For the Wolf

by Hannah Whitten

  Red took a gulp of coffee too quickly and burned her throat.

  Eammon sat his now-empty cup next to the branch and jerked a thumb toward the painted silver bands. “The paint is there so we can see how much the branch grows. A benchmark for your progress.”

  “That can’t grow.” Red took another sip, more carefully this time. “It’s dead.”

  “So was that thornbush yesterday,” Eammon countered.

  The mention of yesterday made their eyes dart away from each other.

  She’d thought they could ignore it. She’d thought if they pretended it didn’t happen, it would fade into the background, a moment of weakness they’d grow beyond.

  Foolish of her.

  “I saw the thicket,” Eammon said, his voice steady even as the tips of his ears burned. He strode to the mantel and shelved his book, keeping his back to her. “We passed it right before we saw the missing sentinel. It was dead, dried out, and it obeyed you anyway.” The muscles in his shoulders moved as he crossed his arms. “Even in death, things stay tied to the Wilderwood.”

  His voice was low, roughened with emotion she couldn’t parse with his face hidden. Tentatively, she touched the branch, nearly expecting it to spider-crawl over the table, but it remained still.

  The silence tugged at her until she raised her narrowed eyes to his still-turned back. “Some direction would be welcome here, Eammon.”

  She hadn’t meant to say his name. Even in irritation, it felt like too much in her mouth, too intimate after what they’d shared and the way he’d pulled away from it.

  Kings, she wanted to kiss him again.

  He turned, finally, something molten flickering in his eyes, halfway between anger and fevered heat. “You did well enough on your own yesterday.”

  He had to stop mentioning yesterday, damn him. He said it like a challenge.

  Red leaned back in her chair, arms crossed. “I told you. It works better when we’re close.”

  “Exactly how close do you need me, Redarys?”

  It stopped her for a moment, mouth parted, possible answers roaring through her head like flames with fresh kindling. She settled for “Closer than that.”

  They stared at each other across the room, the air between them warm and waiting. With a ragged sigh, Eammon moved closer, until he stood just out of reach. “Better?”

  She wanted to say no. She remembered him yesterday in the forest, kissing her like she was warmth in winter before pushing her away, and by all the Kings and all the shadows, that was the closeness she wanted.

  But she nodded and turned to the tree limb.

  Her power wouldn’t cooperate. Trying to grasp it felt like trying to hold hands with water. Red couldn’t make it bloom, couldn’t do anything but chase it fruitlessly. With a frustrated growl, she opened her eyes to the still-dead branch, fingers curling on the wood of the table. “It’s not working.”

  “It worked just fine before.”

  “You were closer before.”

  She clenched her teeth shut as soon as she’d said it, but it hung like an ax and couldn’t be taken back. Eammon said nothing, though she could hear his breath, the rattle of it in and out of root-tangled lungs.

  “Is it emotional?” The attempt at brusqueness fell flat and made his voice only rougher, stoking the heat in her stomach. “The closeness you need, I mean. Or . . . or physical?”

  “Both.” Red closed her eyes, knowing this was giving in, knowing she didn’t care. “Both seem to help.”

  Her eyes stayed closed, but the atmosphere around her shifted as he moved forward, warm and charged as the air before a thunderstorm. A breath of hesitation before he brushed away her loose hair, put his warm hand on the nape of her neck.

  “I won’t be there.” He said it like an apology. “I can’t always be there, Red.”

  She knew it. He was tied to this damn wood, mired in it. The sentinels trapped him as well as any shadow-creature, any wicked king, and he wouldn’t be there in Valleyda to calm her chaos with his closeness. The more Red practiced control, the more she might be able to re-create it without him, but that wasn’t what this was about, and they both knew it.

  This was about stalling. About taking the closeness they could get.

  “Being here now is enough,” Red murmured.

  The tips of his fingers curled against the roots of her hair.

  The power in her center gathered and steadied, like this was what it wanted all along. It was simple to grasp it now, simple to turn it to her will.

