “Here.” It hadn’t been wrapped, and Isla hadn’t quite met her eye. “This seemed like something you would like.”

It hadn’t been. Not at first. But when Isla left, nearly as soon as Red closed her hands on the book, she’d sat down at her window and read the whole thing through twice.

The poems were childish, and she knew them by heart now. She hadn’t opened the book to actually read it in years. But she liked to keep it close. Proof of one moment of warmth.

Red packed the books back in her bag and started up the stairs.

She stopped short at the sight of the figure in the hall.

A shock of reddish hair was his most identifying feature, and vaguely familiar. He knelt before the sapling she’d noticed that morning, peering at its roots. One white-skinned hand he kept tucked close to his middle, marked with violent lines of scar tissue.

This must be Fife, then.

He muttered a quiet curse, tugging something from his pocket— another vial of blood— and reached toward the tree.

“Careful!” The sight of flesh so near something she’d seen bare its teeth pulled the warning out of her before she could call it back. He lived in the Wilderwood, of course he knew he should be careful.

The figure froze before turning his head, arm still outstretched. A ginger brow raised.

Red shifted on her feet. “Sorry, I just . . . they bite, sometimes.”

The brow climbed higher. “They only bite you, Second Daughter.”

If that was meant to be comforting, it missed the mark by a mile.

Forest detritus had already grown up around the tree, vines and flowering bushes. Carefully, Fife peeled them back, peering at the base of the sapling beneath.

“Kings.” He sat back on his heels. “This is the second one in as many days to come into the Keep.” With a practiced motion, Fife uncorked his vial with one hand, the scarred and withered one still held close to his middle, and poured the blood over the roots of the sapling. Nothing changed, not that Red could see, but he took no further action. His eyes darted to her. “Did you do anything to it this morning?”

“To what? The tree?”

“Yes, the tree. Did Eammon tell you to do anything?”

“No.” Incredulity made the word sharper than she meant it. “He told me to stay away from it. From all of them, I mean. All the white trees.”

Fife’s lips pressed together, regarding her for an unreadable second before turning back to the sapling. “Well, that should hold until Eammon can get to it.” He pressed up from the floor. “Since he is apparently still determined to do this on his own.”

Red’s brows drew together, looking from Fife’s retreating back to the sentinel sapling. A twist of her lips, and she turned to follow him down the corridor. “I’m Redarys. But you knew that.”

“Correct.”

“And you’re Fife.”

“Two for two.”

“So your blood doesn’t just kill shadow-creatures, then. It does something to the trees?” Lyra had mentioned that in the kitchen, something about holding saplings steady.

The question finally made him stop his march down the hall, giving Red a sidelong glance. “Keeps them stable,” he answered after a laden moment. “Holds off the worst of the shadow-rot until Eammon can move them back where they’re supposed to go.” The march to the foyer resumed.

Red followed, though the quick look he gave her said he wished she wouldn’t. “Thank you for breakfast,” she ventured, dropping her bag of books at the corner.

“Best cook in the Keep.” Fife headed for a door behind the once-grand staircase. “Not that it’s saying much. Eammon thinks bread and cheese are acceptable for every meal, and Lyra’s culinary skills begin and end at tea.”

He reached up to push the door open. As he did, his sleeve fell back from his arm. Another Mark, the mirror image of Lyra’s.

Fife saw her looking. “We all have one around here. Gaya and Ciaran weren’t the only ones foolish enough to make bargains.”

Red’s hand drifted to her own Mark, hidden beneath her dark-blue sleeve. “I made no bargain.”

“Neither did Eammon.” He shoved open the door. “But the original Wolf and Second Daughter are gone, so the Wilderwood makes do with the next best thing.”

The door spilled them into the back courtyard, with its crumbling stone wall and strange forest-wreathed tower. Fife went left, following the path of Red’s broken corridor. Three more white saplings pushed up from the rubble at the end, stretching into the fog.

She hung back as Fife approached them. “I take it those aren’t supposed to be here, either?”

“A quick study, aren’t you?” Fife peered closely at the sapling’s roots. Black rot boiled over them, though the surrounding earth still looked solid, not like the rotten sponginess she’d seen the night before. “He’ll have to heal these first,” he muttered, uncorking another vial of blood and pouring it over the ground. The rot receded incrementally, so small a difference Red wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been watching. “They’re already weakening. The one inside can wait, it isn’t shadow-rotted yet.”

“Shadow-rotted?”

Another arch look, like her questions irritated him. But Fife pointed through the fog, to the forest beyond the gate. “See that?”

Right at the edge of the tree line was a black spot on the forest floor— the same dark, damp ground that produced the creature from last night. Red nodded.

