Red frowned up at her predecessor. It was a deft bit of work, what made Gaya revered and the Wolf reviled, a delicate filling-in of unknown history. The Five Kings had disappeared in the Wolf’s territory, therefore he was to blame. No one quite knew what he was supposed to be accomplishing by trapping the Kings— more power, maybe. Perhaps he was just doing as monsters do, having become one himself as the forest he was tied to twisted and darkened. The Order said that Gaya had been killed trying to rescue the Kings from wherever Ciaran had hidden them, but there was really no way to know, was there? All they knew was that the Kings were gone, and Gaya was dead.
Stuttering scarlet prayer candles—scarlet for a sacrifice; I guess prayer counts— provided the only light, and it wasn’t enough to read by. But Red knew the words by heart.
The First Daughter is for the throne. The Second Daughter is for the Wolf. And the Wolves are for the Wilderwood.
The candlelight flickered over the carvings on the wall. Five figures to her right, vaguely masculine— the Five Kings. Valchior, Byriand, Malchrosite, Calryes, and Solmir. Three figures on the left-hand wall, carved with a more delicate hand. The Second Daughters— Kaldenore, Sayetha, Merra.
Red brushed her fingers over the blank space next to Merra’s rough outline. Someday, when she was nothing but bones in the forest, they’d carve her here.
A breeze filtered through the open stone door, ruffling the gauzy black veil behind Gaya’s statue. The second room of the Shrine. Red had been there only once before— a year ago, her nineteenth birthday, kneeling as the Order priestesses prayed that her Mark would appear quickly. She found little reason to linger in places of worship.
Still, a year hadn’t been enough to dim the memory of the white branches lining the walls, cuttings from Wilderwood trees cast in stone to stand upright. The pale, dead limbs never moved, but Red remembered the strange sense of them reaching for her, like ferns and growing things did when she couldn’t keep her splintered magic lashed down and tightly controlled. She’d tasted dirt the whole time the priestesses were praying.
Her fingers picked nervously at the wrinkled fabric of her skirt. She was supposed to enter the second room, supposed to spend this time readying herself to enter the Wilderwood, but the thought of being among those branches again made her blood run winter-cold.
“Red?”
A familiar figure stood in the doorway to the garden, outlined in morning glow against the Shrine’s gloom. Neve hurried toward her, a newly lit prayer candle guttering in her hand.
Confusion bloomed in Red’s chest, though it was chased with no small amount of relief. “How did you get in here?” She looked over Neve’s shoulder. “The priestesses—”
“I told them I wouldn’t enter the second room. They didn’t seem happy about it, but they let me through.” A tear broke from Neve’s lashes. She swiped it roughly away. “Red, you can’t do this. There’s no reason for it beyond words on shadow-damned bark.”
Red thought of riding headlong through the night, hair whipping, her sister at her side. She thought of thrown rocks and a fierceness that made her chest ache.
And then she thought of blood. Of violence. Of what coiled beneath her skin, a seed waiting to grow.
That was her reason. Not monsters, not words on bark. The only way to keep her sister safe was to leave her.
There were no words of comfort. Instead she pulled her twin forward, Neve’s forehead notching into her collarbone. Neither of them sobbed, but the silence was almost worse, broken only by hitched breathing.
“You have to trust me.” Red murmured it into her sister’s hair. “I know what I’m doing. This is how it has to be.”
“No.” Neve shook her head, black hair matting against Red’s cheek. “Red, I know . . . I know you blame yourself for what happened that night. But you couldn’t have known we were being followed—”
“Don’t.” Red squeezed her eyes shut. “Please don’t.”
Neve’s shoulders stiffened beneath Red’s arms, but she went quiet. Finally, she pulled back. “You’ll die. If you go to the Wolf, you’ll die.”
“You don’t know that.” Red swallowed, trying unsuccessfully to level the knot in her throat. “We don’t know what happened to the others.”
“We know what happened to Gaya.”
Red had no response for that.
“Clearly, you’re determined to go.” Neve tried to raise her chin, but it trembled too much. “And clearly, I can’t stop you.”
