The Wilderwood still seemed wrung out, exhausted and pushed to its limits. But when Red twitched her fingers, the branches quivered.
Eammon bared his teeth. He cut the air with his hand—go back— but Red shook her head. Another step closer, power coalescing—
And she stepped on a twig.
The crack could’ve been a spine, for how loud it sounded. Red
froze, hand outstretched toward Eammon. For the first time since she’d known him, the Wolf looked terrified.
The creature raised his nose to the wind. Sniffing. “And oh, here it is.” The shadow-bloated head swiveled to face Red. “Fresh blood.”
The word was a lunge, and the seconds stretched too long, her heartbeats coming in measured ticks. Beat and the creature launched in her direction, beat and its dark-rotting hand raised, beat and the once-human nails elongated to claws.
Beat and Eammon sprang in front of her. The claws raked him instead, slicing through fabric and flesh.
Magic rioted in her middle, the sight of Eammon’s blood finally giving space to memories of all the ways it could go wrong. It shivered in her grip, the ease their marriage had bought slipping away as Eammon crumpled before her. Magic wasn’t the only way to heal the breach, though, and the glint of the knife as it fell from his hand to the ground was a sharp, clear reminder even as her magic slipped toward chaos.
Damn his rules. Red grabbed the dagger and slit her palm.
Her hand slammed to the dirt, blood seeping into the forest floor. Her intention was a scream in her throat, reverberating through every part of her, too focused to be ignored. “Stop!”
The shadow-pit obeyed.
It wasn’t slow, not this time. The edges of the rotted ground shifted backward, surging toward the roots of the sentinel, disappearing beneath them. The tree righted itself with a boom, shock waves skittering over the forest floor. Distantly, Red was aware of those people at the fringes falling backward, unable to keep their balance on unsteady ground.
A moment of silence, of stillness. The creature watched her with wide eyes, still swimming in shadow. Eammon looked from the bloody dagger to Red’s hands subsumed in dirt, horror on his face.
And something in Red . . . shifted. The tide of her magic turned, no longer rushing out but rushing in.
Rushing in, and bringing the Wilderwood with it.
Something slithered against her hand in the dirt. A tendril of root, working its way into the cut in her skin. The forest laying claim. It had a taste of her, and wanted more.
If you give the Wilderwood blood, it won’t stop there.
Pain brought a snarl to her mouth, but the sound that ripped through the clearing didn’t come from her. It came from Eammon.
He lurched from the ground, his scarred and leaking hands closing around her shoulders, wrenching her out of the dirt. The slithering feeling of roots against the cut sharpened, then let go as her hands came free of the ground.
Eammon crouched, slamming his hand to the forest floor, still churned with Red’s blood. No new cuts in his skin. Instead, changes, like that day in the library when he healed her cheek: Bark closed around his forearms like vambraces, the veins in his neck and beneath his eyes going green. Emerald ringed his amber irises, until no white was left.
“Leave her,” Eammon growled at the now-healed sentinel, at the surrounding Wilderwood. His voice was layered, resonant, like it echoed through leaves. “This one isn’t yours.”
The Wilderwood shivered. It gave a sound almost like a sigh.
Eammon’s breath came in pants as he collapsed on his knees next to Red. His chest bloomed crimson and green in three stripes, more blood coming as he ripped a strip of fabric from the bottom of his shirt and tied it messily around her hand.
Then he sat still, eyes searching hers as green slowly leached away, wide and terrified and so tired.
A groan split the moment in two. Eammon flinched.
The creature on the sentinel’s roots twitched. Parts of it shrank— the claws that had rent Eammon’s middle contracted back into the shape of a human hand, the milky eyes that had been wide as saucers grew smaller, grew blue. His monstrous height halved, his legs righted themselves, broken bones snapping back together and ripping a scream from his throat. Shadow hissed out of the cut on his arm.
The half-man, half-monster creature collapsed on the roots, twitching, crying. She’d healed the breach, but not him, not completely.
Red turned away.
