But here was Eammon. Far from the monster she’d been told to expect, far from anything she’d managed to imagine. Eammon, offering her a choice.
He needed her. She doubted she’d ever hear the words from his mouth, but it was clear in everything that had happened since she crossed the border of his forest, in the words of the Wilderwood earlier as they faced each other in the fog. There had to be two, but he wouldn’t force her to stand with him. Wouldn’t make her do anything she didn’t wholeheartedly choose to do.
Her pulse thrummed in her throat.
Eammon watched her face, the play of incomprehensible emotion across it, and shook his head. “Forget it. I’m not even sure if—”
“It’s a good idea.”
His teeth clicked together.
“Worth a try, anyway.” Red took a tentative step forward, pulling her tangled braid over her shoulder, untying the bit of twine that kept it bound. Her hair was still damp, wavy from where she’d braided it wet. She shook it loose, lifting her chin to meet the Wolf’s gaze.
“If this is a proposal,” Red said quietly, “my answer is yes.”
He swallowed, a click in his throat, that unreadable light flickering in his eyes. Then he nodded.
The space between them felt cavernous. Eammon moved first, cautiously. He held the dagger out by the hilt. “You first.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “Call it an exercise in trust.”
“You’ll have to sit somewhere.” Red waved her hand at his head. Truly, the man’s height was ridiculous. “I can’t reach.”
A pause— the only place to sit was the bed, and both of them seemed to realize it at the same time, if the sudden widening of eyes was any indication— then Eammon knelt. “Better?”
She nodded, once. Something about his posture, kneeling like a penitent, made her insides unsteady.
His hair was softer than she expected, smelled like coffee and old books. “Did you do this with the others?” Red forced a laugh, but it sounded as nervous as she felt, and her stomach flipped end over end. “How many wives have you had now?”
He was still beneath her hand, his voice low. “Just you.”
So he hadn’t married the other Second Daughters. The fact, inexplicably, made her stomach feel tangled with her spine. “Why not, if the Wilderwood is trying to re-create what it had?”
“Didn’t need to.” He shifted on his knees. “The Wilderwood re-created it in other ways.”
It did nothing to untangle her stomach from her spinal cord, but it did make her cheeks heat, a flare of irrational embarrassment she was glad he couldn’t see. “Lucky us.”
A low grunt.
Red picked up a lock of hair behind his ear and managed to cut it without bloodshed. “Done.”
Eammon stood gracelessly. His unbound hair fell over his forehead as he held out his hand for the blade.
Red turned, breath shallow as the Wolf’s scarred fingers lightly touched her neck, warm and rough. He plucked up a lock of hair from the same place she had, brushed the rest of it over her opposite shoulder. A soft snick, and a length of dark gold shone in his hand.
“Does it matter how we tie it?”
“We have to do it together, but that’s it, far as I know.” His eyes flickered to hers, a tentative curve to his lips. “This is my first marriage, remember?”
Further stomach tangling.
After a moment of hesitation, Eammon pulled the white bark from his pocket. Messily, they wound the strands around the shard of the sentinel tree. Their hands kept bumping together.
Something else happened as they wound their hair around the bark. Red . . . loosened. If her chest was a knot, her rib cage made of tangled rope, it felt like that knot unraveled, an inverse reaction to what she and Eammon did with their hair. The splinter of magic coiled in her center felt lighter somehow. Less like something lying in wait to wreak havoc, more like a tool she could take hold of if needed.
Eammon had said that a marriage might make her power more manageable. It seemed he’d been right. Binding herself to him— to the Wilderwood he ruled— made the shard of it she carried feel more like an integrated part of her, rather than something she had to cage.
When it was done, the pale bark was almost completely hidden in gold and black. Red looked toward the window and the forest outside, not sure what she expected to see. “So this will make the Wilderwood better?”
“It should.” Eammon pocketed the wood shard. He flexed his hands, once, as if searching the atmosphere for a change. “The sentinels want you . . . closer.”
“Marrying you certainly brings me closer.”
A flash of color across his cheekbone again. “That’s the idea.”
“And that’s what holds back the shadow-creatures,” Red said, choosing not to comment on the blush. “The sentinels.”
“Been studying, have we?”
“Fife explained. Reluctantly.”
More expectant silence. Red couldn’t quite cobble together what she wanted to say, how to say it. An apologetic overture didn’t seem right anymore, not with her hair in his fingers. Not when he was her husband.
So when she spoke, it was blunt. “Do you still want me to try to use the magic?”
His eyes snapped to hers.
“Because I will.” Shadows flickered over the walls. She watched them instead of Eammon. “It scares me, and nothing good has ever come from it. But I think us . . . what we just did will make it easier. And if it will help you— help the forest— I’ll try.”
Eammon said nothing, but his hand arched toward the wooden shard in his pocket, the token of their binding. “You don’t have to,” he murmured. “I don’t want to make you do something you don’t want to do. Anything you don’t want to do. This is entirely your choice.”
“And I’ve made it.” Too far in to back out now. “If you can teach me to use the Wilderwood’s magic, I want to learn.”