  The branch on the table had a muted golden glow when she opened her mind to the Wilderwood, stars behind clouds. Just enough for her piece of it, that thin thread winding through her, to connect to and command. As she arched her fingers, she saw it grow, the twigs stretching past their painted beginnings.

  When her eyes opened, the branch was somewhat bigger, though not by much. Maybe an inch of space had appeared between the silver bands and the main bough.

  Eammon moved abruptly away, taking his fingers from her neck, striding toward the window. He ran one hand through his unbound hair before shoving them both in his pockets. “There,” he said, almost in a rush. “It’s done.”

  Red bit her lip, mind churning fire-laced thought. His mouth on her throat, her hair in his hands, tree bark against her back as he pressed against her center. He’d thought it a mistake, but she hadn’t, and now she was leaving. Even though she was coming back— dammit, she was coming back— she’d still heard that finality in his voice last night. The thing he’d murmured when he thought she was asleep.

  Maybe you should.

  It angered her, that he had room for doubt, to think she’d want to linger anywhere that wasn’t close enough to see that faint scar on his cheek. Room to think they were the same people who’d faced off in a library on her twentieth birthday what felt like lifetimes ago, room to think the space between them hadn’t fully and irrevocably changed.

  Red stood, her chair scraping backward across the floor. “I can do more.”

  He stiffened.

  “I’m capable of more than that. You know it.” Red propped her hips against the edge of the table, fingers curling into the wood, and the next words were plea and invitation and challenge all at once, rough with want. “Help me do more.”

  His turning seemed to take ages. Eammon’s arms fell from crossed to hang by his side, fingers already curved like they held something. The first step was tentative, then he strode across the room like it was a battle march, face determined. His hands hit the table on either side of her hips, tensed enough for her to trace the tendons.

  “Are you sure?” It was strained, tightly reined in. It begged an answer.

  “It worked yesterday, didn’t it?”

  “You called the Wilderwood before I kissed you.”

  Her fingers skimmed across his cheekbone, the nail tracing that thin white line. The first mark she’d left on him. “But not before I wanted you to.”

  A tiny, rueful smile flickered at the corner of his mouth, but his eyes were all hunger as his fingers slid up the small of her back, slipped beneath the fabric of his shirt she still wore. She traced the outside edge of his ear, his jawline, stubble rough under her fingers. The hand not on her back cupped her face, thumb running a half-moon over her cheek, scarred palm against her throat.

  “Am I close enough?” The space between his mouth and her pulse was paper-thin.

  Red tugged his hair, tipping her head so her lips barely brushed his. “Not yet.”

  Yesterday was a kiss born of fear and desperation and relief. Forgetting it wouldn’t be easy, but it would be possible— a momentary slip, a lapse in judgment, easy to dismiss.

  This was different. This was deliberate. It would unravel the bonds they’d made of necessity and turn them irrevocably to something else. His eyes burned into hers, looking for benediction.

  When Red pulled him down, his mouth opened on a sigh.

  Eammon’s tongue swept her lip, slow, purposefu
l. Red made a helpless noise in her throat, pressed farther into his chest. Her fingers dug into his back, pulling him as close as she could, searching for empty places she could fill as one scarred hand skated over her rib cage, her hip. The other cupped the side of her neck like it was something too fragile to let go of, something he was afraid to lose.

  His thumb pulled against her bottom lip, opening her mouth for another, deeper kiss. “Now?”

  “Not yet.” She arched into him as the coffee cups clattered to the floor, greedy for more of his touch, resentful of the fabric between them. “Closer.”

  A low laugh, rumbling against her throat. “Try, first.” They were reduced to snatches of words, mouths eager for other things.

  Red caught his lips again even as she bent her fingers in the vague direction of the branch. Flaring golden light behind her eyes, a momentary glimpse of the two of them as tangled roots— his beacon-bright, hers a thin candle-flame, fed by his closeness.

  A rustling noise beside them, and neither looked toward it. Her fingers tangled in his hair, pulled his mouth back to hers.

