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 of his hair and the rough texture of his scars, the way the corner of his lip lifted, just so, when she said something he thought was funny. How his brows lowered when he read and how right before he fell asleep he’d let out a long, soft sigh and Kings how his mouth felt on hers, how he clung to her like ivy against the stone walls of their Keep.
It was, in the end, the easiest choice she’d ever made.
The seed in her grew and grew, unfettered by anything because it was hers, hers by word and blood.
It was a quiet storm of root and thorn and branch, the deluge of the Wilderwood finally coming for her— not as a predator, but as a missing piece, grateful to finally fit against the splintered edges it had left. The thin tendril of power she’d been given four years ago sped out to meet the rest of itself, and when she breathed deep, she tasted loam, growing things, honey.
Arick, shadow-thin, threw an arm over his face. Solmir pushed off from the wall with his teeth bared. “Shadows damn you—”
His words were lost in the rush. The power in her center met the power outside, collided and bloomed, filling her with root and branch. It grew in the hollows of her lungs, climbed along her spine, vines wrapping organs and seeding in her marrow.
The darkness behind her eyelids was shaped like leaves. And when it cleared, she saw Eammon. Not just his hands, not just the world through his eyes— him, entire, almost something she could reach out and touch.
He jolted from his seat at the edge of their bed, like he saw her as clearly as she saw him. Amber eyes cycled through shock, and wonder, and finally terror as he leapt, hand reaching out to empty air, mouth shaping her name—
Then he was gone, and she glowed golden in a dungeon with the roots of the Wilderwood between her bones.
Red pushed out her hands, fingers crooked. The tiny roots of grass above them grew long, stretched toward her, spangling the ceiling with starburst shatters and sending rock dust raining.
Kiri tried to cower against Solmir, but he knocked her to the side, thrusting out his hands and shaping his fingers into claws. Shadows gathered, but Red was flush with the power of a whole, healed Wilderwood, and all she had to do was arch a hand in his direction. Golden light wrapped Solmir’s fists, straightened his fingers, and he roared agony at the stone ceiling as it consumed his own cold magic, canceled it out.
“You’ll abandon her.” Solmir gritted his teeth, blue eyes glittering in Red’s light. “You’ll be trapped in the Wilderwood, forever. You’re choosing him over her.”
It made her heart feel too large for her ribs, made the beat of it against vine and bloom a painful thud. “If the Wilderwood falls and the Shadowlands break through, I’ll lose them both.”
“Then you have little faith in her.” Still a snarl, but there was something sorrowing in it. “Neve takes to shadows better than you think.”
Her lips peeled back from her teeth at that warmth in his voice again. Red closed her hand to a fist, jerked it sideways.
The light wrapped around Solmir’s hands swept him in the direction Red willed it, bashing his head against a fallen rock from the ceiling. He fell next to Kiri and lay still.
Red’s glow bathed the dungeon, though already the pain was starting, the roots pulling her toward the Wilderwood. The forest reeled her back like the roots in her body were a kite string. More dust spilled from the ceiling, the sound of breaking rock a discordant symphony.
Slumped against the wall, Arick looked half a corpse. His eyes were hollows, cheekbones knife-sharp. He winced away, like she hurt his eyes.
Red thrust out her hand. “Come with me!”
A stone fell from the ceiling and should have hit him; instead, it fell to the floor, like Arick was formed of smoke, like he’d become the shadow.
Arick shook his head. “I can’t, Red.” A tear slid down his cheek, cleared it of dirt. “I’m tied to him. I can’t leave.”
“Please.” She reached through the bars like she could hold his bloody hand, knowing it was fruitless, begging anyway. “Please.”
“Go, Red.” Another fall of rock, another rain of dust. “You have to go!”
Sobbing against pain of two kinds, Red bent her fingers again. Grass roots wrapped around the bars, made impossibly strong by the magic of the Wilderwood. They split, rending from stone with an awful tearing sound, and she climbed through, squeezing between the wall and the already-fallen rocks on bare, bleeding feet.
Neve. She had to find Neve. Red closed her eyes, pelting blindly down the corridor as if the golden glow of the roots could guide her toward her sister. Pain lanced every limb, but she gritted her teeth against it. A grate up ahead filtered starlight onto the stone floor; Red scrambled through, leaking green-threaded blood from her unbroken hand, the other still a mess of agony at the end of her wrist. She emerged on an empty alley next to the palace walls, and tried to rush forward, searching for a gate, a way in.
A scream ripped from her mouth as the roots tightened around her bones, pulling her back in the opposite direction. Red strained against it, her pleading audible now. “Please, I have to at least tell her goodbye, please . . .”
The Wilderwood didn’t answer, not in words. But she could feel its apology, feel it in the gentling of the vines around her spine, the bloom along her rib cage. Growing, and pulling her inexorably away.
