For the Wolf by Hannah F. Whitten

Valleydan Interlude V

Order funerals were morbid affairs. And since this one was for the High Priestess, it seemed even more somber than usual.

Neve’s black veil blanketed everything in shadow, made the pyre and the priestesses and the gathered courtiers look like they moved through thick fog. Nerves twisted in her stomach. This had happened too fast, too quickly for her plans to be fully woven. It felt like holding tight to the reins of a runaway horse.

Zophia’s body lay prostrate on the pyre, wrapped to her chin in the black cloak corpses wore for burning. The dark cloth was covered in tokens from all over the continent to signify the Order’s unity— each country with its own Temple, each Temple with its own High Priestess.

The value of the tokens the other Temples had sent for this burning was staggering. Olive oil from Karsecka, pounds of fragrant blooms from Cian, bottles of dark liquor brewed with gold flecks shipped over from the Rylt. There was far too much to actually include on the pyre, most of it packed away in the Temple’s stores with the prayer-taxes. A happy coincidence, really— the sum Belvedere had ended up paying Alpera to reroute the grain was truly astronomical, and some of the riches brought for the funeral could offset the costs.

Though the expense was vast, the grain had arrived safely. The story of Kiri and Arick’s prayers clearing the mouth of the bay were nothing but rumbles, whispered rumors in hushed tones. At first, that had puzzled Neve, but it was apparently how Kiri preferred it. A folktale of a miracle, she said, would prove more useful to them than something proclaimed by the Temple. Support from the bottom up would be more useful than from the top down. She’d clutched her wood-shard pendant as she said it, face carefully blank, like she was reciting something she’d heard rather than explaining thoughts of her own. It’d made Neve’s insides feel twitchy, and made her glad she’d never actually worn the pendant Kiri had given her. But she nodded along.

From her place behind the pyre with the other candidates for the High Priestess’s replacement, Kiri glanced over, blue eyes glinting ice. The slightest bend of a cold smile, then she looked away.

A torch passed. Neve’s part of the plan began now.

Zophia’s possible successors walked in a circle around the pyre, their seventh and final lap ending in a line behind it. As one, they turned to Neve and Isla. The Queen and the First Daughter had the front row to themselves.

Isla looked worse. She’d been on a steady decline in the week since the trade meeting. Today cosmetics made her cheeks less pale and her eyes less listless, but there was no mistaking her thinness, the slump of her shoulders. Her health had been one of the things delaying Neve in trying to change her mind on the High Priestess’s heir. She’d gone to visit her mother nearly every day, but the silence of her sickroom was oppressive, and Isla had usually been asleep, anyway.

Then Zophia died, with Tealia still selected to replace her. But there was a loophole. One Neve would be exploiting as soon as the call went out for the useless, ceremonial vote.

A tiny prayer, murmured in her mind, the scrap of faith she’d unexpectedly found in all her heresy. Make her listen.

A warm hand landed on Neve’s shoulder, there and then gone, and she almost jumped out of her skin. A quick glance back— just Raffe. He gave her a fleeting smile, squeezed her shoulder once.

It should’ve been comforting. Instead, Neve’s heartbeat sped.

The red rose petal in her hand was limp and crumpled, creased with sweat. The other courtiers in the room made great shows of looking from their petals to the gathered priestesses, as if this vote actually counted for something.

Next to Raffe, Arick’s brows drew low, his petal turning between his fingers. Dark circles marked the skin under his eyes. The meeting in the Shrine last night had run late. He had a new bandage on his hand, unbloodied, though a speck of black still marked the center of his palm. She’d been concerned the first time she saw him bleed from it, but no one else seemed to be, so she kept quiet.

According to Kiri, it was working. The Wilderwood was weakening, loosening its hold on Red. That was what mattered. Everything else, they could figure out later.

She darted another glance at Raffe. The sunlight through the windows made his eyes glow honey-colored, reflected gold along the edge of his mouth. She hadn’t told Raffe anything. Not because she didn’t want to— it was a constant struggle not to let the whole thing spill over— but because he wouldn’t understand. The strange, dark ideas of Kiri and her followers might scare him off.

They even scared Neve a bit, though she was sure most of them were nonsense. Skirting the line between heresy and piety, practicality and fanaticism. An interpretation of the Five Kings that made them both more and less human.

Here they all were, partners in half-measure blasphemy, and Neve was about to lay the final brick in the wall.

