For the Wolf by Hannah F. Whitten

Chapter Thirty-One

At some point, they moved from the floor to the bed, and though Red’s limbs ached when she woke, it was due to something more pleasant than hard floors. Eammon’s skin was warm beneath her cheek, his arm bent behind her neck and palm resting on the crown of her head. His breath came deep and even, but when she turned to kiss his shoulder, he still made a low, pleased sound and pulled her closer.

Red propped her chin on the scarred plane of his chest. Eammon’s overlong hair stuck up at odd angles, mussed from her fingers. His face was soft with sleep, the permanent line between his brows smoothed. Lightly, so as not to wake him, she traced it with a finger.

The Wilderwood, coiled around her bones, pulled marginally tighter. Red squirmed against the ache. Nothing about anchoring a forest within your skin was comfortable, especially as it grew and settled in.

Another twinge, enough to make her wince, and a faint sound through the open windows. A sigh, shaped by fluttering leaves and the stretch and bloom of branches.

Brow furrowed, Red carefully extricated herself from Eammon. He grumbled but didn’t wake, burrowing his head farther in the pillow. She picked up the first item of discarded clothing she touched on the floor— his shirt— and pulled it over her head, arms wrapped around her chest as she crept to the window.

Autumn blazed in the Wilderwood. Scarlet and gold, a swath of sunset colors more vibrant than any she’d seen in Valleyda. Fog still rolled over the ground, but now it seemed ethereal, soft rather than sinister. Fallen leaves carpeted the forest floor, but the ones still clinging to the tree limbs were blushed with green, like autumn was moving backward, slowly blooming into summer.

For a moment, Red was too wrapped up in it to heed its pull. She and Eammon had made the Wilderwood whole, finally brought it balance. The beauty of it made her breath catch.

But there was one thing more to do, and the forest urged her forward.

Red pressed her lips together, the chilly air through the window raising goose bumps on her skin. She looked over her shoulder at Eammon, still sleeping.

Let him sleep, she thought. You can lay bones to rest yourself.

And there was something right in it. Something right about Red being the one to try, however falteringly, to give the other Second Daughters peace.

She pulled a pair of leggings from the wardrobe, stuck her feet in her boots. She went to grab her scarlet cloak before remembering it was still in Valleyda. One shaky sigh, that she’d left it there, but a marriage was more than a cloak. As for the other reasons she’d kept it— the claiming of who she was, what she was— she didn’t need a cloak for that anymore, either. She knew it in her bones, she wore it in her eyes instead of on her shoulders.

The note she’d left for Eammon about wanting the bed back still sat on his desk, like he’d carefully placed it right back where he’d found it. Red flipped it over, scrawled new words. I’m in the clearing. Then, with a wry twist of her mouth: Wolf-things.

The sky was pale lilac instead of lavender, like it strove for daybreak, and the Wilderwood stood in silent reverence as Red moved through it. The path to the clearing where she’d saved Eammon wound through the forest outlined in golden leaves; her boots crunching over them was the only sound.

The sentinel with the Second Daughters’ bones clustered around its roots stood taller than the others, its branches already green-leafed. The scar on the bark was still there, where something had been cut away. She’d put together what it meant— this was the tree where Gaya and Ciaran made their bargain. Where they became Wolves. Whether the other Second Daughters had been drawn to the tree to die or their bones appeared there through some strange Wilderwood magic, she wasn’t sure. But it seemed fitting.

The site felt holier than the Shrine ever had.

Three skulls sat at equidistant points along the sentinel’s trunk. Kaldenore, Sayetha, Merra. Three women the Wilderwood had taken and drained in desperation. Three women Eammon had tried to save.

The growth around the skulls had vague bone-shapes, as if parts of the Second Daughters had become forest as they lay here. Roots twined through gaps in rib cages, flowers bloomed on vertebrae. Red pressed her hand against her stomach, wondering if that’s what it looked like beneath her skin.

Leaves rustled, an isolated breeze sending a whirl of gold that ruffled her hair. There were no dearly bought words in it— they were beyond that now, she and the Wilderwood— but Red understood all the same.

“Fear makes us all do foolish things,” she breathed.

Beside her boot, a thin stem poked through the ground. It grew slowly, blooming until a wide white flower touched Red’s palm.

Red brushed her fingers over the petals. She didn’t speak, but she nodded, and that seemed enough for the forest.

