For the Wolf by Hannah F. Whitten

Chapter Sixteen

The forest growth petered out at the top landing, scraps of green fading to bare stone beneath her feet. It felt strange, after more than a week of moss, and cold enough to numb her toes.

When they reached the balcony, Eammon turned to the right and pushed open a wooden door, revealing another, smaller set of stairs. Warm light from above flickered over his back as he climbed, slightly hunched over the slashes in his middle. His Bargainer’s Mark seemed darker than before, its deep-green color stark as ink against his skin.

The Wolf’s room was the very top of the tower, circular beneath a vaulted ceiling crisscrossed with wooden beams. An open wardrobe stood next to the staircase, but clothes were scattered across the floor in messy piles. Eammon kicked them under the wardrobe. “Kings,” he swore, pressing a hand to his stomach.

Opposite the stairs, a stone fireplace cut into the wall, the source of the warmth and flickering light. Next to it, a bed was shoved between two large, glassless windows, the sheets tangled and the coverlet half on the floor. Books and empty mugs were piled around the bed, and the desk against the wall by the wardrobe overflowed with marked-up papers, an open inkwell, a leaking pen.

Eammon stumbled to the desk, one hand on his middle while the other tried to straighten the piles.

“You don’t have to do that.”

No response, but Eammon stopped his fruitless organizing, turning to face her with an unreadable expression. His eyes flickered to the cloak, still balled in her hands. “You went back for that?”

She nodded.

A line drew between his brows. “I can’t say I understand why.”

“It . . .” But she wasn’t sure how to finish, how to put it into words. “It’s mine.”

He didn’t press her for further explanation. They stood frozen, gazes locked, neither knowing quite how to move.

Eammon broke away first, looking instead at his still-cluttered room. With a sigh, he bent to gather the fallen coverlet. “I’ll sleep at the base of the stairs. If you need—shit.”

He dropped the blanket, hand pressing hard against his stomach. Blood welled through the bandage, more green than crimson, dripping down the plane of pale, scarred skin.

Red strode forward, put her hands on his shoulders, pushed him to sit against the wall. “You’ve reopened the wound.”

“I’m aware.”

“Do you have more bandages?”

“Top drawer.”

She crossed the room to the desk and rummaged through the noted drawer, past shredded bits of paper and broken pens. “Bandages are more effective when they’re kept clean.”

“They’ve worked fine thus far.” Eammon shifted, cursed. “If you haven’t noticed, I get sliced up rather often.”

It reminded her of what Lyra said before. Eammon is used to bleeding. Her mouth firmed, and she dug through the mess with renewed determination.

Finally, she found them, buried beneath a scribble-covered notebook and a layer of pencil shavings. Fist full of gauze, Red came back over and crouched next to him, peeled away the sodden bandage as another curse hissed through Eammon’s teeth. Three deep strikes scored his skin, bisecting chest and stomach. Tiny green tendrils curled from the ragged edges, almost too fine to see, flecked with fragile leaves.

Her eyes flicked from the carnage to Eammon’s face, stricken with sudden worry. “It’s not shadow-rotted, is it?”

“Can’t be.” Eammon’s jaw clenched tight. “Too much Wilderwood in me to let in anything else.”

Too much Wilderwood, indeed. His height still hadn’t lessened from the magic he’d harnessed as the corridor collapsed. Barely an inch, but it felt portentous to Red, made nerves spark along the back of her neck.

There was a tiny scar on his cheek. One she hadn’t noticed before, too faint to see from afar. A thin white line across his cheekbone, the same place where he’d taken her cut that first day in the library.

A scar he’d gained for her.

Their closeness sparked her power, like it had before in the clearing, making Red sharply, painfully aware of every growing thing in the Keep below them, in the courtyard outside. Magic bloomed, arched toward her fingertips, as if the sight of his wound and the bond between them pulled it forward. “You have to let me try to fix it.”