“We can take it from here.” The man who’d caught her when she and Fife first careened into the clearing stepped from the cover of trees. His hair was snowy blond, braided elaborately over his shoulder and into his long beard, paler than his white skin. Silver rings glinted in its length, a style Red had seen only in history books. The others stepped from the shadows, all dressed in the same greens and grays.
The man looked to Red, face inscrutable. “Thank you.”
Red managed a nod. Without the distraction of rushing forest and saving Eammon, the sight of other humans in the Wilderwood was enough to shock her to silence.
Now that the breach was safely closed, Fife joined the rest as they gathered sticks from between the trees, lashing them together to make a rough sling. One of them pulled a roll of bandages from his pack. “Careful not to touch the cut,” Fife cautioned. “It needs to be bound.”
Eammon stood on unsteady feet. “I’ll do it.”
His brow arched at Eammon’s wounds, but Fife offered him the bandages. Slowly, like every step was pained, Eammon approached the man on the roots. He swallowed hard before kneeling to wrap his shadow-infected arm.
Sling made, Fife stepped back to Red, still seated on the ground. Blood seeped through the scrap of Eammon’s shirt wrapped around her palm. I keep ruining his clothes, she thought distantly.
“These are the villagers?” Her voice was hoarse as she pushed up, standing on numb legs. “From the Edge?”
Fife nodded, arms crossed and eyes narrowed.
“And they’re the descendants of the explorers who went beyond the Wilderwood. Before it closed up and wouldn’t let anyone but a Second Daughter pass.” She shook her head. “The official records say the explorers all died. None ever sent word.”
“They couldn’t.” Fife shrugged. “Once the Wilderwood closed up, they were stuck behind it, with no way to return or contact the outside world. They grew old, had children, who in turn grew old and had children. Now there’s a whole country of them back there, providing entirely for themselves.”
She eyed the people ringed around the clearing, all watching Eammon with anxious faces, all dressed like they’d stepped out of the past. “And you said they were looking for a weak spot? What does that mean?”
“A place the Wilderwood would let them pass through.”
Red snorted weakly. “It would appear they found one.”
“They usually do,” Fife said. “The Wilderwood is more relaxed about the northern border. Has less to guard from, I guess. Eammon, Lyra, and I can even leave the forest from that side, though we can’t go far, and it’s not exactly pleasant.” His jaw clenched. “But the Valleydan side is locked tight, and that’s the one that matters.”
The villagers loaded the wounded man into the sling. He moaned softly, still caught between human and monster. Eammon gave him one long look before turning to the man with the rings in his hair, presumably the leader. “Send word when you can.” Despite the wounds in Eammon’s middle, his voice was steady. “Do you have somewhere to keep him?”
“Tavern basement has worked in the past. It’s built strong.” The man shook his head, silver rings clinking. “Bormain helped build it. Damn, Bormain was drinking in it two days ago.”
“Was this a planned expedition?” Eammon’s question was cold.
The man rubbed a hand over his mouth, looking away from the Wolf. With a sigh, he nodded, once.
“It’s pointless, Valdrek.” There was anger in Eammon’s tone, but it was thin, like he didn
’t have the energy for it. “Even if it lets you in on the northern side, you can’t get all the way through.”
“Why exactly is the forest still so weak? It should be strengthening, beginning to open its borders again, not closing them up in case the monsters rattle their cage.” Valdrek jerked his head at Red. “Isn’t that the point of you getting your new blood?”
“It’s Lady Wolf.” Eammon’s eyes could cut. “Not new blood.”
Pin-drop quiet. “I see.” Valdrek’s gaze darted from Eammon to Red. “Well. That’s new. Congratulations, Wolf.”
Next to her, Fife’s brow furrowed, then rose. “Oh.”
Red’s cheeks burned. She didn’t realize a title came along with her new marriage.
Eammon walked toward them, tall and straight, but Red saw the white line of effort his mouth became, the way his hand kept twitching to his side.
“That doesn’t look good,” Fife observed.