Firelight carved hollows into his angular face, flickered in his eyes and made them honey-colored. No green in them, which relieved her more than she quite understood. “Meet me in the tower in the courtyard when you wake.” A pause, and his next words were quiet. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t hurt you. Or anyone else. I promise, you have nothing to be afraid of.”
She nodded. The air between them felt like something solid, something that could be shoved out of the way.
Eammon opened the door into the twilight-painted corridor. As he stepped over the threshold, he pointed at the fire. “No need to worry about dousing that before you sleep. The wood won’t burn out or let the flames move to anything else.”
“How did you manage that?”
He gave her a wry grin. “Perhaps that will be our lesson tomorrow.” Her new husband turned and walked into the darkness of the hall, leaving her alone in her room. “Good night, Redarys.”
Chapter Twelve
R ed’s breath was one more cloud in the fog-covered courtyard, spiraling from her lips in the chill air. She craned her neck upward as she followed the wall to the tower. From this angle, the windows at its top lined up perfectly, forming gaps of sky in the stone.
The moss-covered door creaked slightly as she pushed it open, startlingly loud in the silence of the Wilderwood. Beyond it, a staircase climbed up into darkness. Overgrowth lined the walls, leaves and pale blooms papering the gray rock in shades of white and green. Unlike the Keep, it didn’t seem sinister here— part of the structure, rather than an invader. Still, she took care not to touch it.
The staircase spiraled upward far enough to make her winded before finally ending right in the center of a circular room. No greenery here, but four equidistant windows set into the curved wall with flowers and vines carved into their sills, a wooden imitation. A merrily crackling hearth stood between two of them, filled with wood that didn’t char, and a small wooden table flanked with two chairs sat near enough to feel its warmth. The midnight-blue ceiling rose to a point over the central stairs, where a paper sun hung, crafted in layered
gold and yellow.
Painted silver constellations spangled out from the paper sun, exquisitely detailed— the Sisters, hands stretching from north to south to meet in the center; the Leviathan, cutting through the western sky; the Plague Stars, clustered together above the rough outline of a ship. According to legend, the Plague Stars had appeared to guide the vessel carrying traders infected with the Great Plague back to the mainland. The stars had snuffed out the moment those afflicted were suddenly, miraculously cured.
“This is beautiful,” Red murmured, turning in a circle with her eyes still on the ceiling.
A brief snort snapped her attention away. Eammon leaned against the windowsill behind her, one hand in his pocket, the other clutching a steaming mug. His hair was tied back, the short tuft where she’d cut it for their thread bond sticking out awkwardly behind his ear. “The handiwork of the Wilderwood. The tower and the Keep sprang up when Gaya and Ciaran made their bargain, fully furnished.” He sipped from his cup. “A housewarming present. Ciaran built the rest of the Keep around it.”
Ciaran. Gaya. He never referred to them as his parents, only by their names or titles. Turning them into distant people who didn’t require warmth.
She knew the feeling.
Red went to the hearth and chafed her hands. The windows had no panes, and the room was as cold as the forest outside. “So the Wilderwood made these?” She gestured to the paintings on the ceiling.
“No.” Eammon walked to the table in the center of the room and poured more coffee from a waiting kettle. Another mug sat next to it; he looked to Red, eyes a question. At her nod, he filled the second mug, too. “Gaya painted them.”
Her eyes turned to the constellations again, an odd, weighty feeling in her chest.
“Any particular reason to meet here?” She picked up the mug he’d poured her, wrapping her hands around its warmth. “Pardon the observation, but you don’t seem to like it much.”
He made a gruff noise that might’ve been a laugh. Eammon sank into one of the chairs, tipping it back on two legs. “Because this place was made by the Wilderwood, so its magic is stronger here.”
The knot of her magic still felt looser this morning, teased apart, untangled. The result of their quick thread-bond marriage, she knew, but now that she turned her thoughts to it, some of the ease might come from the tower, too. Blooming along with the flowers on the walls as she moved up the stairwell.
Still, the thought of using it hollowed a pit in her stomach.
The coffee was strong, and bitter enough to make Red pull a face. “Could the Wilderwood’s magic manage to conjure up some cream?”
“Afraid not. I’ll add it to the supply list.” Eammon took a long drink of his own. “For all its force, the Wilderwood’s power is rather limited. It can affect growing things, or anything else connected to the forest, but that’s about it.”
“It can heal wounds, too.”
“Only if the wounded person is connected to the Wilderwood.”
She tightened her grip on her cup to keep from touching her face, the place along her cheekbone where the thorn had scored her a week ago. “You didn’t really heal it, though,” she said. “You just . . . took it. It showed up on you.”
“Pain has to go somewhere.” The chair legs creaked as Eammon leaned back. “It’s a balance. The vine that lights the Keep will hold the flames without burning, but it won’t grow. Neither will the branches the firewood was cut from. Wounds can’t just go away— they’re transferred.”
They didn’t look at each other, but the awareness was solid as a stare. Red took another sip of her bitter coffee.
“Your power must work similarly to mine,” Eammon said to the ceiling. “Since they’re the same thing. Mostly.”
