For the Wolf Hannah Whitten (desktop ebook reader .TXT) 📖

he’d started. “So pale against the rest, like bone.” The hand Kiri had cut flexed open convulsively. The deep puncture wound in his palm blazed lurid scarlet, a black spot of rot blooming in its center, sending sickened tendrils through his skin. “I bled on it. Living sacrifice. Just like she told me.”

Kiri smiled.

“And it . . . opened.” Even now, Arick sounded horrified, like he couldn’t believe what he’d done. “The branch reared back, like . . . like something alive, like a startled horse. There was this sound, this awful tearing sound, and a boom. And then he was there, standing right at the edge of the trees, shadows curled around him like chains. And he asked what I wanted, and what I would give for it.”

“What did you want?” She knew. She asked anyway.

Arick didn’t answer, but his head bowed lower.

“He wanted a way to save you.” Solmir said it like it bored him. “And he said he would give everything.”

Oh, Arick. Arick, telling her he loved her over and over, even when she never said it back. Arick, building a castle in the air where they could have a happy ending, mortaring it with blood and empty promises.

“At first he was just my shadow.” Arick recounted the tale to the damp floor, like looking at Red hurt. “But then . . . when things . . .”

“He couldn’t stomach it.” Kiri swirled the cup of his blood under her nose like wine, breathing deep. “He couldn’t handle when we realized they needed killing, the High Priestess and the Queen. So they changed places. One the shadow, one the man.”

“I’ll have you remember that you were the only one who decided they needed killing,” Solmir murmured. “But once it happened, Arick wanted . . . distance from the situation.”

Red could taste her heartbeat. Her stomach twisted on itself. “How could you?” It was a breath of sound, a wound in the air. “How could you do that to Neve?”

“It was for Neve.” Solmir pushed off the wall, mouth a snarl. “Kiri may have overstepped, but this is what Neve wanted, whether she’ll admit it or not. She was just as desperate to save you as Arick was. She would do anything for you, Redarys. You don’t deserve a tenth of her love.”

Red lunged at the bars, her unbroken hand smacking against the metal. She recognized the warmth in his voice, the shape of things it didn’t say. “If you touched her,” she rasped, “I’ll kill you.”

Solmir watched her with unreadable eyes. His hands turned to fists, then relaxed. “I didn’t,” he said, quiet enough to mask whatever emotion lived in it.

Behind him, Arick pulled in a shaking breath. “We just wanted to save you.” His eyes rose, bruised and dark. “Especially once we learned what was coming. We just wanted to save you, Red.”

“You can calm down the groveling, then.” Now composed, Solmir propped his foot against the wall again. “Redarys saved herself.”

Her teeth ground together. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The roots.” Solmir rolled his eyes. “You haven’t taken them, though it’s clear you care for the Wolf. You’re a practical woman, apparently. You’ve learned love isn’t reason enough for ruin. You chose to save yourself.”

Choice.

She thought of the Wilderwood in the cavern, that awareness that it needed more from her, something it would no longer deign to take. She thought of Eammon, straining under the weight of the sentinels as they came for her again and again, trying to finish something started long ago. She thought of bones at the base of a tree, testaments to all the Second Daughters who came before, drained by a desperate forest that hadn’t yet learned its lesson. Hadn’t yet learned that something taken would only wither, while something given might grow.

She thought of roots.

Solmir’s lip curled. “The Wilderwood will fall. The Wolf will die. The Kings will be freed.” He shrugged, eyes narrowed, voice rueful. “And everyone will get what they wanted.”

Understanding came like the sudden bloom of a night flower, unfurling all at once in new light.

A choice had to be made, and here was hers.

“I’ll take them,” Red breathed.

Three pairs of eyes shot to her, confusion in each gaze, but Red paid no attention. Mustering up all her focus, all her will, she pulled at the thin thread of deep-green power in her center, made it bloom despite the deadening walls. It felt like it might kill her, every tug of blood through her veins a challenge, but still she pulled.

Red took a deep breath and pressed the edge of her sliced palm to the bone of her hip, pushing until the cut split farther and fresh blood seeped from her skin. With a pained gasp, she slapped her bloody hand to the floor of her cell.

Bleeding, and hoping with everything in her the trees could taste it.

“I want the roots,” she said, voice bell-clear and carrying. “I understand what it means, and I want them anyway, because I am for the Wolf, and the Wolves are for the Wilderwood.”

For a breath, the four of them froze in suspended silence. Then— a roar, a rush, as if a million stones overturned at once, as if something sped under the ground like some great beast flashing beneath the surface of the sea.

Roots, rushing from the north to flow into her waiting wound.

The floor cracked as the roots of the Wilderwood thrust up toward her hand, miles traveled in an instant at the call of her blood. The first press of it against the slice in her skin stung, but after that, the way the roots seeped in and curled around her bones felt like home.

The Wilderwood had finally learned, that night when Eammon almost lost himself to it. A Mark and words on a tree and invaded blood wouldn’t sustain it anymore. It needed her to choose it.

To choose him.

And she had been, by slow increments, ever since she met him. Choosing the black curl