She turned on her heel toward the door, swept past the carved Five Kings and Second Daughters, past the guttering candles of useless prayers. More than one blew out in her wake.
Numbly, Red picked up a candle and a match from the small table. It took a few curses before the wick finally caught, singeing her fingers. The pain was nearly welcome, a bare thread of feeling weaving past the shell she’d built.
Red slammed her candle into the base of Gaya’s statue. Wax puddled, dripped down the edge of the inscribed bark.
“Shadows damn you,” she whispered, the only prayer she’d make here. “Shadows damn us all.”
Hours later, bathed and perfumed and veiled in crimson, Red was officially blessed as a sacrifice to the Wolf in the Wilderwood.
Courtiers lined the cavernous hall, all dressed in black. More people crowded outside, the citizens of the capital rubbing shoulders with villagers who’d traveled from far and wide for the chance to see a Second Daughter consecrated by the Order.
From Red’s vantage point on the dais at the front of the room, the audience looked like one shapeless mass, something made only of still limbs and eyes for staring.
The dais was circular, and Red sat cross-legged on a black stone altar in its center, surrounded by a ring of priestesses specially chosen for the honor from Temples all over the continent. All wore their traditional white robes with the addition of a white cloak, a deep hood pulled up to shadow their faces. They stood with their backs to Red. The priestesses who hadn’t been chosen as attendants wore cloaks, too, a solemn row of them sitting directly in front of the dais.
In contrast, Red’s gown was as scarlet as the one she’d worn to the ball, but shapeless this time— in any other circumstances, it would be comfortable. Her hair was unbound beneath a matching bloodcolored veil, large enough to cover her whole body and spill over the edges of the altar.
White, for piety. Black, for absence. Scarlet, for sacrifice.
In the row behind the priestesses, Neve sat between Arick and Raffe, poised at the edge of her seat. Red’s veil made all of them look bloody.
The Valleydan High Priestess, the highest religious authority on the continent, stood directly in front of Red. Her cloak had a longer train than any of the other priestesses’, and to Red, it almost looked a brighter white. She faced the altar, back to the court, the train of her cloak dripping over the edge of the dais to gather in a puddle of white fabric.
Overflowing piety. A high, skittering laugh wanted to lodge in Red’s throat; she swallowed it back.
Eyes hidden in the deep shadows of her hood, the High Priestess stepped forward. Zophia had held the position for as long as Red could remember, her hair long devoid of whatever color it’d once been, her face grizzled with an age that could be determined only as old. She held a white branch in her hands with all the gentleness of a mother cradling a newborn, and passed it off to the priestess at her right with the same care.
Though stoic, most of the other priestesses at least had some sort of emotion on their face— joy, for most, kept subtle but still there. Not so for the priestess now holding the branch shard. Cold blue eyes beneath a sweep of flame-colored hair watched Red with an expression reminiscent of someone observing an insect. Her gaze didn’t waver as Zophia reached forward and lifted Red’s veil, gathering the yards of fabric in her hands.
The fear she’d steeled herself against rushed in when the veil lifted, like it had been a sort of armor. Red’s fingers clutched at the edge of the altar, nai
ls close to breaking against the stone.
“We honor your sacrifice, Second Daughter,” Zophia whispered. She stepped back and raised her arms toward the ceiling. All around, the Order mirrored her in a wave, starting at the front of the dais and cresting around to the back in a sea of raised hands.
For a brief, shining moment, Red thought of running, of forgetting about the splinter of magic that lived in her heart and trying to save herself instead of everyone else. How far could she get if she launched herself from this altar, tangled in crimson gauze? Would they wrestle her back? Knock her out? Would the Wolf care if she arrived bruised?
She dug her nails into the stone again. She felt one split.
“Kaldenore, of House Andraline,” the High Priestess announced to the ceiling, beginning the litany of Second Daughters. “Sent in Year Two Hundred and Ten of the Binding.”
