For the Wolf by Hannah F. Whitten

Chapter Five

He didn’t stand, peering at her down a hawkish nose that had been broken and haphazardly mended, probably more than once. His hand, large and thatched with thin scars against white skin, dropped his pen and ran through his hair, black and overlong, waving messily against his collarbones. He’d half turned in his chair to look at her, carving out the line of his profile in lamplight— the cut of his jaw was severe, and there were tired lines around his eyes, but he didn’t look much older than her. Past his twentieth year, but not his thirtieth.

There was nothing in his form that carried monstrousness, but still that intangible sense of . . . of other, of a human frame that didn’t house a wholly human thing. His proportions were just out of the realm of normal— too tall, too solid, shadows around him darker than they should be. He could pass as a human on first glance, but it was a mistake you’d make only once. The Mark on her arm thrummed when his gaze met hers.

Red swallowed against a bone-dry throat. Her mouth worked, but no sound came out.

The Wolf raised an eyebrow. Dark circles bruised the skin beneath narrow, amber-colored eyes. “I’ll take your silence as a yes.” The scarred hand on his knee tremored slightly as he turned away from her, picked up his pen, and resumed his scribbling.

Red didn’t realize her mouth hung open until she snapped it shut, teeth clicking together. The tale of the Wolf bringing Gaya’s body to the edge of the forest detailed only how she looked, making no mention of his own appearance. Everyone knew the Wilderwood had made him different, something not quite human, though no one knew the specifics. But the Wolf’s story was one of mythic beasts, and as it was told through the centuries, he became one, too.

These scarred hands, this overlong hair, this face too hard-edged to be handsome— she’d thought she was prepared for anything, but she wasn’t prepared for this. The Wolf was a man before he was a monster, and the figure before her didn’t fit neatly into either category.

“You’re welcome to stay in the library,” the Wolf said, turning back around in his chair with welcome nowhere to be found in his tone, “but I’d prefer it if you didn’t lurk behind me while I’m working.”

The dream-like unreality of seeing the Wolf and the Wolf looking mostly like a man made her tongue loose, made her latch onto the only part of this that might still align with what she’d been told. “Will you let the Kings go now?”

Thatmade him face her. His eyes flickered over her leaf-tangled hair, her shredded skirts. They paused a moment on the slice across her cheekbone, briefly widened.

Red had nearly forgotten it. She reached up, touched the cut. Her fingertips slicked— still bleeding, then.

His assessment ended, the Wolf turned back to his work. “The Kings aren’t here.”

It was the answer she’d expected, faithless as she was. Still, it landed like a punch, and the sigh she pulled in shook a little.

His shoulders stiffened. He’d heard. The Wolf eyed her over his shoulder, angular face shadowed. “They’re still on about that, then? The . . . the Order, was it?”

“The Order of the Five Kings.” The answer came mechanically. Red felt like a child’s toy, wound up and set spinning with no clear direction. “And yes.”

“Subtle.” One scarred hand ran over his face. “Sorry to disappoint you, Second Daughter, but the Kings are gone. They aren’t something you’d want returned, anyway.”

“Oh.” She couldn’t summon anything more.

The Wolf sighed. “Well. You came. Your part in this is fulfilled.”

He gestured toward the door. “I’ll count us even. I’ll get someone to lead you out, and you can go back the way you—”

“No, I can’t.” She could’ve laughed at the ridiculousness of it, if her throat hadn’t felt like she’d swallowed a forest’s worth of splinters. “I came to you, and we can’t leave after we come to you. This is it. I have to stay.”

His hand froze, surprise on his rough-featured face. “You don’t,” he said quietly, with a vehemence that would’ve startled her had she still felt capable of being startled. “You truly don’t.”

“Those are the rules.” Her mouth felt like it was moving of its own accord, her head clamorous though her words came matter-of-fact. “Once we come to you, we can’t leave. The forest won’t let us.”

The Wolf’s fingers gripped the back of his chair, hard enough that Red absently thought it might snap. “The forest will let you leave if I make it.” Nearly a growl.

Red clutched the ragged edges of her torn cloak. “I’m staying.”

Something almost fearful flashed in his eyes. “Fine, then.” He faced away from her again, muttering a curse. “Shadows damn me.”

“This doesn’t make sense.” Another swallow, like working her throat might free up words from the maelstrom in her head. “If you don’t want me here, if you were just going to send me back, why did you demand we come in the first—”

“I’ll stop you right there.” The Wolf stood, unfolding from his chair with his pen held like a dagger. He loomed a head and a half taller than her, broad-shouldered and knife-eyed. “I didn’t demand anything.”

“Yes, you did. You brought Gaya to the edge of the forest, you told them to send the next one, you—”

“None of that was me.” He advanced a step, voice matching hers in intensity. “Whatever you think you know is clearly wrong.”

