For the Wolf by Hannah F. Whitten

Chapter Thirty-Four

The Wilderwood was no longer a forest. It had uprooted itself, taken a different form. Its boundaries were the boundaries of Eammon’s body, wreathed in thorn and vine. Eammon was gone, and the Wilderwood stood in the shape of a man in his place.

When he ran toward Solmir, the earth shook.

Red crouched, no longer pressed down by cold magic, sorrow and horror drying her mouth. The forest-god still looked like Eammon, still had his angular face and dark hair. But the way he moved was alien, fog shifting through branches, leaves twisting in wind. He was golden light to Solmir’s shadow, and both were terrible.

Eammon— what had been Eammon but wasn’t anymore and, Kings, she was going to lose it— cracked his fist into Solmir’s jaw. Bark and leaves burst from the contact, Solmir’s head snapping sideways even as a sharp, exulting grin curved his lips.

“You could’ve had such a peaceful death.” Solmir wiped blood from his mouth with the back of a shadow-gauntleted wrist. “Wolves die easier than gods do.”

Lyra stood at the edge of the forest, eyes wide and disbelieving. Then, snarling, she rushed forward and snatched her tor from the ground, no longer held back by the border of a Wilderwood that wasn’t there. Fife followed her with no hesitation. Trees still stretched behind them, but they were different— the colors muted, the sky above star-strewn, the colors of night instead of twilight.

Just a forest, like any other forest. Everything that made it the Wilderwood was in Eammon now.

The bodies of the priestesses lay in white-robed, scarlet-stained huddles between the inverted sentinels in the twisted grove, their blood leaking onto the roots. Kiri was nowhere to be seen. Lear had roused, inching away from the trees with a gash in his forehead that dripped steadily into his eyes.

The gulf of shadow that ringed the grove grew wider and wider, darkness eddying into the air like smoke. The earth around it rumbled, the rattling of a locked door.

A door that would soon be forced open.

Eammon’s hands shot forward, and trunks erupted spear-sharp from the ground. They passed through Solmir like he was smoke, darkness curling away and curling back. Solmir’s fingers crooked, and shadows shackled around Eammon’s arm, twisting it behind his back. A roar, a sound like cracking branches, like a forest burning. When Eammon wrenched free of the shadow’s grip, dark burn marks scored his skin.

Despite the emptiness in her chest, the knowledge that every trace of the Wilderwood was gone from her, Red’s fingers still curled into claws. She shot up from the ground, stumbled toward the warring gods.

It wasn’t shadow that threw her back. It was a vine, blooming, wrapping her waist to set her gently but firmly down. Inhuman eyes she didn’t know peered at her, in a face she’d kissed. There was no recognition in them.

She stayed still on the ground, every breath feeling like a swallowed knife.

A slight form, rushing over the ground. Lyra, tor gripped in her fist and teeth glinting moonlight. The blade sliced through Solmir’s shadow-sheathed leg, a blow that should’ve left a stump, but his body dissipated and came together again. Sneering, he batted Lyra away, sending her flying. She landed next to Red and was still.

“Lyra!” Behind her, Fife screamed it full-throated. His dagger was in his hand as he turned to Solmir, dwarfed by his shadow-wreathed height.

“Fife, don’t!” Red crawled to Lyra, put shaking fingers against her neck. Her pulse was light but steady, her breath shallow but there. “It’s pointless!”

She could see in his snarl that he knew it, and also that he didn’t care. Solmir hurt Lyra, so he’d hurt Solmir, an easy equation. But it couldn’t be now. A strangled roar, and he sheathed his dagger, rushing over to where they lay.

Behind him, Eammon and Solmir raged on, oblivious, a cosmic battle in microcosm.

“She’s alive,” Red said as Fife stumbled forward, moving her hand on Lyra’s pulse so his could replace it. “She’s breathing.”

A sob of relief as he felt her heartbeat, his head bowing low enough for sandy-red curls to brush Lyra’s forehead. Made clumsy by fear, Fife pulled off his jacket to tuck it around her, like it could be a shield.

Then sat frozen, eyes glued to his now-bared forearm.

To what wasn’t there.

“The Mark.” He stopped, swallowed. Then, gently, he pushed up Lyra’s sleeve. Brown, unmarked skin where the Bargainer’s Mark had been, gilded in starlight and unblemished by roots.