Kaldenore, no blood relation, born of the same House as Gaya. She’d been a child when the Wolf brought Gaya’s body to the edge of the forest, when the monsters burst from the Wilderwood a year later— a storm of shadowy things, by eyewitness accounts, shape-shifting bits of darkness that could take whatever form they chose. By the time Kaldenore’s Mark appeared, the monsters had been haunting the northern villages for nearly ten years, with reports of them sometimes getting as far as Floriane and Meducia.
No one knew what the Mark meant, not at first. But one night, Kaldenore was found sleepwalking barefoot toward the Wilderwood, as if compelled.
After that, things had fallen together, the words on the bark in the Shrine and the meaning of Gaya’s death becoming clear. They’d sent Kaldenore to the Wilderwood. And the monsters disappeared, faded away like shadows.
“Sayetha, of House Thoriden. Sent in Year Two Hundred and Forty of the Binding.”
Another name, another tragedy. Sayetha’s family was new to power and mistakenly believed the tithe of the Second Daughter applied to only Gaya’s line. They were wrong. Valleyda was locked into its trade no matter who sat on the throne.
“Merra, of House Valedren. Sent in Year Three Hundred of the Binding.”
She, at least, was a blood ancestor. The Valedrens took over after the last Thoriden Queen produced no heir. Merra was born forty years after Sayetha was sent to the Wilderwood, while Sayetha’s birth was only ten years after Kaldenore left.
“Redarys, of House Valedren. Sent in year Four Hundred of the Binding.” The High Priestess seemed to raise her hands higher, the branch clutched in her fist casting jagged shadows. Her eyes dropped from her reaching fingers, met Red’s. “Four hundred years since our gods bound the monsters away. Three hundred and fifty since they disappeared, bound away themselves through the Wolf’s treachery. Tomorrow, when the sacrifice has reached twenty years, the same age Gaya was when first bound to the Wolf and Wood, we send her consecrated, clad in white and black and scarlet. We pray it is enough for the return of our gods. We pray it is enough to keep darkness from our doorsteps.”
Red’s heartbeat was a staccato pounding in her ears. She sat still as the stone altar, still as the statue in the Shrine. The effigy they wanted her to be.
“May you not flinch from your duty.” Zophia’s clear voice was a clarion call, sweetly resonant. “May you meet your fate with dignity.”
Red tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry.
Zophia’s eyes were cold. “May your sacrifice be deemed enough.”
Silence in the chamber.
The High Priestess dropped her arms, taking the white branch back from the red-haired priestess. Another priestess came forward, holding a small bowl of dark ashes. Gently, Zophia dipped one of the tines of the branch into the bowl, then drew it across Red’s forehead, leaving a black mark from temple to temple.
The bark was warm. Red tensed every muscle in her body to keep from shuddering.
“We mark you bound,” she said quietly. “The Wolf and the Wilderwood will have their due.”
Chapter Three
T he court set out at sunrise, packed into lacquered carriages for the short trip to the Wilderwood. Red’s led the way. Other than the driver, she rode alone.
One scuffed leather bag sat at her feet, packed to the brim with books. Red wasn’t sure why she’d brought them, but they sat against her like an anchor, keeping her tethered to her aching muscles and still-beating heart. Other than the clothes on her back, the bag was the only thing she was taking into the Wilderwood. At least she’d be prepared on the off chance she survived long enough to read.
She’d slipped into the library to pack as the sun rose, pulling her favorite novels and poetry books from the shelf. As she worked, her nightgown’s sleeve fell back from her arm.
The Mark was small. A thread of root beneath the skin, delicately tendriled, circling just below her elbow. When she touched it, the veins in her fingers ran green, and the hedges outside the library window stretched toward the glass.
The pull was subtle, beginning just as her eyes registered the Mark snaking over her arm. Gentle, but inexorable— like a hook was dug into the back of her chest, tugging her gently northward. Reeling her into the trees.
Red squeezed her eyes shut and put her hands to fists, pulling in breath after aching breath. Each one tasted like grave dirt, and that’s what finally made her cry. Wrung out, lying on the floor with books piled around her like a fortress, Red sobbed until the dirt taste turned instead to salt.
Now her face was scrubbed clear, the Mark hidden by the sleeve of the white gown she wore beneath her cloak.
