For the Wolf by Hannah F. Whitten

Chapter Fourteen

Eammon stood frozen, staring wide-eyed across the churn of dirt and forest debris the clearing had become with a look halfway between terror and rage. Then his hand locked around Red’s elbow, vise-like, and he led her into the trees, so fast she almost stumbled.

Solmir. It took Red a moment to place the name, to find its meaning among the mental images it conjured of candles and stone. When she did, her steps stuttered.

Valchior, Byriand, Malchrosite, Calryes, Solmir. The Five Kings.

Her mouth opened to ask Eammon why in all the shadows Bormain would’ve mentioned one of the Five Kings, but her muffled sound of pain eclipsed the question. Her hand felt like it was on fire beneath the makeshift wrapping they’d made of his shirt, and Red’s knees buckled as she clutched it to her chest.

Soft shushing noises, warm hands unwrapping her palm. The cut she’d made was a line of livid scarlet, as if a month of infection had sped through in moments. Pain thrummed with her pulse, an echo of it hammering just below her elbow, around the ring of her Bargainer’s Mark.

One thought, fleeting but clear: The Wilderwood isn’t pleased with me. She’d stopped something from happening, something it wanted. The same thing it’d wanted four years ago, the first time her blood met the forest floor.

Eammon had stopped it then, and he’d stopped it again now, and the Wilderwood was growing more and more impatient with them both.

Those warm hands covered hers. A breath, and the stabbing pain was gone, both in her hand and in her Mark. Another slice opened Eammon’s lacerated palm, a twin to the one she’d cut on her own, turning heart and lifelines into messy crossroads. A curse gnashed through his teeth, his uncut hand pressing against his forearm, where his Bargainer’s Mark was hidden beneath a torn and bloody sleeve.

Taking her pain, again. Hurting for her, again.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Red murmured, suddenly embarrassed. She pushed herself to stand, though her legs wobbled, and turned over her palm to see whole, unbroken skin. Rusty streaks of blood crusted on her wrists.

“I was going to say the same thing.” Eammon paced away from her, the rush of pain he’d taken apparently manageable now, one hand on the jut of his hip and the other running shakily through his hair. It had all come unbound and hung down his back like an ink spill. “What in all the shadows did you not understand about staying in the tower, Redarys?”

Red crossed her arms, the skin he’d healed smooth and somehow tender. “I saw you.”

“You saw me?”

“I had a . . . a vision, I guess.”

His brow arched incredulously. “A vision.”

“It was like that first time. The night I cut my hand, bled in the forest, but stronger. More vivid. Like our connection is . . .” She trailed off and turned her head, cheeks suddenly burning. Her fingers picked at the fabric of her sleeve covering her Mark. “Like it’s deeper now, after the thread bond.”

Calling it a thread bond rather than a marriage was supposed to feel less awkward, even though they meant the same thing. Still, her tongue nearly stumbled over it, this fragile thing she was never supposed to have.

Silence hung heavy in the cold air. Finally, Eammon sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “Well,” he murmured, “that’s something.”

Red’s lips twisted.

“So this”— his hand waved between them— “makes it so we can see each other.” A snort. “In times of distress.”

“Apparently.”

“Wonderful.” Eammon rubbed at his eyes again. “What did you see, exactly?”

“Your hands.” Red untangled a leaf from her hair, grateful for something to look at other than the Wolf. “Like last time. But also Bormain, and the sentinel.” She paused. “That’s why I knew you needed help. I saw you cut yourself, and saw that it wasn’t working.”

The leaf Red freed from her hair twisted to the ground, brittle brown brushed with green. When it touched the forest floor, the color slowly leached away.

“I suppose we should try to keep the distress to a minimum, then,” Eammon said, eyes on the leaf.

“Rather difficult around here.”

“It’s the best I can do at the moment.” Eammon turned, the movement twisting the wounds in his middle. A curse gritted through his teeth, blood and sap seeping into the fabric of his shirt. He leaned back against a tree, like he suddenly couldn’t keep himself upright.

“That looks bad, Eammon.”

His eyes darted up at the sound of his name— cheeks coloring, she realized it was the first time she’d addressed him directly with it, in over a week of knowing each other.

Well, he was her husband now. She couldn’t call him Wolf forever.

“Can you heal it?” she asked hurriedly, chasing the echo of his name away. “Like you did my hand?”

“Can’t heal yourself.” His eyes closed, head tilting back against the tree trunk. “Balance, remember? Pain going somewhere?”

Her step forward was tentative, her reach more so. “I could . . .”

“No.” His eyes snapped open. “You could not. You’ve done quite enough for one day, Redarys. Let’s not add further mangling of my insides to the list.”

That stung more than she cared to admit. Red snatched back her hand. “You’d rather I’d left you to be mangled alone, then?”

“Has it occurred to you that I wouldn’t have been mangled if I hadn’t had to protect you?”

“You needed me.”

It hung heavy as an executioner’s ax. The Wolf looked away. “I suppose I did.”

Red arched a sardonic brow, though the tick of her pulse seemed to land a fraction harder. “Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

His rueful laugh turned to a grimace, hand pressing harder against his abdomen. Red peered worriedly at the blood outlining his fingers. “Are you—”

“It’s fine.”

Lips pressed to a tight line, Red directed her attention to the site of her own injury, since he seemed determined to ignore his. “It didn’t hurt when I first cut it,” she mused, flexing her fingers. “Just after.” She paused. “That’s happened before, too.”