“It looks worse than it feels.” It was almost certainly a lie, but Eammon’s tone didn’t invite argument. When Red looked to Fife, he gave a slight shake of his head. Prying would be pointless.
“I’ll go on ahead, then. Tell Lyra everything is taken care of.” Fife jogged toward the tree line, muttering unintelligibly, but Red caught the phrase self-martyring bastard in there somewhere.
Pain laced Eammon’s features. The ragged hem of his shirt showed a stripe of blood-muddied skin. He opened his mouth, closed it again, throat working an empty swallow. Red, with nothing to feed into the waiting silence, just pressed her lips together.
Behind them, the shadow-infected man muttered nonsense under his breath. Red looked back over her shoulder, and his blind, milky eyes stared right at them.
“Solmir says hello, Wolf,” Bormain murmured.
Chapter Fourteen
E ammon stood frozen, staring wide-eyed across the churn of dirt and forest debris the clearing had become with a look halfway between terror and rage. Then his hand locked around Red’s elbow, vise-like, and he led her into the trees, so fast she almost stumbled.
Solmir. It took Red a moment to place the name, to find its meaning among the mental images it conjured of candles and stone. When she did, her steps stuttered.
Valchior, Byriand, Malchrosite, Calryes, Solmir. The Five Kings.
Her mouth opened to ask Eammon why in all the shadows Bormain would’ve mentioned one of the Five Kings, but her muffled sound of pain eclipsed the question. Her hand felt like it was on fire beneath the makeshift wrapping they’d made of his shirt, and Red’s knees buckled as she clutched it to her chest.
Soft shushing noises, warm hands unwrapping her palm. The cut she’d made was a line of livid scarlet, as if a month of infection had sped through in moments. Pain thrummed with her pulse, an echo of it hammering just below her elbow, around the ring of her Bargainer’s Mark.
One thought, fleeting but clear: The Wilderwood isn’t pleased with me. She’d stopped something from happening, something it wanted. The same thing it’d wanted four years ago, the first time her blood met the forest floor.
Eammon had stopped it then, and he’d stopped it again now, and the Wilderwood was growing more and more impatient with them both.
Those warm hands covered hers. A breath, and the stabbing pain was gone, both in her hand and in her Mark. Another slice opened Eammon’s lacerated palm, a twin to the one she’d cut on her own, turning heart and lifelines into messy crossroads. A curse gnashed through his teeth, his uncut hand pressing against his forearm, where his Bargainer’s Mark was hidden beneath a torn and bloody sleeve.
Taking her pain, again. Hurting for her, again.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Red murmured, suddenly embarrassed. She pushed herself to stand, though her legs wobbled, and turned over her palm to see whole, unbroken skin. Rusty streaks of blood crusted on her wrists.
“I was going to say the same thing.” Eammon paced away from her, the rush of pain he’d taken apparently manageable now, one hand on the jut of his hip and the other running shakily through his hair. It had all come unbound and hung down his back like an ink spill. “What in all the shadows did you not understand about staying in the tower, Redarys?”
Red crossed her arms, the skin he’d healed smooth and somehow tender. “I saw you.”
“You saw me?”
“I had a . . . a vision, I guess.”
His brow arched incredulously. “A vision.”
“It was like that first time. The night I cut my hand, bled in the forest, but stronger. More vivid. Like our connection is . . .” She trailed off and turned her head, cheeks suddenly burning. Her fingers picked at the fabric of her sleeve covering her Mark. “Like it’s deeper now, after the thread bond.”
Calling it a thread bond rather than a marriage was supposed to feel less awkward, even though they meant the same thing. Still, her tongue nearly stumbled over it, this fragile thing she was never supposed to have.
Silence hung heavy in the cold air. Finally, Eammon sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “Well,” he murmured, “that’s something.”
Red’s lips twisted.
“So this”— his hand waved between them— “makes it so we can see each other.” A snort. “In times of distress.”
“Apparently.”
“Wonderful.” Eammon rubbed at his eyes again. “What did you see, exactly?”
