For the Wolf

by Hannah Whitten

  “Not today, Majesty.” There was a note of relief in his voice, and it set her teeth on edge. They’d always feared Red, thought her more relic than girl, proof that the world was wider and more terrifying than they’d prefer it to be. A flicker of that same fear twisted to Neve now.

  Part of her liked it.

  “When she comes,” Neve said, an echo of how she always responded, “bring her to me.”

  The commander nodded, just like he always did.

  Her errand complete, Neve swept toward her rooms. She hadn’t moved when she became Queen— sleeping in the same place Isla died didn’t sit well with her. Dinner was already waiting on a cart before her desk. When she took meals at all, she took them here.

  Someone else waited here, too. Forearms braced on his knees, head bowed.

  Raffe.

  Neve’s pulse jumped. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Raffe. These days were a blur of bleeding and planning, little food and less sleep. Her hands went to her hair, the hollows of her cheeks— she didn’t spend a great deal of time looking in mirrors these days, but she knew she didn’t look well. She hadn’t thought to care until now.

  “Forgive me for intruding,” Raffe said, still looking at his hands.

  “You aren’t intruding.” She pressed her back against the door, spine straight against the rush of feeling the sight of him brought. Sorrow, heat, shame.

  They stayed like that, anchored in opposite corners. Neither of them knew how to navigate the space between.

  Raffe sighed as he stood, a sound deep enough to drown in. His eyes went to her cut palm, then away. “Spending time in the Shrine again?”

  Neve closed her hand to a fist. The edges of her cut stung. “Order business.”

  Raffe made a low noise in his throat. Tentatively, like he thought she might rebuff him, he took a step closer. When she didn’t object, he closed their distance and took her hand.

  He tilted her palm back and forth, even though they both knew he could see nothing in the dim light. This was just an excuse for touch.

  “I’m worried for you,” he murmured.

  And Neve couldn’t dispute it. Couldn’t tell him not to worry, couldn’t pretend there was nothing to worry about.

  So instead, she kissed him, because Kings and shadows damn it, maybe one thing could go the way she wanted it to, if only for a moment.

  Raffe never did anything by halves, and kissing was no exception. By the time he pulled away, making space for fears and misgivings to come rushing back, Neve was breathless, hair mussed and lips bruised.

  Raffe tilted his forehead against hers. “Whatever you’ve done,” he whispered, “it’s not too late to undo it.”

  “I can’t.” Had she thought of undoing it? Maybe, deep in the night, when the darkness of unwanted thoughts loomed too large to ignore. “Raffe, I have to do this. If it can free Red—”

  “Red isn’t here.” His whisper was fierce, and Neve pressed her forehead farther into his, like she could drown it out. “You can’t bring her back. She’s gone.”

  Her fingers dug into his back, and she kissed him again, not gently. A kiss to swallow things. For a moment, he let her, then he broke away, his fingers winding in her hair.

  “Neve.” He pulled back enough to look in her eyes. “There is nothing you could do to make me stop loving you, no matter how terrible. You know that, right?”

  The word was a thud in her heart, heavy and light at once. The first time he’d told her, and it was under the pall of this.

  Kiri’s words echoed in the garden—perhaps we were too hasty in the making of your reign.

  When she spoke, it was barely sound. “What do you think I’ve done, Raffe?”

  “I have truly awful timing, don’t I?”

  Raffe released her, stepping back like she was a coal that could burn. Neve turned in a whirl, nerves and inexplicable guilt twisting in her stomach.

  Arick stood in the doorframe, a smile with no warmth on his face. The look in his eyes wasn’t anger, exactly, but they held a strange light as he looked from Neve to Raffe. “It’s good to find you here, Raffe. I’ve been meaning to speak with you.”

  “It’s been a while.” Raffe lifted his chin. “You’ve been busy.”

  “Both of us have.” Arick dipped his head toward Neve, indicating the other half of both. “Kind of you to help your Queen relax.”

  Moonlight reflected on Raffe’s bared teeth, but it was Neve who stepped forward. “Arick. Don’t.”