  Her power redirected itself as Eammon pressed against her, as heat built between them and their breathing grew ragged. She could feel the Wilderwood around them, in them, blooming upward. The rush of roots in the ground beneath the tower, the stretch of branches toward the open windows, the forest drawn to her as she was drawn to him. Bonds, slipping off. Whatever had held it shackled ebbed away, grip loosening, letting the Wilderwood creep closer—

  Eammon froze, hands on the bare skin of her waist beneath her shirt. His fingers dug in, and he kissed her, once more and fiercely. Then, releasing her like a burning ember, he pushed away, breathing hard.

  Red reached for him, just for a second. But he’d turned, back to her, and she let her hands fall empty. “Eammon?”

  “Give me a minute.” His hand scrubbed through his hair, made it stand up at odd angles. “Just . . . just give me a minute, Red.”

  Slowly, her magic recoiled, shrinking back down into her hollows. As her pulse slowed its thundering, she noticed the windows.

  The greenery growing on the outside of the tower had bloomed into a riotous, anachronistic spring. Thick, woody vines nearly covered the gaps in the stone, blocking out the lavender light of the Wilderwood with huge white flowers and verdant leaves. Tendrils of roots spilled over the windowsill, stretching toward the table where she sat, studded in tiny blooms.

  As Red watched— as Eammon stood with his back to her, shoulders moving with his breathing— the new growth slowly shrank back. The root tendrils retracted, slipping back out the window, away from her. The white blooms closed. The leaves dropped away from the vines as they disappeared, back to their proper places, leaving gaps of sky in their wake. The movements were rhythmic, matched to Eammon’s breath.

  He’d said that holding the Wilderwood used all his concentration. And now, kissing her, distracted from that singular purpose— it’d slipped, the magic escaping the careful cage he kept it in.

  “I’m sorry.” His whisper was a cut. “I thought I could . . . it doesn’t matter what I thought. This was a mistake.”

  Red crossed her arms, hunched over them like she could hide, make herself smaller. The three-fold scar on her stomach, his wound she’d healed so long ago, twinged for the first time in weeks. Somehow, sorry hurt more than mistake did.

  Something brushed her arm. Red glanced to the other end of the table. The branch she’d directed her magic at was huge, the silver-painted bands at least a foot away from the central bough. Green leaves sprouted from the ends of the twigs, summer-verdant.

  She must’ve made a noise, because Eammon turned slightly, worry in his face like he thought he might find her crying. His eyes widened when he saw the branch.

  “Told you I could do more.” Her voice was hollow. The tears he worried for hung in her throat and grew sharp.

  Dark hair feathered over Eammon’s shoulders as he hung his head. He ran a scarred hand over his face. “I wish things could be different. But they just . . . they can’t. I can’t hold it back from you if I . . .” He trailed into silence. Took a breath. “Keeping the Wilderwood from coming for you takes everything I have,” he said, the words clipped and measured. “All my concentration, all my strength. Everything. There isn’t anything left. And the forest is so tied in me, so close to the surface . . .” A short, sharp gesture to the encroaching growth around them. “When I get close to you, it does, too. And I won’t let it trap you here, Red. I won’t.”

  There’s not much of me left to give to another person.

  There’s not much of me left.

  He’d told her to trust him, yesterday, when he broke off their kiss and went about his business as if it never happened. But instead they’d pushed, breaking through the thin barriers they’d set up between themselves. The pieces were too jagged to put back together.

  Whatever they’d just shattered, it was the only thing they could have.

  Red slipped off the table. “I wish things could be different, too.”

  She ducked down the stairs so he couldn’t see the tears start.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  R ed closed the Keep door with more force than necessary, pressing her back against it like a barricade. Her tears had been short-lived, thankfully, a benefit of living a life that gave her little opportunity to spill them. Still, her face was blotched and her eyes felt heavy.

  The front door pushed open, Fife and Lyra tumbling in. She was laughing, a palm pressed to her stomach, and Fife’s hands flew as he shaped some story in the air, the most animated she’d ever seen him. Red stood quiet, watching. Things between them were complicated, Fife had said, but it was clear they loved each other uniquely. Simply.

  It made her chest ache.