She felt him before she saw him, her body attuned to every movement of his. Eammon stepped slowly forward until he stood beside her, staring at the bones wreathed around the tree. He brushed a finger over the flower, then clasped her hand.

“This will never happen again,” he said, low and fierce.

Another fall of leaves, another creaking twig. The Wilderwood’s acquiescence.

Moving on instinct, Red stepped forward. Eammon squeezed her hand once before letting go, a silent mourner watching her benediction.

Red laid her hand on the first skull. Kaldenore, she somehow knew. She’d attended only a handful of funerals, and never paid close attention to any of them. So when Red spoke, it was simple. “Be at peace,” she murmured. “It’s over.”

Almost without thinking, she pulled forward the golden forest magic within her. So easy to do, now, like flexing her finger or arching her back. It flowed through her palm, into what was left of Kaldenore. Washing the horror away, drowning it in light.

When her eyes opened, her hand touched dirt. The skull had sunk into the ground, the Wilderwood soaking up the last of the woman who’d been its sacrifice. Obeying Red’s word to finally lay these bones to rest.

She moved through the others, giving them the same blessing— Sayetha, then Merra. When Merra’s skull was gone, she walked back to Eammon, blinking against the burn in her eyes. He wrapped his arms around her, surrounding her in his paper-coffee-leaves scent, and when her breath broke on the end, his embrace only tightened.

“Eammon!”

Lyra pelted through the autumn-bright forest, grinding to a halt with her hands on her knees. Her breath was a harsh whistle, and worry etched in her flawless face. “Fife met me at the gate and told me to come find you. Someone’s at the Keep.”

Eammon’s fingers tightened around Red’s. “The forest let someone through?”

“Well, yeah.” Her thin fingers gestured wryly at the autumn glow around them. “He said his name was Raffe.”

Raffe and Fife had no idea what to do with each other. When Red threw open the door, out of breath from her headlong sprint through the forest, the two men stood on either side of the staircase, eyeing each other warily. Fife held a wooden spoon across his chest like a shield, dripping soup, but the fierce light in his eyes made it look sinister rather than ridiculous. Raffe’s hand hovered over the hilt of a dagger at his belt.

Red’s brow climbed. “Raffe?”

He looked surprised to see her at first, attention diverted from Fife’s dripping spoon. But then Raffe grabbed her shoulders and pulled her into a rough hug. “Did he hurt you?”

“No, of course not.” She backed up, confusion creasing her forehead. “What are you—”

“I’ll thank you to keep your hands off my wife.” Eammon filled the doorframe, eyes flaring like embers.

“Shadows damn us, I’m perfectly fine. On both counts.” Red pushed Raffe’s hands from her shoulders. “Eammon, this is Raffe. A friend of mine from Valleyda. Raffe, Eammon.” She paused. “The Wolf.”

“I gathered.” Raffe’s fingers twitched toward his dagger hilt. When he spoke, it was almost a snarl. “What have you done with Neve?”

Her arms went slack. “What do you mean?”

“She’s gone, Red.”

Red blinked. The room seemed to fade in and out of focus, the edges of things muddied and misty.

Neve. The panic from last night, the storm of emotions Eammon had helped soothe away, came rushing back. She and Eammon would come up with something, she had to believe it, because what else could she do? But now, with Raffe’s tired, worried eyes boring into her, helplessness in his face . . .

Her knees felt watery.

“You came all the way to the Wilderwood to make accusations?” Eammon put a steadying hand on Red’s shoulder, like he could tell she was a breath away from drowning. His jaw was a harsh line in the dim light. “The Queen isn’t here.”

“That’s what I told him,” Fife said darkly. He brandished the soup spoon in Raffe’s direction. “He wouldn’t listen.”

“She’s not in Valleyda, not in Floriane. She’s gone, and the only thing she’s talked of since Red left is getting her back.” Raffe looked at the Wolf’s hand on Red’s shoulder with burning eyes, and a snarl bent his mouth. “Isn’t one sister enough?”

“Raffe.” Her own voice cleared the fog in her head. Red drew herself up under Eammon’s hand. “I promise you, she isn’t here. Tell me what happened.” Her voice shook. “Please.”

Raffe’s eyes tracked from Red to Eammon, the calculation in them clear. “He might have her hidden away.” Distrust sharpened his voice to a razor-edge. “He’s the Wolf, Red, and no matter what he’s told you—”

“I know who he is, Raffe.”

“He isn’t . . .” Raffe stepped forward, mouth pulled tight, but something beyond her caught his attention. Anger bled away to incredulity, then wonder.

