He was rambling, trying to change the nature of her question by overwhelming it with other answers. “You know what I mean.” Red picked at the hem of his coat. “I recognized Merra. Who were the others?”
A long moment of silence, long enough to make her wonder if he’d answer her true question at all. When he did, his voice was clarion-clear and stripped of emotion. “Kaldenore,” he said, finally. “Then Sayetha. Then Gaya. Then Ciaran.”
A parade of death. Red bit her lip. “The Second Daughters, and . . . and Gaya . . . the Wilderwood drained them.”
He nodded, one jerk of his chin.
“What about Ciaran?” She kept it to names, not titles. If Eammon avoided saying mother and father, she assumed it best if she did, too.
The Wolf pushed aside a branch from the path, harshly enough that it nearly cracked. “Wilderwood drained him, too.”
The gate rose out of the fog; Eammon laced his fingers through the bars, nearly leaning against them as the opening bloomed. He paused for a moment when the iron swung inward, as if he had to gather the energy to step forward. Too much blood, he’d said before, and he moved like it.
When the gate was safely sealed behind them, Eammon turned, eyes glinting. “Back there,” he said carefully. “When the Wilderwood . . . came for you. How did you make it stop?”
“The same way I’ve been doing for four years.” She wanted it to come out accusing, but it was thin and hollow in the cold air. Red avoided his eyes, staring instead at a hole one of the thorns had torn in the sleeve of his coat.
“The Wilderwood had you. I didn’t get to you in time.” She couldn’t tell if he meant it as a confession or an accusation. “It’s desperate enough that it should’ve drained you in moments, but it didn’t, because
you stopped it. You’re going to have to give me specifics, Redarys.”
“I don’t know specifics! Ever since my sixteenth birthday, when I came here and cut my hand and bled in the forest, I’ve had this . . . this thing, inside, like a piece of power I’m not supposed to have, something that makes plants and growing things act strange around me. Sometimes I can hold it back, but sometimes I can’t, and when I can’t, bad things happen!”
“Plants and growing things. Things with roots, under the Wilderwood’s influence.” Eammon’s face was drawn into pale, tight lines, his voice canted low, as if he was working through some difficult equation aloud. A thoughtful hand rubbed over his jaw; he looked up, addressing her again. “When you first entered the forest today,” he said, words strung as deftly as beads on a bracelet, “you said a thorn cut your cheek. Did you mean—”
“When I crossed the border, I ended up with my hands in the dirt. I don’t know how, I don’t remember doing it, but it clearly had something to do with this power.” Even saying it now made Red shiver, thinking of movements she didn’t choose to make. “But I stopped whatever it was trying to do. I didn’t let the magic out, I kept it contained, and it stopped. That’s all I did this time, too. Keep it contained.”
A strange grief shone in Eammon’s eyes, a regret she couldn’t quite make sense of. “I don’t understand,” he murmured. “I thought—”
“You don’t understand? I saw you the night it happened! You’re part of it! I saw your hands when it all rushed in, right before it stopped!”
That changed him, altered the harsh line of his jaw and the wounded light in his eyes. “It stopped.” As if the words had been the scaffolding that held him fast, his shoulders dropped, relief in their shape. “I stopped it from happening.”
“Stopped what from happening?”
Eammon didn’t answer, gaze on the ground as he pulled in a deep breath. “I couldn’t keep it from you entirely. But I stopped what mattered. I kept it from . . .” He trailed off into silence, hand passing over his face, leaving a streak of green-and-scarlet blood across one cheekbone. “It could be different this time.”
Red gritted her teeth. “What do you mean?”
“Your power. It’s a piece of the Wilderwood. Part of it making a home in you.”
“I gathered.”
“I understand wanting to hold it back, to push it away. But if you learned to use it, maybe the Wilderwood wouldn’t have to . . . to take anything else.” Hope was a barb in his voice, something that could cut. “Maybe it would be enough, just for you to use what you have already.”
“I don’t understand. The Wilderwood wants to take something?” She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “It hasn’t taken enough already?”