He spat the word as he stalked toward her, and the dark shadow of the Wolf and the flash of his teeth were enough to finally send fear spearing through the numb fugue her mind had become. Red crossed her arms over her chest, hunched into them like she could make herself smaller.

The Wolf paused, stepping back with his hand half raised in something like surrender. Anger bled out of his face, another emotion flickering there. Guilt.

“I . . .” He looked away, ran a tired hand over his face. Sighed. “I had no more part in this arrangement than you did, Second Daughter.”

Confusion made a snare of her thoughts, tangled as roots in dirt. Again, she found herself latching onto the simplest pieces, the things she could understand and fix in the face of all she couldn’t. “My name isn’t Second Daughter. It’s Redarys.”

“Redarys.” It sounded strange in his mouth. Soft, somehow fragile.

“And you’re Ci—”

“Eammon.” He turned, dropping back into his chair.

Red’s brow creased. “Eammon?”

Scarred fingers picked up his pen, his tone now clipped and business-like, all that vulnerability gone in an instant. “Ciaran and Gaya were my parents.”

Silence. Red shook her head, mouth forming words that broke apart before they became sentences. “So you . . . you didn’t . . .”

“No.” Expressionless, though tension carved the curve of his shoulders beneath his plain, dark shirt. “No, I didn’t bring my mother’s body to the edge of the Wilderwood. No, I didn’t tell anyone to send the next Second Daughter.” A long, deep breath, rattling in and out of his lungs. “Neither one of us really had a choice here. Other than you choosing, vehemently, to stay.”

His tone wanted an explanation for that, but Red didn’t know how to give him one. She said nothing.

The Wolf shifted, sitting with his legs stretched out beneath the desk and his back slumped against the chair back, arms crossed and face still turned away. “They sent you off with the usual fanfare, I see,” he said, deftly changing the subject. “With that damn red cloak.”

She twitched at the fabric, now muddy and torn. “Scarlet for a sacrifice.”

The reminder made the air feel weighted. A beat, then the Wolf waved a hand. “Leave it in the hallway, and one of us will burn—”

“No.” It came out sharp, a word made a weapon.

He glanced at her over his shoulder, a line drawn between dark, heavy brows.

Red pulled the edges of the cloak closer, like she could still feel Neve in it somewhere. Neve helping her dress, Neve finally letting her go. “I want to keep it.”

The line between his brows deepened, but the Wolf nodded. When he spoke again, it was careful, quiet. “How long has it been since the last . . . the last one came?”

“A century.” She crossed her arms against a sudden shiver. “A century since Merra.”

A muscle in his back jumped. He looked down at his hands, the scars standing out against his skin, and slowly closed them to fists. “Damn.”

Red wanted to respond, but nothing came. The fire had bled from them both. Now there was only this strange, mutual exhaustion.

The Wolf—Eammon— gave his head one firm shake. “If you insist on staying, don’t go outside the gate. The forest isn’t safe for you.” Then he turned back to his work, ignoring her completely, and Red knew she’d been dismissed.

With no idea what else to do, Red drifted back into the library stacks.

Her thoughts were too scattered to organize. In all her darkest imaginings about what might happen when she entered the Wilderwood, she never expected . . . this. A Wolf who wasn’t the figure from the legends, but his son. A Wolf who didn’t want his sacrifice, who tried to send her back. What bitter irony, that he and Neve seemed to be in accord.

But Red belonged here. The magic that made her taste dirt and turned her veins green made it clear, the magic that could wreak such destruction if she didn’t keep it contained, and she was so tired of being afraid.

It wasn’t your fault. Neve had said it the night of the ball, said it countless times before. But it had been Red’s half-drunk and half-mad idea to steal the horses and run for the Wilderwood, to scream at the trees and see if they screamed back. And when the thieves came with their knives and their bladed smiles, when her hands were still bloody and the shard of the Wilderwood’s power was newly curled around her bones, Red had—

She clenched her fists tight, scoring half-moons into her palms until the pain covered the memories, faded them to specters. She was dangerous. Even if Neve didn’t remember.

And if she wanted to keep her sister safe, Red had to stay here. Whether the Wolf wanted her or not.

The warm familiarity of the bookshelves kept her together, knit her back into herself as she wandered between them. She hoped there might be novels, something other than the dry tomes she’d seen earlier. One volume looked promising, Legends gilt-inscribed on the spine. Red didn’t think of the still-bleeding slice on her cheek when she reached to pull it down, and her bloodied fingers smudged the canvas. “Oh, Kings.”

Eammon rounded the corner, books stacked in his arms. He glanced at the blood-smeared cover before his eyes darted back to the cut across her cheekbone. A moment of that same close scrutiny he’d given it before, then he placed his stack of books on the ground. “What happened there?” Something wary lurked in his tone, like the question had a right and a wrong answer.

“A thorn,” she said. “It’s not deep, I just . . . they were around one of those white trees . . .”