Eammon leaned his head back against the wall. “Not a good idea.” His words were scaled back and stilted; he could force only so many up his throat. “Too much.”

Too much pain, and it had to go somewhere. Her bent hands hovered over his skin, conviction sharpening the edges of her voice. “I can do it.”

“Why?” Dark hair shadowed Eammon’s eyes, where she read everything he didn’t say. Why was she so determined to try healing him, when before the idea of using her power was met with such resistance?

Red wasn’t sure how to answer. The only thing she was sure of, when it came to Eammon, was that she wanted him safe. She cared. The caring was a complicated, layered thing, but that was the only kind of caring she knew.

“Because I have a vested interest in you not dying.” Then, somewhat softer, “And I owe you.”

Eammon’s eyes searched hers. Finally, he nodded, grimacing as he shifted against the wall, spelling out clipped instructions. “Focus your intention. Connect to the forest’s power in you. Touch the wound. Draw it in.” His mouth went suddenly fierce, brows drawn low, and when he spoke it was sure and strong. “Not all of it, Redarys. Promise me.”

She swallowed against a dry throat. Nodded. Then, fighting to keep her hands steady, she placed them against his skin.

Eammon was always warm, but this heat was fevered, sickly. His green-and-scarlet blood lined her fingers, pricked with leaves, and Red had to close her eyes to concentrate, to guard against the fear that mounted in her head at the sight of him hurt so badly.

But even the fear had its purpose. Something about it— something about it being for Eammon— made her power easier to wield, easier to shape. Her caring, magnified by their shared splinter of magic and the marriage they’d made, fashioned the chaotic power into something she could use.

It still scared her, how unexplainable it was. The connection between them forged in forest. Earlier, when she tried to grow the ivy, she’d been thinking of Neve and violence, of carnage she couldn’t control. But then there’d been the vision, proof that the way she and Eammon had tied themselves together made her stronger. And now, when the task before her was meaningful— when she wanted him safe, both because of that strange caring and because she feared what might happen to all of them if he wasn’t— she could treat her magic like a tool to be used rather than something to contain.

Intention clear, Red took hold of her power, opened herself to it. And she didn’t drown.

It flowed, rich and heady, deep green. A thin tendril, winding through muscle and bone like a root snaking toward the sun, waiting for her will.

The wounds burned under her hands. Slowly, carefully, Red let them in.

If there was pain, she didn’t feel it. The beat of power was steady, sure, a flow that matched her pulse. For the first time, this felt right, and the feeling was intoxicating. She took a little, then a little more, pushing herself—

“Red, stop!”

Her hands were empty. Red’s eyes opened, face sweaty and breath labored.

Eammon’s hand hovered above her cheek. He pulled back as her eyes opened, cold air replacing his warmth.

“You took too much.” His eyes were clearer than they’d been since the breach. “Dammit, Red.”

She looked down. Crimson bloomed across her abdomen, barely visible through the thin fabric of her nightgown. A wound, but not nearly as awful as his had been— she’d taken only part, not the whole. Still, as if the sight sparked her nerves to working, pain seared across the cuts, brought a hiss to her teeth. “Shit.” She sat back, hand pressed against her stomach. “You’ve lived with this all day? More than this?”

Eammon pushed off the wall, brow furrowed, legs shaky. “That was too much,” he said again, almost to himself.

“But it worked.” After the initial burn, the wounds weren’t so bad. Pain had to go somewhere, yes, but it seemed to come in a quick flare, all of it at once. Gingerly, Red lifted her hand from her middle, noticing as she did that her veins were traced in brilliant emerald, not just her wrists, but all the way up her arm. They faded almost immediately, ran blue again. “You’re . . . well, not good as new. But better. No more mangled insides.”

Eammon hung his hands on his hips, glowering down at her. Triple stripes of faint red with white-scarred lines in their centers marked his chest and stomach. “Less mangled.” Then, lower: “Thank you.”