Lyra stood in the doorframe, tor drawn, backlit by autumn light that made a corona of her dark curls. Her eyes narrowed at Raffe, mouth somewhere between a smirk and a snarl. “Please continue,” she said, polite as any courtier. “If I want you to stop talking, you’ll know.”

Raffe’s eyes were round as moons. His mouth worked, like he’d forgotten how to form words. Slowly, he raised his fist to his forehead, and it took Red a moment to remember where she’d seen the motion— a traditional greeting, from one Meducian noble to another.

“Plaguebreaker,” Raffe murmured. “You look . . . damn me, you look just like the statue.”

Fife and Eammon darted glances, their faces identical masks of guarded acceptance. Whatever had just occurred to Raffe, it wasn’t a surprise to them. But there was a new tension in their frames, prepared to jump to Lyra’s defense at the slightest provocation.

A beat, and Lyra sheathed her tor. She balled a fist, raised it briefly to her forehead, then crossed her arms. “I didn’t know that story was still told.”

Red’s brow furrowed. Plaguebreaker . . . like the myth of the Plague Stars, a whole constellation winking out at the moment of miraculous healing. And the band of root around Lyra’s arm, and Fife’s answer when she asked what Lyra bargained for: Her story is longer and more noble than mine.

“Not everyone knows it.” Raffe sounded half entranced. “But there are those in Meducia who remember you, who revere you as much as or more than the Kings. The altar is still there, in the cliffs by the harbor. They leave you gold coins and pray for healing from illness.” He shook his head. “My father brought some, once. When I was young. I was sick, and after he prayed, I got better.”

Lyra’s lips twisted, face unreadable. “I doubt I had anything to do with that.”

“Still.” He took a tentative step closer. His head arced toward the floor, like he might bow, then he thought better of it. “How did you do it? How did you stop the plague?”

Lyra’s eyes shone honey brown in the candlelight, arms tightening across her chest. “I bargained,” she said, voice clipped and measured. “My brother . . .” One hitch in her breath, barely noticeable, before she swallowed and went on. “My youngest brother became infected. So I bargained. Bound myself to the Wilderwood in exchange for a cure.”

Raffe’s face was unreadable. He looked from Lyra to Eammon and back, glanced around the Keep. “And you live here,” he said slowly. “With the Wolf. In the Wilderwood.”

“With us.” Fife took a small step forward. The spoon in his hand didn’t look foolish at all anymore.

Lyra shrugged. “There are worse places to be.” A slender brow arched. “And since you’re asking,” she added, “the Queen isn’t here.”

Raffe’s gaze flickered between Lyra and Eammon. His eyes closed, briefly, and the tension in his shoulders went slack, like his anger had been the only strength in his spine. “Then I have no idea where she might be.”

The floor was solid beneath her, but Red felt like she was falling. Eammon’s hand on her shoulder was all that kept her upright, a counterpoint to the chaos in her head. Neve was gone. Red had left her, pulled away by the roots in her bones, and now she was gone. Her throat felt like she’d swallowed needles.

“What happened?” Eammon asked.

Raffe sank to a seat on the bottom step, denting the moss. “No one has seen her in the palace since yesterday morning.” He sounded hoarse, like the words were too heavy for his throat to lift. “Not since the incident in the Shrine. The rumor was that the Second Daughter was there . . .”

“You thought I took her.” Red’s voice was harsh.

Raffe didn’t nod, but the tightening of his clasped hands was a sentencing. “I didn’t . . .” He stopped, started again. “I knew she was doing something that affected the Wilderwood. And I knew—”

“Then why did you leave her?” Red didn’t realize she’d advanced a step until the weight of Eammon’s hand fell away. “If you knew what was happening, how could you leave her?”

“You think it was my choice?” Raffe snapped the word, like he could break it between his teeth. “It wasn’t. The Order sent me away.”

“And you let them?”

“Arick all but forced me out.” Despite the blade of his tone, there was sadness in Raffe’s face. Arick had been his friend, too. “He said I had nothing to gain by getting embroiled in Valleydan politics, and he said it like a threat. I rented a room in the city, kept an eye on things as best I could. It’s all I could do.” He ran one hand helplessly over his shorn hair. “It wasn’t enough.”

Red took her grief and buried it deep, something to be dealt with later. For now, her mind whirred through possibilities, solutions.

One clicked.

“I know how to find her.” She spun on her heel, toward the back door. “Come with me.”