“You don’t need to worry about that.” His voice was the steadiest it’d been since fighting the monster at the tree. It was almost enough to make her believe him. “All you should concern yourself with now is learning to use the magic the Wilderwood has already given you.”
“I can’t use it.” Red barked a laugh, another plume of smoke into the twilight air. “Maybe you can, but I can’t.”
“If you can control the power enough to keep it contained, you can control it enough to turn it to your will.” The Wolf rubbed at his jaw again, thinking. “I’ll have to figure out the particulars—”
“Figure out the particulars? You don’t even know how it works? But you just—”
“This is different. You’re different. The others . . . they were connected to the Wilderwood, too, but not like this.” Again, that knife-point hope, so raw it nearly hurt to hear. “This could fix it.”
It should’ve been comforting, that she was different from the Second Daughters who came before. Different from the three women the Wilderwood had consumed. But all Red could think of was blood and branches and the slumped body of her sister, a four-year-old memory still fresh as the day it happened.
The taste of dirt was still in her mouth, no matter how much she swallowed. Red shook her head. “It’s dangerous,” she murmured. “It’s not something that can be used.”
“We don’t have much of a choice.” Eammon finally stopped fidgeting, peering at her sternly down his twice-broken nose. “I will do my best to keep you safe from the Wilderwood, Redarys, but you’re going to have to help. I can’t do it alone. I’ve tried.”
That awful, echoing voice thrumming through the fog. You can’t bleed enough to hold it off forever.
He watched her, in that quiet courtyard under a starless sky, and Red had to drop her eyes from his. The ache there was too sharp, pain and weight she couldn’t put words to. She thought he probably couldn’t, either.
After a moment, the Wolf turned toward the Keep. Wordlessly, Red followed.
Eammon stopped just inside the door. His face was carefully neutral, but his eyes still sparked. “Are you satisfied, then?” A twitch of scarred hands. “Did I give you reason enough to trust me?”
Red nodded.
The Wolf stalked up the stone staircase. Behind him, the moss and twigs rose, blocking the way, closing him in.
Valleydan Interlude II
T he book wasn’t where it was supposed to be.
Neve frowned at the paper in her hand, a reference with author name and shelf number. It was a book of poetry she was after, one written by a trader who had a rhyming system for navigating Ciani rivers. Not exactly a popular item. It was forbidden to take things completely out of the library, anyway, though Red did it all the time—
She stopped, pressed a hand against her stomach at the sudden ache. Kings, she had to stop doing that. Thinking of Red as if she were still here. It’d been only a day, but every hour felt like a dagger.
Tears burned behind her eyes, too sharp to fall.
“What if we didn’t visit with the venerable Master Matheus today?” Behind her, Raffe twisted her vacated chair, straddling the seat and folding muscular arms over the ornately carved back. “What if, instead, we did . . . literally anything else?”
Had it been anyone other than Raffe, Neve would’ve snapped at them to leave her be. As it was, the grin she cracked was half genuine, though exhaustion made the edges pull down. After her ill-fated t
rip to the Shrine, she hadn’t slept much. “I assume by not visiting, you mean we should skip his lecture on southern weather patterns and their effects on imports?”
Valleyda was at the very top of the continent, landlocked, with the Wilderwood to the north, the Alperan Wastes to the east, and Floriane blocking the way to the western coast. It made trading a nightmare, but that was why Valleyda was the best place to learn about it— they’d thought through to the bottom of any commerce issues one might encounter, because they’d encountered all of them.
Valleyda’s only power was in religion, in sharing a border with the Wilderwood and being locked into the Second Daughter tithe that protected the world from monsters, but it at least led to most countries being willing to offer fair prices. No one wanted to anger the Kings by cheating the kingdom that might one day provide the sacrifice to set them free, or sour the prayers they paid for from the Temple.
Still, crop scarcity would always be a fear, especially when the passes blocking Valleyda from Meducia and Alpera froze so early in the year. Neve’s marriage to Arick was mostly to lock in a sea route, making Floriane a province and providing Valleyda with unfettered access to its coastline.