Still, she struggled forward. Her vision blackened, and she fell to her knees on the cobblestones, a harsh sob in her throat. With as much care as they could, the sentinels reached their roots into her, curling around her organs, calling her back home.
Home.
Neve wasn’t dead. Solmir claimed she was safe, and though she loathed the softness with which he said her sister’s name, she believed him. Believed that he wouldn’t hurt her, that he’d protect her, in his own twisted way.
And Red would know if Neve was dead.
Her head hung low. Red released one more wrenching sob. Then she turned and ran toward the Wilderwood.
Chapter Thirty
R ed smacked the stolen horse’s flank, sending it running back toward the village. She doubted he’d make it all the way back to t
he capital— he was a fine thing, and whoever found him bridle-less and wandering could probably use him more than some drunk lord could.
The forest in her bones had guided her through the city, invisible as any urchin in her bare feet and bloody dress. Pain still splintered through her limbs, but it was manageable, and lessened as she moved northward. The horse she stole from a tavern’s hitching post, his rope carelessly tied. Riding under the deep-blue cover of sky and stars reminded her of sixteen and Neve, and she wept into his mane.
The Wilderwood was different. When she’d left— yesterday, only yesterday— it’d looked like the dead of winter, branches gnarled and bare, leaves gray on the ground. Now glimmers of autumn shone gold and ocher, seasons moving in reverse. In her chest, roots reached, stretching through the gaps in her ribs like she was water and air and sun.
It ached when Red turned toward Valleyda, pulling at the roots as they grew, but she did it anyway. She stood on the slight hill just before the forest’s edge, the crossroads of two homes that were never content to share her.
Her eyes closed, tear tracks drying on her cheeks. Maybe if she stood here long enough, right at the edge of her world, Neve might sense her. Maybe Red could will her reasoning into the earth, weave some kind of understanding into the air her twin would eventually breathe.
“I love you.” An echo of the first time she’d disappeared between these same trees. Neve’s promise that day had come true— they’d seen each other again. Red hadn’t made a promise, not out loud, but this felt like it coming true, anyway. Her place had always been the forest.
One more deep breath of outside air, then Red slipped into the Wilderwood.
Trees stretched tall, branches spread in fanfare. The moss made a carpet for her bare feet. The sentinels speared up from the ground, tall and proud with no trace of rot around their roots.
A trick of the light made it almost look like they bowed.
The forest inside her stung as it grew, as it anchored. Above her, the sky faded from lavender to plum, and Red’s breath hitched in her chest.
The Wilderwood soothed in a voice of rustling leaves. A vine grazed along the ridge of her shoulders in comfort.
“Red?”
Lyra picked through the forest deft as a fawn. “I thought you said three days?” There was something stricken in her voice, her manner.
“I got homesick,” Red whispered.
Golden leaves crunched beneath Lyra’s feet as she approached, brows drawn into a question she already knew the answer to. Tentatively, she laid her hand on Red’s arm. Static rent the air, a sharp crackle like the atmosphere before a thunderstorm, and Lyra hissed as she pulled her hand back, dark eyes wide.
“Oh,” she breathed, understanding distilled into one syllable. Red’s knees felt weak. “I figured it out.”
Everything chased her, everything catching up. Adrenaline spiked in her middle, memories of Arick and twisted sentinels, Kiri’s knife, Solmir’s face. And Neve, Neve beyond her saving. Spots swam in her vision. “Where’s Eammon?”
Lyra’s face was unreadable. “Waiting for you.” She eyed Red’s hands, one sliced and bloody, the other clearly broken. “Those need to be seen to. Come on.”
Red followed Lyra silently through the trees. It made a path for her, the Wilderwood, retracting roots and thorns. A fall of leaves fluttered to the ground.
One lighted in Lyra’s curls. She plucked it out, turned it over in her hands. “Kings,” she murmured, something awed in her voice. “It wasn’t like this before. Even with . . . with the others.”
“The others didn’t have a choice.” Red reached out with her cut hand and touched the bark of a sentinel as she passed. It was warm beneath her palm, soothing on the slices. “I did. Eammon made sure I did.”
Lyra nodded. She opened her hand. The leaf fluttered to the ground.
When they reached the gate, he was waiting. He opened it before they reached the iron, running across the forest floor, eyes wide and mouth set and arms warm as they wrapped around her, tight enough to pick her up off the ground.
Eammon’s fingers shook as he pushed her hair away from her face, traced her jaw. Red rested her forehead against his chest. Warmth bloomed, the forest in him welcoming the forest in her, a missing piece fitted into place.
“What did you do, Red?” Horror laced Eammon’s voice, and when she looked into his eyes, it lived there, too. He pressed his forehead against hers, swallowing hard. “What did you do?”
Fife brought food and wine, but didn’t linger, movements small and eyes unreadable. His voice met Lyra’s when he climbed back down the stairs, murmuring low and indistinct.
