“It’s horseshit, Raffe. If the monsters were real, we would’ve seen them that night.”
No need to clarify which night. The night of rocks and matches and a Wilderwood impervious to both. The night of the men that followed them, that were horribly slain by . . . by something.
Neve didn’t actually remember most of it, after the thieves arrived. She’d passed out when one of them hit her in the temple with a dagger hilt, and hadn’t woken up until they were back in the capital and under heavy guard.
But Red remembered. And Red thought it was her fault.
Guilt iced her spine, guilt and cold certainty. Whatever had happened, whatever Neve couldn’t remember, was part of what drove her sister into the Wilderwood.
“It was for nothing,” she repeated softly.
This time, Raffe had no response.
Neve walked down the path, trailing her fingers over the blooming hedges, letting the points of sharp leaves catch her skin. One pricked hard enough to bring a bead of blood to her fingertip.
Behind her, a sigh. Raffe’s footsteps echoed on the stone as he walked away.
She closed her eyes against early-summer sun, the light illuminating veins and capillaries, making her vision look veiled in blood.
“What about a bargain?” The voice was hushed and hoarse, like the speaker hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in a week. There was something familiar in it, but it was too quiet to be sure.
The voice came from beside her, hidden in a bower of wide pink blooms— clearly, this conversation wasn’t meant to be overheard.
But Neve didn’t move.
“Impossible.” This second voice was brusque, vowels clipped and precise. Also familiar. “The Wilderwood has twisted, its power has grown weak. It will no longer accept paltry things like teeth and nail clippings. Not even blood, if it’s not from a fresh wound.”
There was something leading in the tone. As if meaning hid behind the words, things implied rather than spoken.
That tone locked the familiarity into place. The red-haired priestess.
“No,” the priestess continued. “A dead sacrifice will no longer do. It would require more, if it could be accomplished at all, a heavier price both in the bargaining and in the aftermath. Our prayers have told us so.” A pause, then, cadenced like a litany: “Blood that has been used in bargains with things beneath is blood that can open doors.”
Neve’s brow furrowed, but the other voice sounded too distraught to try to puzzle out the cryptic nonsense. “There has to be a way.”
“If there is, dear boy,” the priestess murmured, “you must be prepared to give, and keep giving.” A pause. “The Kings take much, but they give much in return. Serving them brings opportunity to your door. I know.”
A rustle as someone stood from the bench hidden in the blooms. Cursing silently, Neve spun away, tried to make it seem like she’d been absorbed in examining a flower bed on the other side of the path.
From the corner of her eye, a flash of white. “Do come to me with any further questions,” the priestess said. “Our prayers this morning, after our less dedicated sisters left, proved most . . . insightful.”
A disheveled-looking boy stepped out from behind her. “I will. Thank you, Kiri.”
Neve froze, fingers on a wide yellow bloom.
Arick.
The priestess— Kiri, she finally knew her name now— looked once at Neve. Her smile was cold as she dipped a nod and glided back toward the castle.
If he was surprised by her presence, he didn’t show it. Arick ran a hand through hair that looked like it hadn’t been combed in a week. “Neve.”
“Arick.” A stone-heavy second of quiet. “We’ve been worried about you.”
The worry was well earned, it seemed. His face was pale and drawn, hollows carved beneath his green eyes. He jerked his head toward the flowering trees and disappeared.
Neve cast a look around before ducking beneath the boughs, though it was ridiculous to fear being caught— he would be her Consort, after all. Cementing that sea route for Valleydan trade through Floriane.
A dull ache started in her temples.
Neve pushed aside pink blooms, revealing Arick already sitting on the bench beneath the arbor. The wan look of him, waxen skin and shadowed eyes, was incongruous against the backdrop of flowers.
He said nothing as she settled beside him, the bench so small she couldn’t help the press of their legs. They’d been easy friends before sixteen and betrothal, and even after, when Red was still here, a buffer between them and the inevitable future. Now she didn’t know how to act.
She shifted on the bench. “How are you?”
“Not well.”
“Me either.”
Silence bloomed around them. No words felt right. All she and Arick had in common was grief, and how could you build a conversation on that, much less a life?
“I tried.” Arick leaned forward, running both hands through his already-wild hair. “The night of the ball, I tried to get her to run.”
“We all tried. She wouldn’t listen.”
“There has to be a way to get her back.”
Neve chewed her lip, thinking back over the conversation she’d overheard. Thinking of who he’d been having it with, and of ruined shrines and bark shards. “Arick,” she said carefully, “I don’t want you to do anything foolish.”
“More foolish than running to the Wilderwood to throw rocks at the trees?” There was a ghost of levity in his voice.
She smiled to hear it, though it was a tired, faded thing. “I suppose I’m not one to talk.” In more ways than he knew.
Arick’s shoulders slumped, the momentary lightness gone as soon as it had come. “I’m going to find a way to bring her home.”
Neve glanced at him sidelong. She knew he loved Red. But she also knew Red didn’t love him and never had. She’d certainly cared for him, but her sister hadn’t wanted to shatter any more lives than she had to when she crossed into the trees. And though Arick’s feelings went deeper, he’d seemed to understand. Neve had expected his mourning, but she’d expected it to pass quickly. Arick was resilient.
“I know you thought I’d get over it,” Arick said, as if her thoughts were something he could see in the air above her head.
“That makes me sound cruel,” she murmured.