“That,” said Fife, “is an empty place where one of these sentinels is supposed to be. It felt the Shadowlands pushing through, so it came loose and regrew here, closer to Eammon, so he could heal it. Only the stronger ones can do that. The others just rot where they stand, leaving breaches we have to find and close.”

“Like the one last night. It was rotting when we found it, but he said it would’ve ended up at the Keep in ten more minutes.”

Hazel eyes snapped to hers. “He let you go with him?”

Incredulity in his voice, thick enough that Red wondered if she shouldn’t have said anything. She shrugged. “He wasn’t happy about it, but yes.”

“Hmm.” Fife studied her a moment longer, brow furrowed, before facing the forest again. “He must’ve really wanted to convince you of his trustworthiness, then.”

Red shifted on her feet.

Fife gestured to the lines of rot on the sapling’s trunk. “The more the shadow-rot eats through the saplings once they’re here, the harder they are to send back. Sentinels are like bricks in a wall, each placed strategically. Move one, and the whole thing gets weaker.”

“The whole what?”

“The whole Wilderwood.”

Red tightened her arms over her chest, peering nervously at the still, white trees. The sentinels. They looked like shards of bone thrust into the earth. “So they’re . . . good.”

“The sentinels aren’t good.” He said it like the notion was ridiculous. “But they aren’t bad, either. The Wilderwood has a job to do, and it takes what it has to in order to do it.”

“And what it has to take is blood.”

A covert glance. “Right now,” Fife said carefully, “yes.”

“Why everyone’s blood? It seems like the Wolf’s is the only thing that does much.”

Another pause, another unreadable look. “Eammon has the strongest connection to the forest,” he said after a moment, weighing out his words. “Only his blood can heal the breaches, his blood or his magic. Whichever he feels safest using at the time.”

She thought of last night, how Eammon had put his hands to the ground before resorting to his dagger, the bark edging through his skin, his veins running green. Magic, and it changed him, tipped the balance of his body more toward forest than man.

Dread spiked in her stomach, though she wasn’t sure exactly why.

“Lyra and I have connections to the forest, by virtue of this damn thing”— Fife pointed his chin at his Mark— “but it’s weak. We can slow shadow-creatures down, kill them if they’re weak enough, stabilize the sentinels until Eammon can get to them. But he’s the only one who can really fix anything.” A quick flicker of his eyes. “Him, and you.”

Red swallowed. Tension weighed in the air, as palpable as the fog around their feet.

She turned away, facing the tower and the Keep. “Where is Eammon?” She’d expected to run into him at some point; it wasn’t like there were many places to hide in the crumbling ruin. The fact that she hadn’t made something almost like worry itch at her, especially after what she’d seen last night.

“He went out to heal another breach Lyra found this morning. He’ll be back.”

If Eammon was already healing more breaches, he must be in fine enough shape. The faint itch of worry faded, though not completely.

They reached the Keep door at the top of the sloping hill. It creaked when Fife pushed it open. “I’m going to find some food.” Almost begrudgingly, he added: “Do you want to come?”

A split-second decision, and Red shook her head.

He looked at her a moment, brows drawn down. “Stay within the gate,” he finally cautioned before pulling the door shut with a snap.

She probably should’ve followed. But now that she was outside, the idea of being within those ruined walls again was suffocating. Red turned away, wandered farther into the courtyard.

The air of the Wilderwood was chilly, and fog coiled low over the ground, crawling up her skirt. The sky was a wide expanse of lavender, clear of moon and star and cloud. Pretty, in a strange, uncanny way. Giving the saplings at the bottom of the hill another wary glance, Red walked in the opposite direction, vaulting over the short stone wall to go around the Keep’s side. Piles of stone rose out of the fog, sleeping giants.

Something caught her eye beyond the gate. A shape, rising from the mist, falling back into fog before she could quite make sense of it. Red stopped, narrowing her eyes.

The shape bobbed up again, like someone who’d stumbled forcing themselves back to their feet. Cautiously, Red stepped forward, her feet silent on the mossy ground.

The figure rose once more, close enough now for her to make out a face. High cheekbones, aquiline nose. Eyes green as summer.

Her breath went icy in her lungs, her heart paused in her chest. Surely not. None but the Second Daughter could pass into the Wilderwood, none but her could cross over. Impossible, but—

The fog eddied around a form she knew.

Red was in control of herself enough not to run, but only just. She wound through the mist and the broken stones of the fallen Keep like someone in a trance, scarcely daring to breathe until she was an arm’s length away, looking down on a familiar dark head, familiar shoulders, familiar green eyes in a scratched and bleeding face. He looked spent and bloody, eyes ringed in shadows, clothes torn by his flight through a hostile forest.

“Red,” Arick gasped.