His eyes met Red’s, wide with wonder and no small bit of fear.

A weight on her shoulders, a heavy regard that pricked the skin of her neck. Red looked over her shoulder, throat tight, knowing what she’d see.

Eammon—not Eammon— gazed at her with luminous green-and-amber eyes for half a second, almost puzzled. Then the heavy gaze went to Fife. One nod, perfunctory and business-like.

“Shit.” Fife’s hand closed around his forearm.

The forest-god turned back to his battle, the whole pause taking barely a breath. Jagged branches grew from his fingers, sweeping for Solmir’s face.

The dark giant Solmir had become didn’t try to dodge. The branches swept through him like he was shadow, and he coalesced back into form in their wake.

Shadow.

Red’s mind tripped over the thought, then latched. When she’d seen Arick outside the Shrine, Arick who was Solmir, there’d been no shadow on the ground behind him. And Kiri’s words in the dungeon—one the man, one the shadow.

Five priestesses lay dead, five lives to free five kings. Solmir, already half here, should be condensing into flesh, should be using the sacrifice to manifest fully in this world. But still he held on to the connection with Arick, staying the shadow as long as he fought Eammon.

As long as Solmir fought Eammon, Arick would stay the man.

Fife crouched between Lyra and the war between shadow and forest, hand on his dagger. When he spoke, it was with his characteristic bluntness. “I don’t know what your next move is. But I’m staying with Lyra.”

“I’d never ask you to do anything different.”

Still brusque, but with affection in it. “I know.”

Red knew what had to happen now. But it was a heavy weight in her middle, one she didn’t want to look at too closely. Not until it was clear there was no other choice.

The choice would have to be made quickly. Eammon couldn’t fight a shadow forever.

She pushed herself up on shaking legs. “I’m going to the grove.”

Fife met her eyes. Nodded.

Red took off running.

Lear met her at the edge of the sweeping shadows ringing the grove, swiping blood from his face. “Tried to stop them.” He waved his scarlet-streaked hand to the priestesses’ bodies, nearly hidden in writhing darkness. “Kept begging them to run. None of them listened, and the redhead knocked me a good one before I could try to pull them out.” The wound in his forehead dripped into his eyes; he wiped the blood away like it irritated more than pained him. “I didn’t go any farther before the shadows sprang up, but Raffe is still in there.”

“I have to go find him.” Even with all the Wilderwood spilled from her, the grove still felt repellent. Something that should never be under the sky. “I have to find my sister.”

Concern lit Lear’s eyes. “If she’s in there, I don’t know what exactly you’re going to find.”

“Me either.” Red swallowed. “But it’s our only chance of stopping this.”

Lear nodded. Then he inclined his head in a short bow. “Good luck, Lady Wolf.”

Before she could lose her nerve, Red ran forward, leapt over the furrow of growing shadow, and landed inelegantly next to the corpse of a priestess.

The grove was blanketed in silence, blocking out the roar of gods outside. The ground was dark but solid, even as it rumbled. Still, she could almost feel the fault lines forming beneath her feet, cracks something could seep through.

The sentinels bowed inward, ashamed. Red put her hand on a trunk like she could offer comfort. There were more of them than she realized, growing only inches from one another, the white of picked bones.

It gave Kiri plenty of places to hide.

The snap of a twig was Red’s only warning as the High Priestess lurched from behind an inverted sentinel, swiping wildly at Red with a bloodstained dagger. She ducked away, the slash catching only the fabric of her sleeve.

“Should’ve killed you before.” Kiri’s voice sounded ravaged, like she’d been screaming for hours. “Can’t do anything to stop it now.” Another wild swipe, weighed down by blood-soaked robes. “Our gods are coming, and you’ll—”

A hollow thunk, a hilt on her temple. Eyes rolling back, Kiri slumped to the ground.

Behind her, Raffe sheathed his dagger.

His fingernails were torn and bloody. The hilt of the dagger was pockmarked, chipped, like he’d slammed it repeatedly against a rock. “Took you long enough.”

Outside the grove, a muffled roar. He turned toward it with an arched brow, only mildly interested, then nodded at the body of the priestess near the edge of the trees. “How long do we have?”

“Not long. Eammon—” His name burned in her throat, made her swallow past a lump that felt bladed. “He’s keeping Solmir occupied, but he can’t for much longer.”