Isla rose, and the court followed. The priestesses stood behind the pyre with ramrod spines, hands tucked into wide white sleeves, eyes fixed forward. Kiri’s hair shone almost the same color as the bright-red petal in Neve’s hand.

“One passes, and another takes her place.” Isla’s words were calm, solemn. She held her petal aloft. “Tealia, in the names of our lost Kings and the magic of bygone eras, I ask that you take up this task.”

Tealia didn’t have the guile to look surprised. Mouth a pleased grin, she inclined her head. “As you ask.”

According to ceremony, other nominations should be heard here. Neve pulled in a deep breath, waiting.

But Isla turned to the assembly, the matter seemingly concluded. “By our—”

“I have a nomination.”

Neve expected her voice to sound quiet and thin, a match for her quaking fingers. Instead it rang clear as she held her petal aloft. She stepped forward, eyes on Kiri, not looking at her mother. “Kiri, I ask that you take up this task.”

Kiri didn’t feign surprise. She nodded, eyes straight ahead, stone-solemn. “As you ask.”

Isla’s face blanched, but she didn’t let her petal drop. “What is the meaning of this, Neverah?”

An accusation, not a question. She’d expected as much, and it had kept her awake once she realized this was the course she’d have to take. An answer her mother would deem acceptable, something weighty enough to give her pause.

Red would’ve known what to say. Red always knew how to spar with their mother, how to shape words into daggers and let them fly, or use silence as a blade in itself.

All Neve had was her grief, artless and aching and hopefully shared.

“Things can change.” Neve kept her voice from breaking, there at the end, though it was a close thing. “Just because something has always been one way doesn’t mean it has to be that way forever. Red can—”

“That’s quite enough.” But Isla’s voice rang hollow, her eyes distant from more than illness. Grief, finally, dredging up from whatever deep well the Queen of Valleyda kept it in.

So Neve pressed on. “Mother, we can bring her home.”

Pin-drop silence. Raffe looked at her with his mouth agape. Arick gave a slight, sad smile. Kiri did nothing.

The petal between Isla’s fingers trembled. Her dark eyes closed; her chest swelled with a deep breath.

Neve didn’t take one.

Glass-fragile silence, then the Queen turned away. “By our lost—”

“No.” Neve’s petal fell to the ground, her sharp retort ricocheting through the hall. According to tradition, the appointment had to be unanimous. If it wasn’t, the assembly was cloistered for hearings until they reached a decision. “If there’s more than one—”

“Neverah.” Isla’s voice sliced hers off, strong despite how frail she looked. “This has been decided.”

Shock painted Raffe’s face, petal hanging limp in his hand. Neve gave him a pleading look, though she had no idea what she was pleading for. Her hands opened and closed on her skirts, helpless. Isla was so married to tradition, so set on doing things the way they’d always been done . . . it hadn’t occurred to Neve that her mother wouldn’t follow Order strictures. That the Order would let her.

Perhaps Kiri wasn’t so far off after all. Perhaps it’d always been about power, the definitions of what passed as holy kept purposefully mutable.

Raffe inched forward, but Arick’s hand on his shoulder stopped him. Neve couldn’t read the look in either man’s eyes.

The priestesses, ever the picture of calm, stared straight ahead. Even Tealia, though visibly shaken, schooled her face to placidity. A flutter of white sleeves as the candidates put their black candles to the pyre, all those gifted riches going up in flames.

Some indecipherable emotion lived in Kiri’s pale face. Her eyes flickered to Neve and Arick for one lingering, laden moment, and then away.

When Isla spoke the confirmation, she didn’t look at Neve. “By our lost kings and the magic of bygone eras . . .”

The petals rose high, the pyre caught, and Neve’s plans ground away to dust.

The knock at her door was quick and brusque, almost furtive. Neve paused in her pacing, brows knit. Her picked-over dinner tray was already cleared, and she’d told the maid not to bother coming to help her undress.

Another furtive knock. “Neve, open the door.”

Raffe.

She pulled him inside, cheeks flushing. She and Arick alone in her room would be gossip; she and Raffe would be a scandal. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’d be in for coming without a chaperone?”

“Probably as much as you’re in for that stunt at the confirmation.” His brow arched. “What were you doing today?”

Neve sank into the chair at her desk. She didn’t have the energy for pretense. “You know what I’m doing.”

Not the whole of it, no. But Raffe knew her enough to know that all of this had to be about Red.

Raffe swore, rubbing a hand over his closely shorn hair. “You have to let it go, Neverah. It’s eating you up, and I . . .” He trailed off, sighed. In one fluid motion, Raffe sank to a crouch before her, pulled her hands into his. Neve knew she should remind him of impropriety, of whispers. But his hands were so warm.

