For the Wolf by Hannah F. Whitten
Chapter Thirty-Two
The mirror was propped against the same wall where Eammon had first left it. Red half expected the glass to be clear, the healing of the Wilderwood reflected in its relic. But the surface was still matte and gray, touched by the subtly sinister twist of smoke. Maybe it would take time to heal, or maybe it was something that would always look foreboding.
Red swallowed. She wasn’t sure which option disconcerted her more.
“This . . . shows you Neve?” Apprehension made Raffe’s voice brittle. He’d balked at the sight of the tower, wrapped in vine and branch, bursting with as much golden autumn as the rest of the Wilderwood. Now he held himself carefully, arms crossed so he didn’t touch anything.
“Gaya made it so she could see Tiernan.” Red untied her braid, shaking her hair over her shoulders. She pulled out one strand, hesitated, then tugged a few more. Neve might be harder to find this time.
“And it works?”
Eammon’s eyes flickered from Red to the mirror, the same nervousness she felt etched into his face. “Mostly.”
“Strange magic,” Raffe murmured.
“An understatement.” Despite his nonchalance, Fife held himself stiffly against the stair railing. Lyra had gone to the Edge to tell Valdrek what was happening, to finally make good on his promise of help if the need ever arose. Red knew Fife would be nervous until she returned.
With one last reassuring look at Eammon, Red wound the strands of her hair through the mirror’s frame and sat back on her heels, waiting for the smoke and shine, waiting for her sister.
When the vision finally came, it was blurry, even more than usual. Wherever Neve was, it was dark. She lay on her back, unmoving but for the slight rise and fall of her chest. Indistinct shapes flickered around her, but Red saw a flash of an auburn braid and a white robe, and someone tall with a face like smeared paint, shifting between one thing and the other.
Kiri and Solmir.
As she concentrated, the darkness above Neve slowly coalesced to a night sky, midnight blue, scattered with stars. Valleydan countryside sky. A line of deep violet split the horizon— the edge of the Wilderwood.
Slowly, Red came back to herself, relief making her breath shudder. “She’s alive. In Valleyda, but near—”
The words choked off into a scream of unexpected pain. It flashed down her spine, the roots around it twisting, branches spearing across the inside of her skin. Eammon’s eyes flashed, his hand reaching out as he tried to come toward her, but his knees buckled before he could, hitting the floor with a muffled groan.
“What are they doing?” Raffe’s voice, somewhere between shock and fear.
“The roots,” Fife breathed, face blanched.
Outside, a low keening noise, a gathering wind, and a crack of falling branches. The autumn colors muting, fading, winter seeping in again.
Eammon was on his knees, fist pressed against his side, jaw an agonized ridge. He tried to move, but another slice of pain lanced through them both, turned his forward motion into a fruitless spasm. Something cut away, something taken.
Raffe backed against the wall, wide-eyed. “What happened?”
“Wilderwood.” With teeth-baring effort, Eammon lurched toward Red, pulling her up with a steady hand despite the pain. His palms ran over her arms, looking for wounds. “They’ve taken more sentinels.”
It felt like a hundred knives, the way the forest skittered in her chest, the way it fought to close itself around the unimaginable tear— dozens of sentinels, ripped away at once. Her veins were a rush of sap, her heartbeat clattering against stretching branches, all of it agony.
At the bottom of the tower, the door banged open, footsteps rushing up the stairs. Valdrek topped the rise, Lyra behind him, both of them out of breath. “What is going on, Wolf? The Wilderwood was open when we entered, then an awful—”
He stopped cold, eyes wide as they took in Red’s and Eammon’s drawn faces and what they must mean. “Kings and shadows.”
“Apt.” Eammon’s lips were white. He steadied Red against him.
“They’re doing it,” she murmured. Words in a dungeon, before she took the roots—the Wilderwood will fall, the Kings will be freed. “Solmir is freeing the rest of the Kings from the Shadowlands.”
Outside, the Wilderwood’s keening had subsided, but the silence it left was almost worse. They’d left the tower, unsure how its magic-heightening influence might be affected by such violence done to the forest. Red leaned against Eammon, all but limping. Eammon walked tall, but pain lived in the line of his mouth.
Raffe pushed open the door to the Keep, and Red nearly collapsed on the bottom step of the staircase, teeth clenched against the sting of so many missing sentinels. Eammon leaned against the banister, his fingers white-knuckle on the newel post.
Lear had accompanied Valdrek and Lyra, and took a place near the wall, armed to the teeth with weapons that should’ve been ancient, glinting in the light of the burning vine. His blue eyes were sad and tired. “When I said you could always ask for help, Wolf, I was thinking more about finding material to rebuild the Keep, or maybe getting your input on crop rotation. Not the whole damn Wilderwood collapsing.”
“We were halfway here before it started.” Lyra, voice low, fingers on the hilt of her tor. “Everything was fine, then all of a sudden, it . . . tore.”