The tired grin on Neve’s face became slightly harder to hold.
“Precisely what I mean,” Raffe answered. “I find I can’t summon a shred of enthusiasm for the subject of commerce at present.” The late-afternoon light through the window teased muted gold highlights along his long, elegant fingers.
Neve pressed her lips together. She spent far too much time watching Raffe’s hands.
“It’s summer,” he continued, “or as close to it as it gets around here. Forgoing one droning diatribe won’t kill my father’s business. And if it does . . . well.” A shrug. “I’m not terribly worried about it.”
Neve dropped into the chair across from him. “What if you didn’t have to worry about it at all?” She picked at the wrinkled reference paper, tearing it into a tiny snowdrift. “If you didn’t have a business to run, trade routes to learn. What if you could do anything?”
Raffe’s playful smile fell a fraction, handsome features turning introspective. “Well, there’s a question.” His gaze strayed to her hands on the table.
Warmth rushed to Neve’s cheeks. She couldn’t deny an attraction to Raffe— she didn’t think anyone could; the man was handsome as a fairy-tale prince and had the kindness and charm to go with it— but nothing could happen between them, not with her betrothal cemented. Still, that didn’t stop the want, and it didn’t stop the simple pleasure of knowing that her wanting was returned.
Raffe settled his chin on his arms, dark eyes curious as they flickered from her hands to her face. “What about you? If you could go anywhere, where would you go?”
Her answer came instantly, and it banished all the warmth his eyes had brought her, replaced it with an inexpressible ache. “I’d go find my sister.”
A line drew between Raffe’s brows. When he spoke, it was on the end of a sigh. “You did all you could for her, Neve.”
She had, and it wasn’t enough.
“It isn’t your fault.”
Then whose was it? Fate twisted one way, and Neve was born first. None of it was fair, and none of it was right, and she should’ve tried harder to change it. Should’ve done something other than beg Red to run, long after it became clear she wouldn’t.
Raffe’s hand stretched out. It hovered over hers, a moment’s hesitation, before his fingers settled across her wrist. He was warm, so warm, almost enough to call her out of the cold place she retreated to inside herself, where she could grow numb and distant. She’d spent a lot of time there, recently. Numb and hollow was better than raw and hurting.
“You have to stop blaming yourself, Neve. She made a choice. The least we can do is honor it.” He paused, swallowed. “Honor her memory.”
Memory. The word slashed her open. “She isn’t dead, Raffe.”
She thought of what the red-haired priestess in the Shrine had told her, what had happened to Red when she crossed into the Wilderwood. Tangled in the forest, bound to it. It’d been at the back of Neve’s mind all day— her sister threaded with vines, fodder for a ravenous wood.
But alive.
And hadn’t part of her known that? She would’ve felt it if Red died. There would’ve been something, some sort of absence, and Neve still felt horribly whole.
Raffe didn’t dispute her. Still, there was nothing like faith in his eyes, and the thought of trying to explain it to him, to put the thing into words, was exhausting.
So Neve pulled in a deep breath, measured it so it wouldn’t shudder. “The gardens,” she said, pasting on a smile. “Not exactly exciting, but it’s somewhere to go.”
“Better than lessons.” Raffe stood, gallantly offered his arm. “Will Arick be joining us?”
He said it lightly, but there was worry in his tone. Neve’s pasted smile fell. “No.” She threaded her arm through his. “Honestly, I’m not sure where Arick is.” She hadn’t seen him since they returned from the Wilderwood, the three of them packed into one black carriage, lost in separate silences. Neve remembered thinking that was the only thing redeeming in the whole day, the whole year. If they had to lose Red, at least they could sit with the loss together, find a way to hold it together.
But then Arick slunk off to lick his wounds alone.
Raffe sighed. “Me either.”
She squeezed his arm, unspoken comfort. Then the two of them drifted through the library doors out into a sun-filled hall.