“Neve.” He said her name like a touchstone, a still point he could come back to. “Red is gone.”

“She’s alive,” Neve whispered to their tangled hands.

“Even if she is, she’s bound to the Wilderwood. She’s lost to us.”

So close to the truth, myth and fact a nimble dance.

Raffe’s grip tightened. “You have to stop trying to lose yourself, too.”

Neve was already lost. Her mind was a forest, full of deep shadows and tripping vines, a labyrinth of regret. And now that their plan had failed, that she’d been the one to fail . . . She didn’t realize a tear had fallen until she tasted salt.

He caught her tear on his thumb, his palm cradling her cheek. “What would you want her to do? If she’d been born first, if you’d been for the Wolf, what would you want her to do?”

“If I’d been for the Wolf,” Neve whispered fiercely, “I would’ve fought. I would’ve run. If I’m going to give myself over to some magic woods, it’s not going to be for something useless.”

“But she didn’t run.” Raffe tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Her choice was to go. And you have to find a way to live with that.”

Neve’s mouth pressed to a bloodless line, her eyes closing as her forehead tipped against his.

“Cozy in here,” said a voice from the doorway.

Her eyes snapped open; Raffe dropped her hands and stood, straightening his coat.

Eyebrow cocked, Arick lounged against the doorframe, wine bottle in hand. He swaggered into the room and offered it to Raffe, tripping slightly on the rug’s edge. With a tight smile, Raffe waved it away, but the look he shot Neve was edged in apprehension.

“Didn’t mean to interrupt.” Arick slumped into the chair across from Neve. His hair was a scattered mess of black across his forehead, his eyes bloodshot and bruised. He held his bandaged hand close to his chest. “Things took an interesting turn this afternoon, didn’t they?”

“Maybe you can get through to her,” Raffe said, crossing his arms. “Tell her she has to let this go.”

“Perhaps I can.” Arick took a long drink. “I’m her betrothed, after all.”

Raffe’s jaw clenched.

“Or perhaps,” Arick said, swirling his remaining wine, “I can support whatever decision Neve makes.”

The flash of Raffe’s teeth was too sharp to be a smile. “Even when those decisions are dangerous?”

“What’s life without a little danger, Raffe?”

“You’re drunk.”

“I imagine you two would have a better time if you followed suit.”

“I’d have a better time if you stopped talking about me like I’m not here.” Neve pressed her fingers to her temples, trying to ease the pounding in her head. She’d thought Arick might come to discuss an alternate plan. Instead, he seemed focused on nothing but drinking to forget, and it made rage stoke deep in her chest, the quiet kind that could be dangerous.

The kind that made her think about shadowed veins and called-up power, and how using it would be so easy.

Raffe sighed. “Neve . . .”

“Leave me, please.” She took a deep breath, raised her face. “I’m tired.”

Raffe’s mouth twisted like he might speak. But his eyes darted to Arick, and he stayed silent.

Legs unsteady, Arick stood, clapped Raffe chummily on the shoulder. “You heard the lady.”

Stiffly, Raffe turned to the door. Arick followed. But when he reached the threshold, he looked back at her, jerked his chin toward the bottle he’d left on her desk.

“Might help you sleep.” The bandage on his hand stood out stark against the shadows. “It’s helped me.”

Neve frowned. “Have you had trouble sleeping?”

He didn’t smile, though his mouth spasmed like he might’ve tried. “You could say that.” Arick stumbled out. “Don’t worry, Neve,” he murmured, slurred but earnest. “All isn’t lost yet.”

She frowned, watching him lurch into the hall, leaving the door ajar behind him.

Neve grabbed the bottle by the neck and took a long drink. The wine was strong enough that her head felt light after one swallow, but it was preferable to the crushing weight of failure. She took another drink and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

In minutes, she’d drained the bottle, leaving her thoughts pleasantly fuzzy and filtering the edges of the day to a warm, blunted glow.

A flash of white in the hallway, seen through the still-open door. Neve stood on legs like a fawn’s, rolling her eyes. If some maid was trysting with a courtier, she didn’t want to hear it. She went to the door, taking a few tries to make her hand actually connect with the knob, and peered down the corridor.

A familiar white robe disappeared around the corner, a familiar flash of ember-red hair. Kiri?

Whoever it was, they were gone by the time she reached the hall. Neve pulled the door closed and fumbled out of her gown, finally falling into sleep.