The night she’d tried to defy the Wilderwood, the night of Neve and blood and a vision she didn’t understand. After they’d been collected from the carnage, her hand had felt bathed in flame, a sharp and stabbing pain that couldn’t have come from the thin slice across her palm. The physicians were baffled and didn’t know what to do other than give her watered wine until the pain subsided. It did, eventually, but it took two days.

Eammon shifted, still leaning against the tree. “It’s the Wilderwood,” he said finally. “Something about connecting with it through blood.” The answer seemed truncated, like there should be more tacked onto the end, but the Wolf didn’t offer anything else, face turned slightly away so she could see only the line of his profile.

Red frowned, scrubbing a spot of dried blood off her wrist. “Probably something about it being upset, too.” Meant to be leading, but the only sign that Eammon might take the bait was the bob of his throat as he swallowed. “The Wilderwood doesn’t seem pleased that we haven’t let it do . . . whatever it is it wants to do.”

The Wolf still didn’t look at her. “That, too.”

Hands mostly clean, Red crossed her arms, arched a brow. “Does it hurt you that badly? Every time?”

“It used to.” With a grimace, Eammon pushed away from the tree trunk, took a lurching step forward. “Come on.”

Red fell into step behind him, and for a minute, the only sound in the Wilderwood was the unsteady tromp of their boots. “He mentioned the name of one of the Five Kings,” she said finally, because she couldn’t think of a way to finesse her confusion into delicate questions. “Solmir. The one who was supposed to marry Gaya. Why?”

Ahead of her, Eammon half turned to fix her with one amber eye. A long sigh, then he pivoted to weave through the underbrush again. “How much do you know about what’s in the Shadowlands?”

“Nothing. Much like every-damn-thing else, I know nothing other than the myths, and thus far, it seems like those are mostly horseshit.”

“They get the broad strokes, but yes, mostly horseshit. The Shadowlands imprison shadow-creatures and mythic beasts and the Old Ones— those are the things that were more like gods than monsters.” He discussed monsters so mildly, did the Wolf, pushing aside branches to clear their path through the dark wood. “But the Five Kings are in there, too.”

Her steps faltered, stopped. Red’s mouth hung open. “But I thought you said the Kings weren’t here?”

“They aren’t here. They’re in the Shadowlands. And contrary to current religious belief, I have no way to let them out. Not unless you want everything imprisoned in the Shadowlands to come with them and the whole Wilderwood to fall, which I assure you, you don’t.” Eammon pushed up a branch, holding it out of the way so they could pass. “The Wilderwood and I might not see eye-to-eye on methods, but we’re in agreement on principle.”

She thought of the shard of the forest in her, the larger one in him, the push-and-pull of fighting against something that was part of you and separate at the same time. “How did they end up there?”

“They bargained. You know that part. Bargained to make the Shadowlands, to make a place to hold the monsters. The Wilderwood accepted, but in order to accomplish such a thing, it needed an immense amount of power.” All of this in a voice only slightly strained, though Eammon’s shoulders were rigid lines and his hand pressed against his middle as he walked, like something might fall out if he didn’t hold himself together. “Before, magic was part of the world. Just . . . there, to be used by anyone who could learn. To make the Shadowlands, the Wilderwood pulled all that magic inward, trapped it. Created the sentinels, created the Shadowlands beneath.”

“And the Wardens.”

“Them, too. The Wilderwood needed help to sustain its new prison. Ciaran and Gaya had truly awful timing.” The hand that wasn’t pressed against his bloody stomach curled into a fist. “Fifty years after they’d made their bargain, the Kings decided they wanted magic back. Tried to unravel the whole thing by cutting down the sentinel where they’d made their deal. Instead, it opened up a hole into the Shadowlands and bound them there, with the monsters they’d banished. The Wilderwood takes its bargains very seriously. That’s when it closed up the borders, too— didn’t want anyone else trying to go back on a bargain, or make a new one.” A shrug, stilted and pained. “There’s a moral lesson in there somewhere. People with power resent losing it, and too much power for too long a time can make a villain of anyone.”

The beginnings of a headache pricked at Red’s temples. “That still doesn’t explain why Bormain mentioned Solmir, if all the Kings are there. Why him, specifically?”

The name tensed the muscles in his back, but Eammon’s voice stayed even. “Who knows. Bormain fell through a breach and into the Shadowlands. There’s no way to know what terrible things he saw.” Up ahead, the iron gate to the Keep loomed out of the fog. “Don’t think too much of it. Shadow-infection affects your mind as much as it does your body.”

Red’s eyes narrowed, but she said nothing.

Eammon touched the gate. “Stay within the walls of the Keep for the rest of the day,” he said as it swung inward. He gave her a stern look over his shoulder. “I mean it, Red. The Wilderwood has been . . . restless since you arrived, and every time it tastes your blood, it seems to get worse.” The flicker of a tired grin. “I’ve saved you, you’ve saved me, let’s call it even. Don’t get yourself into another situation you’ll need rescuing from, at least not for a day or two.”

“Same goes for you.”

“I’ll do my best.” Eammon staggered past the gate, foot catching on a loose rock; he stumbled slightly, clutching his middle. “Kings on shitting horses.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to—”

“Quite sure.”

The door to the Keep banged open, silhouetting Lyra’s curling hair and slender figure. “And when were you planning on telling us you got married?”

Red stopped in the center of the courtyard. “I . . .”

“Delightful,” Eammon muttered, staggering up the hill with his bloody shirt sticking to his skin. “I’m going to kill Fife.”