  He stopped mid-stride, a momentary flicker of surprise on his face. The bright moonlight gave his eyes a strange blue cast. “Apologies.”

  Fraught silence. When had it become like this with the three of them? Furtive and secret and harsh, when it had been easy once?

  Neve swallowed against a bladed throat.

  “You said you needed to speak with me,” Raffe said finally. “Speak.”

  Arick’s grin was lazy, but his eyes were sharp. “What are you doing here?”

  A beat of surprise. Then Raffe sighed. “Look, I understand that you and Neve—”

  “Not that.” It didn’t sound entirely true, like there were waiting emotions that had to do with the kiss he’d interrupted, but Arick wasn’t addressing them now. “What are you doing in Valleyda, Raffe?”

  Raffe’s eyes narrowed.

  “You’ve known all there is to know about trade routes for years now. Your family is eager to have you home.” Arick shrugged. “Don’t you want to see them?”

  No answer at first, Raffe’s eyes flickering between Arick and Neve. “Of course I do,” he said quietly. “But I wanted to be here for Neve, after . . . after everything.”

  “You’ve certainly done that.” Arick was so different lately, but the three of them had known one another long enough that she recognized his pain when she heard it.

  Her puzzled gaze darted to him, made shadowless by the wash of moonlight. He looked almost as taken aback by that pain as she was.

  Raffe looked to Neve, swallowed hard. “We’ll speak later. Remember what I said, Neve.” He spared one final glance for Arick, then walked out. The door closed behind him.

  Neve slumped into her desk chair, forehead in her palm.

  There was something almost unsure in the way Arick held himself, lingering in the center of the room. The discomfort looked odd on his frame, usually languid and nonchalant. “You should eat.”

  “Not hungry.”

  He didn’t press. From the corner of her eye, Neve saw him cross his arms. “What was he asking you to remember?”

  A strange slant to his voice, as if he both wanted and didn’t want her to answer.

  She didn’t. Instead, she asked a question of her own, giving words to the dark thing in her head, the suppositions that kept her awake. “Arick, what happened to my mother?”

  A moment of lead-heavy silence. “Why would you ask that?”

  And that was an answer in itself.

  Neve’s head sank lower. A low, pained sound escaped from behind her teeth. She should’ve known. Isla’s sickness, how it came on so fast . . . she should’ve known.

  The worst part was that a piece of her had. Had recognized that something strange was happening, and ignored it, because it got her closer to what she wanted.

  Her sister, home. Some Kings-damned control.

  She heard Arick’s footsteps cross to her, felt the shift in the atmosphere as he reached out a hand. He didn’t touch her, as if he knew that would be a bridge too far, but she felt his desire to. A deep, begrudging ache to comfort.

  “And the High Priestess?” She stared at her hands, interwoven like vines, bloodlessly clutched. “Her, too?”

  “Yes.”

  Not twists of fate. Not proof she was right. Murders. “Who else knows?”

  “Only Kiri.” A pause. “Kiri killed them both.”

  Kiri, with her disapproving mouth, her smugness. There from the beginning, orchestrating the fall.

  She heard him
swallow. “My plan didn’t include so much death, but it . . . it served its purpose. I didn’t tell you because it wouldn’t have made a difference.” His hand finally moved, landing lightly on hers. It was cold, but she didn’t pull away. “We do what we have to do.”

  An echo of the night after Isla died. Not the night everything changed, but the night they crested the hill of it and began careening down the other side. She’d set the wheel in motion, and now she had to hold on until the end was reached.

  A deep breath. Numb lips. “We do what we have to do.”

  All this death had to pay for something.

  “You are an extraordinary woman, Neve.” He used her shortened name so rarely these days. Every time he did, it came out like something he wasn’t sure he was allowed to say. “You’ve risen to every challenge, you’ve held up under burdens no one should have to bear. You are a better Queen than this place deserves.” His thumb twitched slightly, like he wanted to run it over her knuckles. He didn’t. “You are too good for this.”

  Neve looked at Arick, confusion and uncertainty freezing her in place. In the silver light through her window, his eyes looked almost blue instead of green.

