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

let him help her up, though her brow stayed furrowed. Arick’s green eyes searched hers, lips twisted. Then he pressed a quick kiss to her forehead.

“I’ll be back soon,” he whispered. “I’ll find a way to save her, Neve.” He slipped out of the flowered trees.

Neve stood beneath the boughs for a long time, skin tingling where his lips had brushed. A slow, vague guilt closed crushing hands around her throat, like she’d unknowingly passed down some kind of sentencing.

But Red was alive. And they had to find a way to save her.

Chapter Nine

T he unchanging light made it impossible to know how much time had passed when Red woke, head fuzzy and aching. For a moment, she didn’t remember where she was. When she did, it only made the aching worse.

She sat up, middle twisting. In the chaos of the night before, she’d completely forgotten to ask about food. Now her empty stomach gnawed at her spine.

Eammon’s coat hung on the hook inside the door, thorn-slashed and muddy. Red peered at it with her lip between her teeth, then threw a wary glance at the vines pressing against the window. For now, at least, they were still.

The water in her tub was clean, but still freezing. She washed quickly, pulled on a gown— midnight blue this time— and stood in the center of her room, somewhat at a loss for what to do now.

Here was her new life, as vast and dark and featureless as the forest that held it.

No. Red shook her head. She couldn’t fall into despondency now, not when she’d lived in spite of every expectation. This new life might be strange, but she had it, and that was a miracle in itself.

She hadn’t run away, despite all of Neve’s begging. But she’d lived anyway. And she owed it to her sister to make something of that.

Another rumble of her stomach pulled her mind away from the shapeless stretch of a day she’d never expected to see. “Food,” she declared. Brows set in determination, Red wrenched open the door.

A tray sat on the mossy floor past her threshold. The toast was burnt, slathered liberally with butter, next to a mug of black coffee. Both were hot, but whoever— or whatever— had brought them was long gone. Nothing moved in the main hall but drifting dust, and the leaves at the corridor’s end didn’t stir.

Red was too hungry to care about where breakfast came from. She sat with her back against the mossy wall and ate the toast in three bites. The almost-ash crust tasted better than anything she’d ever eaten in Valleyda.

The coffee was strong, and Red sipped it slowly, wondering if whoever brought the food would return. Probably one of the other voices she’d heard talking to Eammon last night. She had a hard time imagining the Wolf cooking.

The wreckage at the end of the corridor looked different. Yesterday there’d been only flowering bushes and moss, broken rocks and roots. Now one thin, pin-straight sapling rose from the tangle, reaching almost to the ceiling.

Coffee sloshed over the lip of Red’s mug as she scrambled up, burning her fingers. The sapling stood tall and still, with no sign of shadowy corruption on its bark. Not like the tree last night, rotted and listing in a pool of spongy dark ground.

What was it Eammon said? Something about how if one of the white trees in the forest—sentinel trees, she remembered now, he’d called them sentinel trees— was infected badly enough with rot, it would leave its place, show up in the Keep?

The sentinel stood silent, thin and pale as a specter in the gloom. Not where it was supposed to be, but not an immediate threat, either. Still, the memory of them opening trunks to bare wood-shard teeth was fresh, and Red kept a wary eye on it as she rolled her now-empty mug between her hands and backed down the hall.

The foyer stood echoing and empty, dust motes dancing in seams of twilight beneath the cracked window. Other than the dust, Red was alone.

Then the door opened.

She crouched like she’d hide herself in the mossy remnants of carpet as the weathered wood swung wide, weak lavender light outlining a slight, feminine form with a cloud of curls and a curved blade in her hand. Something dripped off its sharpened edge, a mix of sap and what looked like blood.

The woman stopped, narrowing dark eyes in a brown-skinned, delicately featured face. “Redarys?”

The musical voice from last night, the one she’d heard speaking to Eammon. Apparently from a human throat. Sheepishly, Red straightened, cheeks coloring. “I . . . ah . . .” she stuttered, hands waving uselessly, halfway to a curtsy before she realized that was probably ludicrous. “Yes. That’s me.”

The other woman snorted, but she cracked the corner of a bright smile. “I figured the chances were good. I’m Lyra.” She stepped farther into the foyer, pulling a cloth from a small leather bag at her waist and scrubbing it along the bloody edge of the blade as the door closed behind her. Without the glare, the blood on her clothing was obvious, her white shirt and dark leggings nearly covered with still-wet copper, tendrils of shadowy rot, and tar-like sap.

Red made an involuntary gulping sound. “Are you all right? Kings, how are you walking?”

Lyra looked confused for a moment, then followed Red’s gaze. “Oh, that. Don’t worry, Eammon is the only one who slices himself up on the spot— he’s the Wolf, all tangled up in the Wilderwood, so it likes his blood straight from the vein. It isn’t as picky about the rest of us.” Lyra tugged a small vial from her pocket. Deep-scarlet liquid sloshed as she wiggled it in the air. “I used at least five of these,” she said, like it was an explanation of some kind. “Lots of shadow-creatures out today. I needed to come back and replenish my supply.” She grimaced, starting toward the