Her brow furrowed. “But when I can’t keep it contained, I don’t . . . like how you . . .” She trailed off, not sure how to phrase it delicately.
“You don’t change like I do.” Quiet but matter-of-fact.
“No,” she murmured. “I don’t.”
A visible swallow down the column of his throat. “My ties to the Wilderwood are stronger than yours,” Eammon said. “And when I use its power, it . . . takes part of me away. The changes fade, usually, but it’s still unpleasant. And some things linger.” He shrugged, stilted. “That’s why I use blood, sometimes. It works the same way the magic does, without opening me up to quite as much alteration.”
The last word came out bitter. Still looking at the ceiling, Eammon rubbed at the spot above his wristbone where she’d seen bark edge through his skin.
Red nodded, sliding her gaze from his silhouette to the wavering reflection in her coffee mug. “So I won’t change, because my magic isn’t as strong as yours.”
“Exactly. Not as strong, and more chaotic.”
“To put it mildly.”
“We should focus on control, then. Channeling only a small amount at a time, directed to a specific task.”
Nerves sparked, sending her floundering for some distraction to stall the inevitable. Red sank into the chair across from him, mug clenched tightly between her palms. “Why does the magic affect growing things?”
“When Ciaran and Gaya made their bargain, the sentinels rooted in them. Became part of them.” The belabored chair legs squeaked as Eammon leaned back, reciting history to the paper sun. Willing to let her put this off, if having every question answered would make her more comfortable. “So the Wolf and the Second Daughter can control the things of the earth, the things with roots. They’re under the sentinels’ influence, and thus under ours.”
Her mind riffled through all the times she’d had to steel herself against her seed of magic, miles and miles from the Wilderwood. “For having such a limited purview, the sentinels’ influence seems to stretch rather far.”
“I wouldn’t know. It’s been centuries since I could leave this damn forest.” The four chair legs clattered to the ground. “It traps Wardens better than it does shadow-creatures.”
“Wardens?”
“The words for ‘Warden’ and ‘Wolf’ are remarkably similar in most of the continent’s ancient languages.”
“There has to be more to it than that.”
“Ciaran was a huntsman.” Eammon stood and strode across the room to one of the vine-carved windows. A small ceramic planter sat there, green ivy curling over the edge. He picked it up and brought it to the table, bracing his hands on either side. “Before he ran off with Gaya, his proudest achievement was slaying a giant, monstrous wolf that prowled at the edges of his village— a child of one of the things trapped in the Shadowlands, before they all died off. They called him the Wolf long before he came here, and the word for ‘Warden’ wasn’t different enough for them to stop.” He flashed her a sharp smile and slid the ivy in her direction. “To be honest, I prefer Wolf.”
“Maybe people wouldn’t think you a monster if you were called the Warden instead.”
“Maybe I don’t mind them thinking I’m a monster.”
It was meant to sound fierce, and on the surface it did. But there was something about the depth of belief in it that plucked a chord in her chest. Red lightly twisted one of the ivy tendrils around her finger.
Eammon sat properly in his chair this time, no precarious tipping backward. “We’ll keep it simple.” He gestured to the ivy. “You’re going to make that grow.”
Red slid her half-drunk mug to the side, hoping he couldn’t see the tremor in her hands as she settled them on either side of the pot. “How exactly do I do this without calamity, then? We made the magic easier to manage, but I’m still not exactly confident.”
The mention of their marriage, oblique as it was, made their eyes dart away from each other.
“Focus your intention,” Eammon said after a laden moment. “Once you have it clearly in your mind, open up to the forest’s power. It’s . . . intuitive.” He looked up from his scarred knuckles to her face. “It’s part of you.”
Part of you. She thought of the
changes magic wrought in him, the bark and the green eyes, the height and layered voice. A scale tipping back and forth, man to forest, bone to branch.
The bloom of magic in her middle stretched upward. Something she could wield, if she was brave enough. If she could swallow down the memories of the times before—
Red closed her eyes and gave a slight shake of her head, like those thoughts were something she could physically dispel. “I’m ready.”
“I’m here.”
The quiet reassurance soothed some of the anxious tension in her limbs. Letting out a long, slow breath, she tried to quiet her racing thoughts, to focus her intention. Growth, roots digging deeper into the soil as ivy leaves spread wide.
When it was clear in her mind, she reached for her power. Tentative, the barest touch, but it opened like a flower.
And for a brief, gleaming moment, Red thought she could do it.
But memory was a current, and the deliberate touch of power pulled her under, drowned her in panic. All of it ran behind her eyes like it was happening over again: an eruption of branch and root and thorn, blood spraying, rib cages shattered by sharp trunks, Neve slumping to the ground—
“Red!” She heard it through a haze, distant as shouting into a cyclone. All she could see was black forest, black sky, all she could taste was soil and blood. Distantly, she felt her spine locking up, her throat working for air that wouldn’t come, her body shutting itself down in a final attempt to keep her magic shackled.
A strong grip on her shoulders, turning her to wide amber eyes. The Wolf’s warm, scarred hands against her cheeks. “Red, let go!”
For the Wolf Page 14