Silence fell, their fragile camaraderie overshadowed by awkwardness. Eammon unhooked a poker from over the hearth and halfheartedly stirred up the embers, banishing the chill from the open windows. “You can put your cloak in the wardrobe,” he said to the fire. “If you want.”

The tattered fabric lay on the floor where she’d dropped it, distracted by Eammon’s bleeding. She picked it up, padded across the room. There was plenty of space in the wardrobe, since most of Eammon’s clothes seemed to live on the floor. The clothes that had made it inside were darkly colored and scented like leaves. Red tucked her scarlet cloak next to a stack of Eammon’s shirts.

She crossed back to the fireplace and sat on the floor, wrapped her arms around her knees. “It made you taller,” she said after a moment, quietly. “I mean, it made you taller, and then it didn’t go away.”

Eammon stiffened, pausing a moment in his stirring of the fire. His eyes flickered down, as if taking stock of himself, before closing. “So it did.”

“Has that happened before?” She kept her arms around her knees and her voice lightly conversational, but worry gnawed at her stomach. “A change from the magic staying permanently?”

One more stir of the embers, a spiral of sparks in the cold air. “No,” he said curtly, replacing the poker on the mantel.

The worry grew sharper teeth, bit deeper.

“It was a lot of power.” Quiet, meant as much for himself as for her. “More even than I’ve used healing a sentinel before. That’s probably why. I just harnessed more than normal. Let more in.” He rubbed at his eyes. “Should’ve at least tried blood, though it wouldn’t have been enough.”

“No pleasant options available, I guess.”

An affirmative grunt.

Red watched him from the corner of her eye, how his tense shoulders tapered to his hips, how his midnight hair fell across his brow. The scar on his stomach was a mirror image of hers, just like the Bargainer’s Mark. There was a strange intimacy in it, one that sharpened the alchemy of worry and guilt clawing up her insides.

Her husband, the Wolf. Scarred for her, scarred for everyone else, locked in a constant fight with a forest that was part of him.

“Downstairs,” she ventured, turning her gaze to the flames so he wouldn’t catch her staring. “You said it’s never been this bad before.”

Nothing from Eammon. After a moment, he sighed. “It hasn’t.”

“Is it my fault?”

“No, Red.” For all his clear reticence to discuss this, the rebuttal was immediate. “None of this is your fault.”

“But if it’s only gotten worse since I came—”

“Your situation is unique. Your connection to the Wilderwood— I’ve never seen anything like it before.” His shadow moved over the floor as he came to stand beside her. Eammon’s mouth worked, eyes unreadable, like he could call up the exact words he wanted from the flames if he stared at them hard enough. “The others were bound to the forest, but not like this.”

Red curled further into her knees. “They were bound in ways that killed them.”

It was hard to tell in the dim, but she thought his face blanched. “Yes,” he said quietly. “But you aren’t. You won’t be. And yes, because it’s so different, everything has been . . . difficult to navigate. But I promise you, we will figure it out.”

Together. It went unspoken, but the ghost of it hovered in the air. We’ll figure it out together.

Eammon turned, bending with a minor grimace to gather the coverlet. “I’ll sleep downstairs. If you need—”

“It’s freezing down there.”

“Thus, the blanket.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

He shrugged, walking toward the stairs.

“You know, sharing a room is not an unheard-of thing for married people to do.”

He froze, glanced back at her. Red closed her mouth, biting her lip to keep more foolish words from escaping. Her pulse thrummed in the wounds they shared.

She stood, crossed her arms, suddenly vulnerable in his amber-eyed scrutiny. “Do you snore?”

“Used to.” Eammon turned his attention to the blanket in his hands. “It’s been a while since someone was in a position to tell me if the issue persists.”

“Well,” Red said, shoring up false confidence, “I’ll let you know.”

The corner of his mouth flicked up, dropped again. After a moment, Eammon walked to the other end of the room and spread his blanket next to the wall. He stretched out on his back, hissing as his shoulder jostled against the floor.