  He squeezed her hand, once, before dropping his. “It will be over soon.” Then Arick bowed, and slipped out into the dark.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  S he woke with her spine at odd angles and her neck aching. Red sat up with a disgruntled sound, rolling her shoulders. On the bed, Eammon’s deep, even breathing was just shy of a snore.

  A smirk pulled at her mouth. She’d have to tell him the issue persisted.

  Firelight combed golden highlights through his black hair, his face softened in sleep. She studied its angles, for once not hardened by exhaustion and teeth-clenching control. There was a slight scar through one dark eyebrow. Stubble shaded his jaw, a tiny nick from a careless razor right below his chin. It heartened her, strangely, to see a mark not made for the Wilderwood.

  And to think, she’d once thought the Wolf too severe to be handsome.

  Red pushed his hair off his forehead. He sighed, still asleep, moving the angle of his chin so his lips brushed her palm. The root-tendril Mark stood out against his pale skin, swirling to halfway down his forearm, up past his elbow. Last night, she’d been too preoccupied with saving him from the forest to concentrate on the shape of his chest, the breadth of his bare shoulders. All things she’d noticed before, obviously— it was impossible not to— but not this close, not since the night she healed him.

  The sheet pooled around his waist where he’d kicked it down in the night, and the faint blush of those three scars glanced across his abdomen. Her hand was half reaching to touch them before she pulled it back.

  No. She couldn’t. They couldn’t.

  The dining room was empty when she went down the stairs, and so was the kitchen. A battered kettle hung over a banked fire, and she poked it into flame before scouring the shelves for tea leaves. She half hoped she wouldn’t find them, one more thing to stall the inevitable.

  Red had to leave. She had to go to Valleyda.

  It had been foolish to put it off as long as they had. Only a day, but she should’ve left the moment she realized what was happening. The only reason she hadn’t was because she didn’t want to leave him. He’d let himself be a distraction, let her use him as procrastination; stalling the inevitable just as much as she was. She didn’t know whether she wanted to hit him or kiss him for it.

  Both, probably.

  The pot whistled. Red jumped and pulled it off the hook, too quickly. A burn stung across her knuckles, and she looked at it for a moment, thinking of Eammon, how he always insisted on taking her hurt.

  She resolved not to let him see it.

  Red was on her second cup of weak tea when Lyra walked through the broken arch of the dining room, pulling leaves from her hair. Her tor clattered to the table as she sat across from Red, wrinkling her nose at the teapot. “I hate this stuff.”

  “It’s all I could find.” The blade’s edge was dark, smeared with Lyra’s blood and something like sap. “What happened?”

  “More missing sentinels.” Lyra pulled a cloth from her pocket and rubbed it along the tor’s edge. It didn’t do much other than spread the muck around, and she quickly abandoned the endeavor with a low curse. “Cut up a few shadow-creatures, but I couldn’t do anything about the holes. My blood won’t touch them anymore. Doesn’t do a damn thing.”

  More holes. He’d healed them all, nearly given up himself to do it, only for more to appear mere hours later. “Eammon healed them all last night. All the breaches.” Red sighed. “Didn’t take long for new ones to open.”

  The other woman’s eyebrows flicked up, a thoughtful expression on her elfin face. Lyra set her tor aside. “Self-martyring bastard.” Despite her earlier protestation, she tugged over the teapot and poured herself a cup. Then she sat, peering at Red through the steam as it wreathed her dark curls. “Do you want to help him?”

  “Of course I do.” The question was unexpected, but the answer was so automatic that Red didn’t have time to be caught off guard.

  Lyra settled in her seat, legs crossed and tea cupped between her palms, watching Red like she was weighing something in her mind. Finally, her dark eyes closed, long lashes sweeping her cheeks. “He’s kept it from you. You know that, right?”

  She did. In Red’s mind, bones wrapped around the base of a tree, tangled with vines.