“Your hands.” Red untangled a leaf from her hair, grateful for something to look at other than the Wolf. “Like last time. But also Bormain, and the sentinel.” She paused. “That’s why I knew you needed help. I saw you cut yourself, and saw that it wasn’t working.”
The leaf Red freed from her hair twisted to the ground, brittle brown brushed with green. When it touched the forest floor, the color slowly leached away.
“I suppose we should try to keep the distress to a minimum, then,” Eammon said, eyes on the leaf.
“Rather difficult around here.”
“It’s the best I can do at the moment.” Eammon turned, the movement twisting the wounds in his middle. A curse gritted through his teeth, blood and sap seeping into the fabric of his shirt. He leaned back against a tree, like he suddenly couldn’t keep himself upright.
“That looks bad, Eammon.”
His eyes darted up at the sound of his name— cheeks coloring, she realized it was the first time she’d addressed him directly with it, in over a week of knowing each other.
Well, he was her husband now. She couldn’t call him Wolf forever.
“Can you heal it?” she asked hurriedly, chasing the echo of his name away. “Like you did my hand?”
“Can’t heal yourself.” His eyes closed, head tilting back against the tree trunk. “Balance, remember? Pain going somewhere?”
Her step forward was tentative, her reach more so. “I could . . .”
“No.” His eyes snapped open. “You could not. You’ve done quite enough for one day, Redarys. Let’s not add further mangling of my insides to the list.”
That stung more than she cared to admit. Red snatched back her hand. “You’d rather I’d left you to be mangled alone, then?”
“Has it occurred to you that I wouldn’t have been mangled if I hadn’t had to protect you?”
“You needed me.”
It hung heavy as an executioner’s ax. The Wolf looked away. “I suppose I did.”
Red arched a sardonic brow, though the tick of her pulse seemed to land a fraction harder. “Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
His rueful laugh turned to a grimace, hand pressing harder against his abdomen. Red peered worriedly at the blood outlining his fingers. “Are you—”
“It’s fine.”
Lips pressed to a tight line, Red directed her attention to the site of her own injury, since he seemed determined to ignore his. “It didn’t hurt when I first cut it,” she mused, flexing her fingers. “Just after.” She paused. “That’s happened before, too.”
The night she’d tried to defy the
Wilderwood, the night of Neve and blood and a vision she didn’t understand. After they’d been collected from the carnage, her hand had felt bathed in flame, a sharp and stabbing pain that couldn’t have come from the thin slice across her palm. The physicians were baffled and didn’t know what to do other than give her watered wine until the pain subsided. It did, eventually, but it took two days.
Eammon shifted, still leaning against the tree. “It’s the Wilderwood,” he said finally. “Something about connecting with it through blood.” The answer seemed truncated, like there should be more tacked onto the end, but the Wolf didn’t offer anything else, face turned slightly away so she could see only the line of his profile.
Red frowned, scrubbing a spot of dried blood off her wrist. “Probably something about it being upset, too.” Meant to be leading, but the only sign that Eammon might take the bait was the bob of his throat as he swallowed. “The Wilderwood doesn’t seem pleased that we haven’t let it do . . . whatever it is it wants to do.”
The Wolf still didn’t look at her. “That, too.”
Hands mostly clean, Red crossed her arms, arched a brow. “Does it hurt you that badly? Every time?”
“It used to.” With a grimace, Eammon pushed away from the tree trunk, took a lurching step forward. “Come on.”
Red fell into step behind him, and for a minute, the only sound in the Wilderwood was the unsteady tromp of their boots. “He mentioned the name of one of the Five Kings,” she said finally, because she couldn’t think of a way to finesse her confusion into delicate questions. “Solmir. The one who was supposed to marry Gaya. Why?”
Ahead of her, Eammon half turned to fix her with one amber eye. A long sigh, then he pivoted to weave through the underbrush again. “How much do you know about what’s in the Shadowlands?”
“Nothing. Much like every-damn-thing else, I know nothing other than the myths, and thus far, it seems like those are mostly horseshit.”
For the Wolf (The Wilderwood Books Book 1) Page 16