“It sounded like the trees were screaming.” Valdrek shook his head. “I’ve never heard the forest make that sound before.”
“We have to go to the border,” Raffe said from the shadow of the staircase. “We have to, if that’s where he has Neve.”
“The Wilderwood won’t let us out. Not now that I have the roots, too.” Red stood, though the effort drove her teeth together. “You’ll have to find her, Raffe.”
He nodded.
“Eammon, Fife, Lyra, and I can go as far as the tree line,” she continued. “Raffe will go look for Neve, and we’ll heal whatever breaches are close until he finds her.”
Eammon shook his head, slightly, like the movement hurt. “Solmir is there, Red. You can’t get that close—”
“My sister is there.” It was nearly a whisper, though part of her wanted to scream it. “There’s no time. We have to go now.”
He shut his mouth against further protest, chin dipping forward as if the weight on his shoulders had increased tenfold.
Valdrek’s eyes flickered over them. “So of the five of you,” he said slowly, “only one can leave the forest.” He pointed to Raffe. “I assume you came in during the brief period where the Wilderwood seemed to have its shit together.”
“It opened the border,” Red said softly. “When I took the roots, when the Wilderwood was healed, the Valleydan border opened.” It made her throat ache, to think of how close they’d been. How briefly everything had been balanced, only to be knocked sideways again.
A pang of longing twisted Valdrek’s face, just for a moment. “Well,” he said, looking to Lear, “we’ll come, then, and try our luck.”
“It won’t let you out.” Eammon’s words came strained.
“Maybe not. But the Wilderwood is held by two now, and differently than before.”
“It should just be me and Raffe,” Eammon argued. “Even if it did let you through, there’s too much risk—”
“We owe it to everyone in the Edge to make an attempt. And if the forest does let us out, and there’s a part we can play in healing it, we have to try.” Valdrek shrugged. “You’re getting our help, Wolf, whether you like it or not.”
Red stood, covering Eammon’s hand with her own. She glared up at him. “No more keeping yourself alone,” she hissed. “You asshole.”
Worry lit his eyes, but Eammon turned his hand over under hers, laced their fingers together.
Lear chuckled, but it was a hard thing. “Maybe we’ll even kill this Solmir fellow. That would be enough to have a ballad written, eh? Killing one of the Kings?”
Firelight gilded Lyra’s curls as she stepped forward. “We’re going, too.”
Behind Lyra, Fife crossed his arms, Bargainer’s Mark standing out in sharp relief against his freckles. He gave one confirming nod.
Eammon’s eyes were shadowed hollows. He looked to Red. She squeezed his hand.
“Let’s go, then,” he murmured.
Every tree in the Wilderwood was thorn-jagged and winter-sharp. The leaves on the ground were gray and skeletal, leached of autumn color as if months had passed instead of minutes. Above their heads, the sky mottled like a bruise.
The hilt of the dagger strapped around Red’s thigh brushed her wrist. Knives glittered in the shadows of Eammon’s coat. She wondered if they’d be able to use them. She wondered if what they went to face was something that could be fought. Kiri could be killed, and so could Solmir while he was on this side of the forest— she assumed— but if the rest of the Kings came through . . .
Heal the breaches, rescue Neve. She kept it up like a litany, this recitation of the two things she knew they could do.
“Do we have a plan?” Lyra murmured. Her tor was a crescent of silver in the dark. With every step, the bags at her and Fife’s waists clinked, filled with vials of blood.
“Stop him.” Eammon didn’t pause in his unflagging pace.
“He’s mine.” This from Raffe, walking behind them and thus far silent. He turned his eyes from the ground to Lyra, dark and glittering. “If Solmir is there, even if he’s where you can get to him, he’s mine.”
She nodded, once.
Silence fell, broken only by the sound of boots over leaves.
The pain of the torn sentinels had flagged to a dull ache. Still, Eammon walked stiffly at the front of their strange procession, like every movement taxed a limited store of energy.
Red picked up her pace until the back of her hand brushed his. Eammon hadn’t touched her since they left the Keep, when they’d rushed upstairs for weapons. Then he’d pulled her to him, kissed her like he could impart some protection through the weight of his mouth.
“Whatever I have to do, I’ll do it,” he whispered. “Whatever I have to do to keep you safe.”
Red traced his scars. “I love you.” Her mouth quirked halfway to a smile, then fell. “I’m for the Wolf.”
His thumb had brushed over her lower lip. “I’m for you.”
Now there was no softness in him, like he’d spent it all in that moment. Eammon was harsh angles and sharp edges, and he moved with vicious intent.
“I’m sure, if you ask nicely, Raffe will bring him past the border and let you have a turn.” The words were toneless, hollow. She said them because there was nothing else to say. Because it will be fine sounded too much like a lie.
There was no humor in his eyes when they met hers. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Red grabbed his hand. He let her.
Up ahead, the trees thinned, rising twisted from the ground. Their small war band stopped, motion arrested by shock.