  “He’s done it for so long, and I don’t think he’ll stop. Especially not now.” Lyra sighed, sipped her tea. “I don’t know how it works. Not fully. The way the Wolf and the Wilderwood tangle together and how they come apart. But I know that if anything is going to change, Red, it will have to be you that does it.”

  Choice. A memory of rustling leaves and cracking branches, forest sounds shaped to a word.

  “If I knew what you had to do, I’d tell you. Even though Eammon would hate me for it. But I don’t.” She placed her chipped teacup on the table, next to her tor. “Something about this is different, both with you and with the Wilderwood. Something more than Eammon holding it back. And you’re the only one who can figure it out.”

  Their eyes locked across the table. Red nodded.

  Another beat of silence, then Red pushed back her chair, stood. “Do you want bread?”

  Lyra shook her head. Red grabbed two slices— one for her, one for Eammon. A letdown of a parting gift, after he’d given her a bridal cloak and the tangled thread of his history. She trudged up the stairs like stones were tied around her feet.

  Eammon sat at his desk, clothed now and mostly scrubbed of blood and sap, though a streak of green-threaded burgundy still slashed behind one ear. He’d bound his hair, messily, and was fully absorbed in an open book. Red craned her neck to see what he was reading, but she didn’t recognize the language.

  “It’s rude to read over someone’s shoulder,” he muttered as he turned a page.

  She tried to quip, but he was close enough to reach out and touch, and that fact filled her mind like fog in a jar. Instead she took a piece of bread and placed it on the page. He gave an affronted snort before picking it up, taking a bite with his eyes still tracking over words.

  Red sat on the bed and watched him, cataloging his movements. His finger brushed back and forth over the corner of the page while he read it, then dipped behind to turn. His foot bounced beneath the desk. Hair fell over his forehead, and he pushed it back, only for it to fall again.

  “I’m leaving today,” she whispered.

  The line of his shoulders went rigid.

  Her chest was a cage for things she couldn’t trap into language. The only words that seemed right were too vast, too heavy. A frailty would be wrought by them, and Red couldn’t afford to be frail now.

  So instead, she repeated herself. “I’m coming back.”

  He took a shuddering breath, closed his book. “Think about it, Red. You don’t—”

  “Stop.” Red stood, w
ent to stand in the tiny gap between him and the desk. “We aren’t having this discussion again. I’ll stop Neve, get her to reverse whatever damage she’s done. And then I will be right back here, Wolf, and you’d better be prepared to tell me what I have to do to save you from these damn woods.”

  He finally looked at her, their eyes almost level, heat in the green and amber. His sigh was ragged.

  “Eammon?” Fife’s voice, calling up the stairs. “Lyra’s back. Another one is gone.”

  It froze him, turned all that heat in his eyes to something cold and resigned. Eammon’s hands clenched his knees, gaze shifting away from hers to the middle distance beyond. He spoke without moving. “When do you leave?”

  “Now.” No use putting it off. No use hoping he’d touch her. He held himself carefully away, even after everything, after two kisses and three skulls and countless words they locked behind their teeth.

  Eammon nodded. “I won’t keep you, then.” He stood and walked toward the stairs, leaving her alone.

  Lyra and Fife were as skeptical of her plan as Eammon was.

  “Your sister is the reason the sentinels are disappearing? She’s hell-bent on killing the Wilderwood, so you’re just going to go present yourself to her?” Fife’s brow arched. “And I’m the only one who thinks this sounds like a bad idea?”

  “What she’s doing is for me. I have to find out what it is, a way to stop it. She’s trying to bring me home.”

  “It would appear she’s been successful.”

  “I’m not staying.” It came out almost a hiss, and it took Fife aback— his crossed arms slackened, and a line drew between his brows.

  Red closed her eyes, took a breath. “I’m coming back, Fife.”

  His reddish hair caught the dim light as his incredulous gaze swung from Red to Eammon. “And you’re fine with this?”

  “It isn’t my decision.” Eammon leaned against the staircase, feigning nonchalance, but his spine was rigid.

  Fife’s sigh deflated his shoulders. “I hope you know what you’re doing.” His eyes slid from Eammon to Red. “Both of you.”