He still crouched from where he’d set his books down, and now his hands curled almost like claws. It would’ve frightened her were it not for that glint of alarm in his eyes. “The white trees?” His voice was quiet, but there was an urgency to it. “Did you bleed on it?”

“Kind of, but it wasn’t on purpose and there wasn’t much—”

“I need you to tell me exactly what happened, Redarys.”

“It’s just a scratch.” She wiped her bloody fingers on her cloak, discomfited by his worry and his sternness. “A thorn got my cheek, and the white tree . . . absorbed it, somehow . . .”

Every line in his body tensed.

“And it chased me here. The Wilderwood did, I mean.” To say it aloud sounded ridiculous. Red’s cheeks heated, making the cut seep anew.

The Wolf stood then, slowly reaching his full height and covering her in his shadow. When he spoke, his tone was measured, belying all that worry in his gaze. “Is that all?”

“Yes. All it did was chase me.” Incredulity sharpened her answer. “If that wasn’t supposed to happen, perhaps you should keep better control of your damn trees.”

Eammon’s brow arched, but relief was in his suddenly slackened shoulders. “My apologies.” He held out his hand, tentatively gesturing to her cheek. “Allow me to make it up to you.”

Red eyed his hand, lip between her teeth. Something about it looked . . . familiar, almost. It pricked at the back of her mind but wouldn’t commit to the solid form of a memory.

She nodded.

His skin was warm. The crosshatched scars on his fingers were rough against her cheek as the Wolf laid his forefinger carefully along the cut. His eyes closed.

Something stirred in the air between them, a gust of warmth, scented with leaves and loam. Red’s vision bloomed golden, the Mark on her arm thrumming again. In her center, the splinter of her magic teased open, a flower feeling spring on winter’s sharpened edge.

A fraction of a second, then the sting of the cut was gone. Red didn’t realize she’d closed her eyes until she opened them again.

There, on the Wolf’s cheekbone, a wound the mirror image of hers. She lifted her fingers disbelievingly to her face. Still tacky with blood, but the skin was whole.

The Wolf knelt quickly, ducking his head to gather his books again, but not quite fast enough to hide his eyes. The whites of them were threaded with green, a verdant corona blooming around the amber-brown irises.

“The benefits of being bound to the Wilderwood are few.” Books in hand, Eammon rose, turning to stride back into the stacks. He seemed taller than before, quite the feat when his previous height was already considerable. There was a strange quality to his voice, too— a slight echo, a resonance that reminded her of leaves caught in the wind. “That’s one of them.”

For a moment Red stood still, fingers resting against her unmarked skin. Then she started after him. Thank you hovered in the back of her throat, but something about the set of his shoulders said he neither needed nor wanted it.

“The rules here are simple.” Eammon shoved a book into its place on the shelf. “The first: Don’t go beyond the gate.”

The odd, echoing quality was gone from his voice now— the Wolf sounded only gruff and tired, with no echo of falling leaves.

“Easily done,” Red muttered. “Your forest is less than hospitable.”

His frown deepened at that. “Second rule.” Another book slammed home. “The Wilderwood wants blood, especially yours. Don’t bleed where the trees can taste it, or they’ll come for you.”

Her fingers curled, still copper-scented with blood. “Is that what happened to Gaya and the other Second Daughters?”

The Wolf froze, another book halfway pushed into place, expression stricken. It took Red a moment for her mind to catch up with what she’d said, and when it did, she wanted to sink into the floor. Reminding him of his mother’s death. What a wonderful way to start their cohabitation.

But Eammon recovered without comment, though he pushed the book the rest of the way onto the shelf with perhaps more force than necessary. “More or less, yes.”

Arms now emptied, Eammon stalked to the library door. When he reached it, he turned, peering at her down his crooked nose. “Third rule.” The new cut on his face leaked too-dark blood, deep crimson with a thread of green that looked almost like a root tendril, but his eyes were normal again, no longer haloed emerald. “Stay out of my way.”

Red tightened her crossed arms over her chest like they could be a shield. “Understood.”

“There’s a room you can use in the corridor.” Eammon pushed open the door and gestured her out. “Welcome to the Black Keep, Redarys.”

The door shut behind her, and Red was alone.

It wasn’t until she sank onto the bottom step that she realized where she’d seen his hands, why their shape and scarring looked so familiar.

The night of her sixteenth birthday, when Red had cut her hand on a rock and accidentally bled in the forest— when the Wilderwood splintered its damning magic into her bloodstream by way of her cut palm— she’d seen something, painted on the canvas of her closed eyes. A vision. Hands that weren’t her own, large and scarred and thrust into the dirt, just as hers were. A sense of rushing, blinding fear that mirrored hers but wasn’t hers.

It was only a panicked flash, vague and unclear, shrouded in branch-shaped shadows. Up until this moment, she’d almost thought she’d imagined it. But now . . .

Now she’d seen them in the flesh. Now she knew whom those hands belonged to, and knew no part of that night had been imagined.

The hands she’d seen were the Wolf’s.