  Fife held a canvas bag similar to the one they’d brought from Asheyla’s yesterday, the top drawstring half open and spilling a length of scarlet. When Lyra caught sight of Red, she hurriedly grabbed the fabric and stuffed it back in the bag. “Red!”

  She pasted on a smile, rubbed at her eyes, and hoped the dim light would be enough to obscure the vestiges of tears. “Back from the Edge?”

  “Picking up the last of the supplies.” Lyra opened her own canvas bag, pulling out a bottle of wine to wag in the air. “Valdrek claims this isn’t watered. I’m inclined to believe him, since you and Eammon saved his son-in-law.” She said it nonchalantly, but curiosity flashed across her delicate features, and she looked at Red like she saw everything she’d tried to hide behind a false smile and quick-scrubbed eyes.

  Red looked away. “What’s in the other bag?”

  Fife glanced at Lyra, an unspoken conversation. “Well, he’s not here to give it to her,” Fife finally said. He offered Red the bag. “Your cloak.”

  Their behavior seemed odd, for it to be nothing but her mended cloak, but Red didn’t have the energy to think too hard about it. She took the bag and slung it over her shoulder without looking inside. “Thanks.”

  Another wordless glance between Fife and Lyra. “Eammon around?” Fife asked as he turned toward the dining room, disappearing beneath the arch.

  “We’ll find him later. He’s probably translating until he’s cross-eyed again.” Lyra gave Red a gentle look, one that invited confidence if it was needed. “You can come with us, if you want. I’m making Fife brew tea.”

  Red bent her mouth to a semblance of a smile but shook her head. “Thanks anyway.” Mud and blood spattered Lyra’s leggings, and the edge of her tor looked like it’d been hastily wiped down. “Did you run into something?”

  “A few more shadow-creatures.” Lyra huffed a laugh, but it was thin. “It was a good thing Fife was there. He spotted one before I did. Managed to toss a vial of blood at it before it made itself a body.”

  “I didn’t know he patrolled, too.”

  “It’s not really patrolling, I guess.” She shrugged, a shade of sadness flitting across her dark eyes. “He just wants to see if there
are any weak spots.”

  Like the villagers, pressing forward from the Edge. So many people caught in the Wilderwood’s tangle, so many people wanting to escape.

  Red chewed on the corner of her lip, thinking of the conversation she’d overheard the day of the mirror, the day she found out about Isla’s death. How Eammon said she could leave if she wanted. How he and Fife and Lyra were too bound to the Wilderwood for it to be an option. “Are there weak spots? Truly?”

  The vials of blood in Lyra’s bag clinked together as she shifted on her feet. “Honestly? I don’t think so. Not on the Valleydan border, and not weak enough to let us out. The Wilderwood has its teeth in too deep.” A pause. “I don’t think Fife really believes he’s going to find anything. But hope, you know? It’s like a boot that won’t break in. Hurts to walk in it, hurts worse to go barefoot.”

  Red knew hope and its burn like she knew the scent of Neve’s hair, the pattern of scars on the back of Eammon’s hands. “Would you want to find a weak spot, if it was there to find? Would you leave?”

  It sounded deceptively simple, for how layered a question it was. Lyra’s long eyelashes flickered down to brush her cheeks as she sighed. “I don’t know. The world . . . it’s been so long since I was in it, and it would be so different, and who knows what would happen to us once we left the forest, and I . . . I just don’t know.” She rubbed at her forearm. “The Mark is what binds us here, not the borders, so even if we found a weak place it’d probably be useless. But if we did, and it let us go . . .” Her hand dropped. “If Fife went, I would, too. We stay together, him and me.”

  The ache in Red’s chest sharpened.

  Another tiny smile. “The tea is a standing invitation,” Lyra said, turning toward the dining room to join Fife. “Just let me know, and I’ll bully Fife into baking something, too.”

  Red gave her a halfhearted smile, then mounted the stairs. Their voices were a hush as she climbed up to her and Eammon’s room, carrying the bag with her mended cloak.

  The bed was rumpled, just as she left it. Red sat with a sigh, dropping the bag, burying her face in her hands.