Another roar, another shudder of the ground, like it was the back of some slow-waking beast. Raffe nodded, then headed through the bone-like trees. Silently, Red followed.

The grove opened on a clearing with two things in the center. Arick, face caught somewhere between shame and resignation.

And a coffin.

It looked made of smoky glass, like shadows frozen in ice, but the figure inside was clear. Dark hair, closed eyes, face the same color as the bone-pale trees. At the edges of her body, veins ran black, and the threads of darkness continued past the bounds of her skin— down the stone sides of her grave-slab, down into the rotten ground with its twisted branch-roots churning through the earth.

Neve, tied to this inverse Wilderwood. The process of bringing the sentinels into the cavern had taken weeks, but with a willing sacrifice so close at hand— and unconscious— Kiri and her Order had grown a new grove in moments.

And anchored it within her sister.

A low, keening noise escaped Red’s throat. Next to the coffin, Arick’s eyes squeezed shut.

“I can’t move it.” Raffe’s voice was flat and emotionless, all feeling wrung out. “I pushed, but I was afraid I might hurt her.” His voice didn’t break, not exactly, but it wavered on a thin thread.

The bottom of Neve’s coffin— a coffin and Neve in it, her mind couldn’t fit the words together— looked fused to the ground, grown from the thatching white branches cutting through the rotten earth. Slowly, with the same fear Raffe had, Red stepped forward, making sure not to step on any of the dark lines connecting her sister to the grove. This close, she could see the shadow running through them, beating like a pulse.

Nausea churning her stomach, Red knelt, touched her fingers to one of those black veins.

Darkness behind her eyes, like her vision had been ripped away. A nightmare blur of images— a wide gray sea, something beneath it flashing innumerable teeth. A huge, scaled carcass, the size of a mountain and just as still. Wrong-shaped skulls in carrion piles. A thin, bony figure, a rotting floral wreath on its head, chained to a rock. Four monolithic men on monolithic thrones, shrouded in white, crowned in iron spikes. Next to them, a fifth throne, empty.

Red jerked her hand away, breathing hard, sweat on her brow. In her coffin, Neve didn’t stir.

“He promised.” Her teeth wanted to shred the words; her nails bit into her palms as she stood on unsteady feet. “He promised she would be safe.”

“She’s alive.” Raffe said it like he’d been repeating it to himself over and over. “She’s. . . . she’s like this, but she’s alive.”

Outside the grove, another roar ripped through the quiet. Soon Solmir would tire of being the shadow to Arick’s flesh, even if it gave him an advantage against Eammon. Soon he would let himself be made whole by the priestesses’ sacrifice, and the rest of the Kings would come to join him.

And the Wilderwood— Eammon— would die.

It was time for choices. She could see only one.

“Arick.” Her voice was hoarse.

At his name, Arick’s eyes closed tighter. “I’m so sorry,” he said quietly. “We were all just trying to save you.”

“Come here.” Tears choked her. “Come here, please.”

A pause, then a lurch as he moved over the darkened ground.

Red fought to keep herself steady against her childhood love’s broken stance and the sure knowledge of things vast and terrible stirring beneath her feet.

She reached up when he came close enough to touch, gently laid her fingers on his bloodied face. “I know you didn’t mean for this to happen.”

“No. But I didn’t care what was going to happen, not then.” There was shame in it, just barely. “I only wanted you safe.”

Red’s lips pressed white. All of them loved like burning, no thought for the ashes.

“I am safe.” Her hand left his face, fell to her dagger. She tried not to think on it, tried to let her body work without her mind’s direction. “I love Eammon, and he loves me. That’s safe.”

Another roar ripped through the grove. “Do you love what he’s become?”

“We’ve both been monsters,” Red whispered. “I’ll love him, whatever he is.”

“You loved me once. You never said it, but you did.” Arick’s dry throat worked a swallow, eyes still pressed shut. “Didn’t you?”

“I did.” It was barely a whisper, this gentle thing that existed beyond truth and lie. Her fingers closed around the dagger hilt. “Not the way you wanted me to. But I did.”

His eyes opened. “Do it quick, then.”

Near Neve’s coffin, Raffe was silent. When Red looked at him, his eyes shone, but his mouth was a tight line.