Eammon sat at the foot of the bed, features shadowed by the blazing fire behind them. Red’s hands rested gingerly on her knees, one sliced and scabbed, the other broken. After taking the roots, the pain of them had been nearly forgotten, but now it was a struggle to keep her breathing even.
“They hurt you.” Eammon looked at her injuries like he was cataloging each one, debts requiring restitution.
The forest in her chest rustled. “I’m here now. I’ll be fine.”
“You aren’t fine.” His eyes stayed on her hand, like he could intimidate it into healing, but the vehemence in his voice made it clear he was talking about more than broken bones and dagger cuts.
She touched his wrist, leaving a smear of her blood. “Eammon, I—”
His fingers closed over hers, cutting her off. She tried to pull away, knowing his intention, but warmth and golden light flared before she could. Eammon growled through gritted teeth as cuts opened on one hand, but he didn’t pause, reaching for the other. A pop, and her bones righted even as his broke over them, the shift sharp against her skin.
Red flinched. She looked at Eammon expecting changes, new height or the whites of his eyes completely taken by green. But other than a faint blush of emerald along Eammon’s veins, nothing happened. The bark braceleting his wrists remained, and the green-threaded veins around amber irises, but the Wilderwood wrought no more changes in him.
She’d taken half the roots, rebalanced the scales. Made him closer to man than forest.
His eyes widened, locked on hers. Then they closed, his jaw tightening against the pain he’d taken.
“Self-martyring bastard,” she whispered.
A low grunt was his only reply. Eammon went to the desk with its scattered paper, rummaging for a bandage with his bleeding hand. When he found one, he turned his attention to his broken fingers. Red turned her head and closed her eyes, not wanting to see him set the bones. Another low, strained growl, another pop that made her wince.
When she looked back, both his hands were wrapped. He spoke to them rather than her. “You shouldn’t have done this. Without the roots, the Wilderwood would’ve let you go.”
“And it would’ve taken you.” The image of him half subsumed in forest was as easy to recall as a recent nightmare. “It needs two, Eammon. You can’t carry it all alone, not forever. I couldn’t leave you to—”
“You should’ve left me to rot.” Eammon did look up then, eyes fierce. “You know what happens.” His voice was hoarse, the last word barely sound. He turned away on it, like he didn’t want her to see him break.
“It won’t happen this time.” She knew it, knew it as sure as she knew the shape of his mouth. “This time it’s different. I chose to take them, knowing the consequences.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does.” Gently, she stood from the bed, crossing the room to stand behind him. They didn’t touch, and he didn’t turn, but every line of him attuned to every line of her. “Eammon, I took the roots because I lo—”
“Don’t.” A whisper, low and rough. “Don’t.”
Her lips pressed together, closing the confession behind them.
They stood silent. Eammon’s jaw trembled with the effort of keeping it clenched. Finally, he pushed back his hair with his bandaged fingers. “Tell me what happened.”
&nb
sp; It sent everything careening back, all the emotion she’d cried out as she rode here on a stolen horse. Red’s breath shook, a tremor that started in her voice and traveled down her hands. “They have Neve. They have my sister, and now I can’t get to her, and I chose it and I wanted it but shit they have her, and I—”
“Shhh.” His bandaged palms cradled her face, all the ways he held himself apart coming undone at the sight of her crying. “We’ll figure something out, Red, I promise you. We’ll find a way.”
Slowly, she quieted, under the run of his fingers through her hair and the library scent of him in each breath. She felt the moment he stiffened again, when his touch fell away from her and he took a small step back.
But he kept holding her hand. And that gave her enough stability to take a deep lungful of Wilderwood air, and start from the beginning.
Eammon stayed still and quiet through her story, until she recounted Kiri cutting her. Then his teeth ground hard enough for her to hear it over the flames in the grate.
Her voice faltered when she reached the dungeon. “Can you feel it when a new breach happens?”
Confusion knit his brows. “Used to, back when I’d first become the Wolf. Not anymore.”
“Arick . . . Arick made a breach. More than a breach. He bled on a sentinel, opened the Shadowlands.” A pause. “He bargained with Solmir.”
Silence. Even the fire seemed to deaden its crackle. Eammon’s breath scraped harsh, every muscle tensed, new blood staining the bandage on his hand holding hers.
Haltingly, Red told the story. Arick and his terrible bargain, his blood waking the sentinel branches in the Shrine and pulling them away from the Wilderwood, Solmir taking his place. Eammon barely moved. He didn’t speak. It was more unsettling than if he’d raged.
“He thought I hadn’t taken the roots because I didn’t want them.” Red darted a look at Eammon, unable to stop the angry tightening of her lips. “He thought you’d told me everything.”
The snarl on his face faded to something softer, sadder. “I was afraid if I told you everything, you would take them. You’d try to help me.” He snorted at the floor, eyes hidden behind his unbound hair. “I was right.”
For the Wolf Page 36