Neve wasn’t exactly sure why she’d suggested the gardens. She and the red-haired priestess had cleared the mess she’d made, and she’d assured Neve no one would notice. Still, it was probably wise for Neve to keep a wide berth of the Shrine, at least for a few days. But she felt drawn out there, like probing a bruise to see how badly she could make it hurt.
As they turned the corner, the glass double doors to the gardens opened, emitting a procession of white-robed Order priestesses.
Most of them had left by now. After the midnight vigils, when it became clear the Kings weren’t returning, the priestesses who’d traveled to see Red’s sacrifice departed, back to their own less revered Temples. Neve had seen them file out of the Shrine that morning, after she’d woken from scant hours of broken sleep, the remnants of scarlet candles in their hands as the sun blushed the sky.
The vigil stopped at sunrise and it was now well past noon, but this group of priestesses had the dark-circled eyes of people just released from prayer. There weren’t many of them, fewer than twenty arranged in double lines. At their front, a tall, thin woman with ember-colored hair.
The priestess from last night. Her odd branch-shard necklace was nowhere to be seen.
Neve didn’t recognize all the faces with her— some of them didn’t hail from Valleyda, must’ve stayed behind when the rest of their sisters departed. The fact made a vague, unformed disquiet coil in her chest.
The red-haired priestess’s eyes flickered over her, but she showed no sign of recognition. Instead she turned and spoke with one of the other sisters behind her, too low for Neve to hear, before walking away down a different branching corridor.
Relief made her stomach swoop, though she wasn’t quite sure why. Still, Neve frowned after the redhead. The only thing down that hallway was another door into the gardens, and hadn’t she just come from there?
The rest of the priestesses walked slowly past them, and Neve moved on instinct. She grabbed the closest one’s arm in a grip tight enough to bruise.
“Neve,” Raffe whispered.
To her credit, the priestess showed no emotion other than a widening of her eyes. “Highness?”
“What were you doing out there?” Neve had no patience for pleasantries, not today. “The vigils are over. Clearly, the Kings aren’t returning.”
Halfway to blasphemy, but again, all she got was a slight widening of eyes. “The official vigils are over, yes,” the priestess concede
d. “But a small number of us have kept up our prayers.”
“Why?” It was nearly a snarl. “Why keep praying to something that doesn’t hear you? Your gods aren’t coming back.”
Oh, she was fully heretical now, but Neve couldn’t bring herself to care. Beside her, Raffe stood rock-still.
The priestess smiled mildly, as if the First Daughter of Valleyda wasn’t seconds from clapping hands around her throat. “Perhaps not. The Wilderwood holds them fast.” A pause. “Help may be required for it to let them go.”
Words from last night slithered in Neve’s mind, like pieces of a dream. The Wilderwood is only as strong as we let it be.
Confusion cooled her anger, made her clenching fingers fall open. Unfazed, the priestess inclined her head, a movement echoed by the others behind her. Then they glided away.
“Well, that will end poorly.” Raffe ran a nervous hand over his mouth. “She’s going to tell the High Priestess—”
“She won’t.” Neve knew it. The same way she knew the redheaded priestess wouldn’t tell anyone she’d wrecked the Shrine. Something about that branch-shard necklace, the way they spoke of the Wilderwood almost as an enemy rather than a holy site, told her that nothing about this would ever reach Zophia’s ears.
Raffe looked at her through narrowed eyes but remained silent.
Gently, Neve pulled her arm from his and walked to the double glass doors of the garden. She didn’t look to see if Raffe followed, but she heard the clip of his boots across the floor, heard him shut the doors behind her.
When they were outside, Raffe took a deep breath, rubbing a hand over his close-shorn hair. “Listen. I know you’re upset—”
“They sacrificed her.” Neve turned, chin tilted. Raffe was closer than she’d thought, his full lips only inches away. Her breath felt like a razor. “They sacrificed her for nothing.”
“Maybe it wasn’t for nothing, even without the Kings returning.” He said it carefully, a blade to carve a silver lining. “The tale of the monsters, before Kaldenore—”
For the Wolf (The Wilderwood Books Book 1) Page 9