Arick bowed his head, and after a moment, he knelt before her. She wanted to grab his shoulders, force him up, but she stood frozen, her hand on her dagger and him like a supplicant at an altar.

“Blood to open,” Arick murmured, a last rite. “Blood to close. My blood brought Solmir here. My blood inverted the Wilderwood. A living sacrifice.” His eyes rose to hers, and the peace in them, the relief, was somehow worse than fear would’ve been. “This only ends when the sacrifice is no longer living.”

Her fingers trembled, sweat-slicked and sliding off the hilt. She’d known this was the answer. But now, when she could see his eyes . . . “I can’t.”

“I tried to do it myself, in the dungeon. It never worked. I can’t do it alone.” Gently, Arick reached out, closed his hand over hers. Together, they drew the dagger. He settled the blade against his throat. “You have to do it, Red. Let me save you this time.”

Tears slipped down her cheeks. The earth beneath her rumbled as she knelt, too, putting them level.

Arick pressed his lips to hers. She let him. “Find a way to get him back,” he muttered against her mouth. “You deserve to be loved, Red. You always did.”

His hand dropped, pleading in his eyes.

Red kissed his forehead, squeezed her eyes shut. She held the dagger still, but she felt Arick push himself forward, heard the soft sigh and felt the warm blood as it dripped, then sheeted. When he dropped to the ground, she dropped with him, forced her eyes open so she could see his.

He raised a hand. Tucked her hair behind her ear, just like he used to do before, when they lay like this. Then a light went out, and his mouth slackened, and he was still.

Red heaved one, racking sob.

The shadows at the edge of the grove paused. The roaring outside went silent.

On her grave-slab, beneath the shadowy glass of her coffin, Neve pulled in a ragged gasp.

Red shot up at the sound, sodden with Arick’s blood, rushing to Raffe’s side. Raffe used his dagger hilt, but Red just used her fists, punching at the glass, not stopping even when she felt her knuckle split, the crack of something fracturing beneath her skin.

But the glass held, and below it, Neve’s eyes opened.

She looked at Raffe. Then she looked at Red. Her face was expressionless, someone who didn’t know if they were awake or asleep.

“Neve.” It rasped from Red’s throat. She lashed out at the glass again, leaving a bloody streak. “Neve!”

Neve didn’t respond. Slowly, dream-like, her gaze turned to her arms, to the black lines emanating from her like external veins. If they horrified her, she didn’t show it, expression curious as her opposite hand reached out, brushed over one of them. It pulsed at her touch, and she shivered, like it was cold.

A moment, stretching long. Neve’s hand fell. She closed her eyes. Then, lip pulling up in something like a snarl, she closed her fists.

The dark veins shuddered. With a sound like a nest of vipers, they . . . retracted, pulling out of the grove and back into Neve. The air hummed as Neve reclaimed the magic that had been spooled out of her, the darkness that had used her like a seed. It flowed into her like a tide of shadows, swirling over her skin. A sound at the edge of Red’s hearing, almost like a sigh.

And the grove ripped.

The twisted sentinels crashed sideways, breaking and melting as the ground opened up. Red scrabbled against the sides of Neve’s coffin, trying vainly to shove it out of the collapsing grove. Raffe pushed with her, but neither of them could make it budge. The coffin sank into the dark-churned earth like it was quicksand.

Red screamed. Outside the grove, she heard an echoing bellow, one of tree and leaf and thorn.

“Red!” Raffe grabbed her hand, hauled her away from the rapidly growing hole. “Red, we have to get out of here!”

“We can’t leave her!”

“We don’t have a choice!”

The earth ate at the sides of Neve’s coffin, covered it in dirt and dark. One glimpse of a gray-scale world with a shadow-eaten horizon, and she was gone.

Raffe hauled her away, beyond the ring of churning dirt, like a hurricane burrowing into the earth. The only solid ground left in what had been the grove was where Arick’s body lay. Now that body was twitching, changing, becoming something different.

The flesh and the shadow, brought together again. She was almost sorry when the body finally looked like Solmir, alive, because it meant she’d have nothing to bury.

“You don’t understand!” he screamed, wild eyes finding Red’s. “You don’t understand, they’re still—”

A shadow curled around his throat and into his mouth, gagging him, the grave he’d escaped from eating him alive.

A shuddering boom, a spray of dust and rock, and the grove was gone. The door was closed.

With Neve on the wrong side.