Red sat gingerly on the bed, setting the sheets to rights. They smelled like him, paper and coffee. Exhaustion weighed her eyelids when she slid between them, but the awareness of Eammon across the room chased sleep out of reach.

She hadn’t shared a room since she and Neve were small. They’d stay up too late, telling stories, arguing, playing dress-up with clothes in the wardrobe. Her chest felt iron-banded. “Who told you that you snore?”

His small movements paused, just for a moment. “Someone I used to share a room with,” he answered finally.

Before today, before she’d felt his blood under her hands, she might’ve left it at that. As it stood . . . “Really?”

In the dim light, Red couldn’t see him, but she could imagine him— the bandage on his middle a square of white, hands behind his rumpled head. “Her name was Thera,” he said finally. Softly.

Thera. “Not another Second Daughter?”

“No.” A quick cut of an answer. “The Second Daughters and I . . . there was nothing like that, not with any of them.”

Red’s hands tightened over her stomach, lacing over new wounds. “Who was she, then?”

“A girl from one of the villages beyond the border,” Eammon murmured. “From before the Kings wounded the Wilderwood. Before it closed in on itself. Gaya and Ciaran were still alive. I wasn’t the Wolf yet. Young and stupid.”

“You still look rather young, to be honest, though I won’t comment on the stupid part.”

“Another Wilderwood benefit. I guess I age like a tree.”

“Better-looking than a tree. Slightly.”

A huff of hoarse laughter. Red quirked a tiny grin in the dark.

“All told,” Eammon continued, “my life was fairly normal before I was the Wolf. Other than having fairy-tale characters for parents. I could leave.”

Once, he could leave. That made it almost worse. “What happened?”

“I’d been staying with Thera, in the village. We fought— she wanted to get married, I didn’t—”

Her stomach flipped.

“— so I came back here for the night.” She heard him shift against the floorboards. “And that night, the Kings wounded the Wilderwood, tried to cut down the sentinel where they’d made their bargain and were pulled into the Shadowlands. The borders closed. I couldn’t go out. She couldn’t get in.” A pause. “I inherited my father’s horrific timing, I suppose.”

“That’s terrible,” Red murmured.

“It was centuries ago.” But there was still a ghost of grief in his voice, an old wound healed but well remembered. “Haven’t been with anyone since.”

“Why not?”

“Other than the obvious issue of being stuck in a forest?” A weak snort, another shift against the ground. “The Wilderwood is difficult to hold together. It takes near-constant concentration, especially when I have to keep it from . . . from doing things I don’t want it to do.” He paused, next words quieter. “There’s not much of me left to give to another person.”

Red worked her thumbnail against the weave of his sheet.

“And you?” Hushed, but with genuine curiosity. “Surely there was someone, in the twenty years before you came here.”

When she closed her eyes and tried to remember Arick’s face, all she could see was the twisted thing from the gate, built of darkness and malice. “One.”

Silence, shatter-ready. “If you didn’t have to be here,” Eammon began, barely above a whisper. “If you could do anything you wanted, what would you do?”

The question felt more complicated than it should’ve. Red’s whole life was under the shadow of the Wilderwood. Considering anything else hurt too much, so she just . . . didn’t. Now that there were options, now that a life stretched before her tied to the man across the room, she wasn’t exactly sure what wanting looked like.

“If I could do anything I wanted,” she answered, “I would let my sister know I’m safe.”

Eammon’s sigh was shaky. “I’m sorry, Red.”

She sat up on her elbow, peered through the ember glow to where Eammon lay, one hand pushing back his hair and the other on his chest. Dim light revealed only his edges— broad shoulders, crooked nose. He turned, and their gazes locked.

“I’m sorry, too,” she breathed.

The permanent line between Eammon’s brows softened. Wordlessly, he nodded.

Red lay back, rolled on her side. After a moment, she heard Eammon do the same, and his breathing slowed, evened out.

Eventually, so did hers.