“I don’t mean it that way. I just mean . . .” A sigh. “Things have gone easily for me, Neve. Mostly because I’ve let them. I’ve never fought for anything, never taken a path that offered any great resistance, because I wanted things to be easy.” His teeth gnashed on the word. “But I can’t just let this go. If there’s anything worth fighting for, it’s her. And not even because I love her. Just because . . . because it isn’t right. She deserves a life, too.”
The sliver of hope in Neve’s chest was a splinter, small and mean and terribly bright, sharpening her grief to a razor-edge. She didn’t know how to articulate it, not with all the added complications of her and Arick and Raffe and the tangled threads connecting them, priestesses with strange necklaces and ruined white trees in a stone room.
“Good,” she replied, because it was the closest thing she could shape that barbed hope into.
He looked at her, nearly surprised, then relief softened the tendons in his neck. Like he’d been waiting for her benediction. “I’ll be gone for a while,” Arick said. “Didn’t want you to worry.”
“Back to Floriane?”
No answer. After a moment, Arick stood. He offered his hand.
Neve took it, 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 som
e 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 broken archway and the sunken room beyond. “Probably change clothes, too.”
Confusion replaced Red’s alarm, drawing her brows together. She followed Lyra into the room. “That’s your blood?”
“Of course.” Lyra shrugged. “Might be Fife’s, actually. We both have the Mark, so blood from either of us will work on a shadow-creature.” She pushed open the small door at the back of the room, revealing a tiny kitchen. “Our blood can hold saplings steady for a day or so and slightly help with rotting sentinels, too, but it won’t do shit for breaches.”
Weathered-looking wooden cabinets lined the back wall, with a small woodstove in the corner and a scuffed table. Lyra went to the cabinet nearest the stove and pulled it open. Inside, rows upon rows of glass vials, all filled with blood. Deep crimson with no trace of green, not like Eammon’s.
Red sank into one of the chairs at the table, her thoughts snaring, knotted as old thread. Last night, when Eammon fought the corpse-bone-forest-thing . . . shadow-creature, monster of legend, Kings, it’s all real . . . his blood had been what finally brought it down. Apparently, Lyra— and Fife, whoever that was, presumably the other voice she’d heard— could use their blood to fight shadow-creatures, too.
But when Red bled in the Wilderwood, it attacked her. Those white trees became predators. Was it because she was a Second Daughter, something about her blood and the bargain it was tangled with making the forest treat her differently?
And who were Fife and Lyra, anyway? The myths didn’t mention anyone else living in the Wilderwood.
“You said you have a Mark?” Her question interrupted the clink of vials as Lyra stuck handfuls of them in her bag.
“Anyone who’s bargained with the Wilderwood has one.” Lyra paused in her packing to push up her sleeve. There, in the same place as Red’s— a tiny ring of root, just beneath the skin. It was smaller than Red’s Mark, the tendrils not reaching quite so far, but unmistakably the same.
Lyra tugged her sleeve back down. “A tiny piece of the Wilderwood. That’s why my blood and Fife’s work against shadow-creatures— the power of the forest cancels out the power of the Shadowlands.”
“And the Wolf’s blood, too?”
“The Wolf’s blood, certainly.” A laugh, but rueful. Lyra grabbed one more vial, then closed the cabinet, clipping the bag to her belt as she moved toward the door. “Though his piece of the Wilderwood could never be called tiny.”
As strange as the idea of bleeding into vials was, there was comfort in it, relief. Eammon wanted her to learn to use the magic the forest had saddled her with, seemed to think that would keep the sentinel trees in check. But surely it wasn’t the only solution when magic and blood ran so congruently here. Her not bleeding where the trees could taste it was his first rule, but maybe it would be different if the blood came from a vial inste
ad of a vein.
And Red would rather bleed goblets full than try to use that damn magic.
“So is there a knife around?” she asked. “Something I can use to bleed into—”
“No.” Lyra spun away from the door, dark eyes narrowed. “I mean, I don’t . . . I’m not . . .” Lyra stopped, sighed. “Ask Eammon. He’ll know.” She pulled her shirt out from her middle, made a face. “I’ve really got to go change. I’ll see you around.”
Red watched her go, still slumped over the scuffed table. Again, that sense of untetheredness, of unreality, of not being sure what to do or how to move.
Books. The thought was a beacon, something to cling to. I brought books.
Too bad she’d left them in the library. Red didn’t know what hours Eammon kept— the unchanging twilight made night and day unclear— but it seemed safe to assume he’d be there.
Ask Eammon, Lyra had said. But Eammon would just talk about using magic again, turning that piece of the forest coiled around her bones toward her will.
A deep breath, squared shoulders. If he asked her about it, she’d tell him she hadn’t decided yet. She would find her books and retreat to her room and try to numb her mind for a few hours before she had to think about any of this again.
The wood-shard candles in the library were all lit with their strange, flickerless flames, illuminating the stacks in strobing light and shadow. Red closed the door behind her as soundlessly as possible. The same mug perched on the same stack of books near the door, empty this time. She eyed it for a moment before purposefully untangling her hands from her skirt and striding between the shelves.
There was no sign of the Wolf himself, but his clutter remained. One book left open amid a sea of papers and pens, another stack piled by the desk, left in shadow by the wood-shard candle.
Red crept toward the desk cautiously. Eammon would be none too pleased to see her paging through his notes, but curiosity overrode her unease. She peered at the scribbled-over paper.
It looked like . . . a shopping list? Things like bread and cheese were scrawled in slanting, messy handwriting, some crossed out. Ask Asheyla about boots was written near the bottom, and, ink still gleaming, new coat.
For the Wolf Page 10