White gown, black sash, red cloak. They’d been delivered to her door last night by a cadre of silent priestesses. She’d thrown the pile into the corner, but when Red woke up this morning, Neve was there, laying them out one by one on the window seat. Smoothing the wrinkles with her palm.
Silently, Neve helped her dress— handing her the white gown to tug over her head, tying the black sash around her waist. The cloak came last, heavy and warm and colored like blood. When every piece was in place, they’d stood still and quiet, staring at their reflections in Red’s mirror.
Neve left without a word.
In the carriage, Red pulled the edges of the cloak tighter around herself. She couldn’t keep her sister close, but she could keep this.
The world rolled past her window. Northern Valleyda was hills and valleys and open vistas, as if the Wilderwood allowed no trees but its own. When she and Neve stole the horses and fled north the night of their sixteenth birthday, she remembered being awed by the emptiness. She’d felt like a falling star on a clear night, pelting through the dark and the cold.
There were villagers by the road sometimes, quietly watching the procession pass. She was probably supposed to wave, but Red stared straight ahead, the world cut to the edges of her scarlet hood. The Mark thrummed on her arm, the tug of it making all her insides feel unstable and shaky.
The road stopped well before the Wilderwood— none but the Second Daughter could enter, and no one else would want to try, so there was no reason to make the way easy. A bump as the carriage wheels rolled into frosted grass, crossing into some borderland belonging to neither Red nor the Wolf.
Red’s limbs moved nearly of their own accord. She gathered her skirts, slung her bag of books over her shoulder. She stepped down carefully. She didn’t cry.
The driver turned the horses around as soon as Red was free of the carriage, without a second glance. A strange hum emanated from the edge of the forest, repellent and beckoning at once. Pulling her forward, warning everyone else to stay back.
The array of carriages behind her ringed the road like beads on a necklace, the line of them almost reaching the village. Everyone who’d traveled to see the tithe paid, waiting silently for the job to be done.
Ahead, the Wilderwood towered, casting shadows on the frost-limned ground. Bare branches stretched into fog, so tall she couldn’t see their endings. Trunks bent and twisted like frozen dancers, and the bits of sky caught between them seemed darker than they shoul
d, already shaded twilight. The trees grew in a straight, exact line of demarcation from side to side as far as the eye could see, a firm boundary between there and here.
She’d been given no instruction on what to do next, but it seemed simple enough. Slip between the trees. Disappear.
Red took a step before she had the conscious thought, the forest drawing her like a leaf on a current. A sharp breath as she planted her feet. The Wilderwood would have her in moments, but shadows damn her, she’d set the terms of her own surrender.
“Red!”
Neve’s voice cracked the quiet. She climbed from her carriage, almost stumbling on the hem of her black gown. Sunlight caught the edge of the silver circlet in her hair as she marched over the field, determination blazing on her face.
For the first time she could remember, Red prayed, prayed to Gaya or the Five Kings or whoever might be listening. “Help her,” she muttered through numb lips. “Help her to move on.”
Whatever remained of Red’s life waited beyond the trees, but Neve’s was here. The thought was sharp and strange-shaped, that for the first time since their conception, she and her twin would both be alone.
Another figure emerged from the carriage behind Neve. Red’s stomach dropped, thinking it’d be Arick or Raffe, the three of them launching one last effort to change the unchangeable. But when the figure made its slow way around the carriage, head held high, it wasn’t Arick.
Mother.
Red favored her mother in appearance. The same honey-gold hair, the same sharp cheekbones, a breadth to their hips and breasts that twig-slender Neve didn’t share. Watching her mother cross the frost-covered field was almost like looking in a mirror, watching her own sacrifice.
The thought felt like it should mean something.
Neve reached her before their mother did, her breath the rattle of a sob tenuously caged. She pulled Red close, thin hands gripping her shoulders.
“I’ll see you again,” she whispered. “I’ll find a way. I promise.”
Her tone waited for an answer. But Red didn’t want to lie.
For the Wolf (The Wilderwood Books Book 1) Page 3