The border of the Wilderwood was a wasteland, trees scattered and broken, those that still stood contorted into tortured shapes. Pits of rotten earth pockmarked the ground— one directly before them, the edge of another visible in the shadows to the left. The sky split in a sawtooth line, plum-dark twilight crashing into indigo, scattered with stars like the glass from a broken window.
Beyond, in the flat and empty expanse of northern Valleyda, a tightly clustered copse of white trees grew, maybe half a mile from the border. Twisted roots stretched up to the sky, tangling and matting together in an impenetrable ring, while thicker branches slashed through the ground below— another inverted sentinel grove, growing upside down. Between the bleached-bone trunks, nothing stirred.
Red recoiled. The Wilderwood within her did, too.
“There.” Raffe was beside her, bared teeth a flash in the dark. “She’ll be there.” He jogged over the burned earth toward the grove with no hesitation.
Valdrek stepped up to the broken border, Lear beside him. As he tentatively stepped over the line, Red felt a tugging in her chest, like a frayed string snapping. The forest, letting them go, knowing that holding its borders wouldn’t help it now.
“Well.” Valdrek turned back, surprise and a tired, sorrow-tinged joy in his eyes. “The world feels much the same on this side. Good luck, Wolves.” He started over the hills after Raffe, Lear following behind.
Lyra stood with her tor in her hand, a loose readiness to her frame like she was set to spring. “No shadow-creatures yet,” she said, eyes scanning the broken edge of the forest. “I can’t decide if that’s comforting or not.”
“The Shadowlands have more important things to let loose.” Eammon kept his voice steady, though his jaw was a clenched line of pain. His eyes flickered to Red. “I’m going to scout the edge of the forest with Lyra. You and Fife stay here. Don’t come any closer to the border until I call for you.”
“Is that an order?” Half a joke, an attempt at lightness to lift the iron feeling in her chest.
Eammon huffed, half a laugh for half a joke, fingers tightening on hers. “If you want it to be.”
“Eammon—”
He tucked her hair behind her ear, scarred palm brushing her cheek. “Let me do this.”
Gently, he untangled their fingers. Gently, he brought her hand to his lips. Then he was gone, off into the ruin their forest had become.
Fife stepped up beside her as Eammon and Lyra moved quickly away. “Foolish of us,” he said, trying for the usual brusque tone he took with her and falling short.
She arched a brow.
He shrugged. “Falling in love with reckless idiots.”
Red gripped Fife’s fingers, briefly, then let them fall.
A flutter of movement caught her eye, in the opposite direction of Eammon and Lyra. Something white, hidden in shadows, right at the edge of the Valleydan border. Eyes narrowing, Red took a lurching step forward. “Do you see that?”
“See what?”
Another flutter of white. In her vision, Neve had been wearing white.
That was enough to make her run.
“Red!”
But she didn’t pay attention, hurtling toward that flicker in the shadowed trees. Maybe Neve had woken from her strange trance, come to the edge of the broken forest—
“Come,” said a voice from the shapeless darkness behind the tree. It was quiet, quiet enough for the voice itself to be indistinct.
“Neve?” Red called, everything in her focused on saving the sister she’d left behind.
No answer.
“Redarys!” A scream this time, a scream to scrape a throat bloody. Eammon, calling for her. The Wilderwood in her chest sliced and burned, a warning against being so close to the edge, but Red clenched her teeth and kept going. Her boots skidded in the dirt as she reached the tree, putting out a hand to sling herself around it.
From the shadows, Kiri grinned.
Red tried to backtrack, but her lungs ached so badly, and the falling forest anchored in her hurt so much. Her fingers fumbled against the hilt of her dagger, too panic-numb to find a grip, and then Kiri’s hands were around her throat, pressing hard.
“More trouble than you’re worth,” the High Priestess hissed, eyes glinting madly in the collision of stars and twilight. “You don’t deserve to see our gods returned.”
“Red!” She felt the slither of roots over her ankles, the piercing of the Wilderwood in her chest as Eammon tried to garner its broken pieces into power.
“Say goodbye to your Wolf.” Kiri’s hands tightened on Red’s neck. “He’ll be joining you soon enough.”
Then— hands wrenching at the priestess’s arms, opening her fingers to let air back into Red’s lungs. Solmir cursed mildly, grabbing Red’s arm in a bruising grip and pulling her toward the ragged tree line.
Distantly, over the sound of her gasps, Red heard running footsteps, heard Eammon’s bellow.
“More trouble than you’re worth, maybe,” Solmir muttered, hauling her by her arm so her feet fell out from under her and her knees slid in the dirt, “but more useful alive than dead.”
Red opened her mouth to curse, to shout for Eammon. But Solmir pulled her over the border, and every fiber, every nerve exploded in burning, all-consuming pain. All thought of anything else washed from her mind in the flare, her scream reverberating through the Wilderwood.
The trees bowed in mourning.