The sound was quiet. If they weren’t caught in fraught silence of their own, they wouldn’t have heard it— a thin screech, like tearing metal. Red’s teeth snapped together, a low, strange discomfort creeping up from her feet, through her bones.
Eammon’s face blanched. His hand curled around the hilt of his dagger, the other still on her wrist. His eyes went to the pitted, rotten ground as he stepped slightly away from her, moving like prey in a predator’s sight line.
The sound came again, louder. The surface of the pit undulated, something stirring beneath.
“Red.” Nearly a whisper, and Eammon’s eyes were wide. “Run.”
The pit ruptured before she had the chance.
It was darkness solidifying, shooting upward. Different from that first night— not some formless thing cobbling a counterfeit body from bone and shadow. This had a body, a wrong and terrible one, a tube of black scales and clinging rot. The tearing-metal noise came from an open mouth, wide as Eammon was tall, ringed with layers upon layers of carrion-caked teeth. The thing wove from side to side, towering in the air, circular jaws gnashing at the twilight sky.
The eruption tossed her backward, the edges of her vision dark and hazy. Red didn’t come fully back to herself until she felt Eammon beside her, ripping her dagger from her hand. Whether to use it himself or to keep her from it, she didn’t know.
“Go!” He jumped to his feet, whipping around in front of her with his teeth bared, facing the thing that had wrenched itself from the breach. Not a shadow-creature, nothing so insubstantial— one of the other monsters the Shadowlands held?
It seemed taller now, like it’d pulled more of itself free of the hole. Eammon held both daggers in one hand and swiped at the palm of the other, twin slices across a dirt-crusted lifeline. “Red, go!”
She scuttled backward across the ground, boot heels churning up roots and rock. A scream hung in the back of her throat, one she wouldn’t let loose, and her eyes couldn’t leave Eammon. Power curled up from her center, blooming like a vine, nearly solid. Nearly a weapon.
Eammon slammed his sliced hand to the shadow-churned dirt. The monster’s sharp teeth came down, and he backhanded it away, the desperate movement sending blood drops flying. Where they fell, the darkness on the ground healed for a moment, but it was like rain on a house fire, too little and too weak. The thing roared.
Red stopped, hair tangled in branches, teeth set and chest burning. It wasn’t fear that drummed her heartbeat, not anymore— it was anger, anger to see Eammon bleeding himself dry, anger that he had to.
Shatter-edged magic climbed through her veins like ivy.
Every movement was unthinking instinct. Red stood, arched her fingers, and the Wilderwood arched with her, synced to her movements. With a snarl, she thrust her hands forward, the taste of earth in her mouth and green in her veins, gathering every bit of magic she could from the thin thread of it winding through her frame.
The forest followed her lead.
That tearing-metal scream reached a crescendo as vines wrapped the beast’s awful length, squeezing until the gore-caked sides split, opened. The creature whipped from side to side, tangling in reaching branches, ripping itself on thorns grown long and sword-sharp until it fell with a sound like a thunderclap, pieces of it breaking away as it hit the ground, stinking of decay. The parts that landed in the shadow-pit sank slowly down; the parts that landed outside the ring of darkness sat like lumps of meat. Unattached to the whole, rot set in quickly, eating through the flesh like acid.
One more screech, one more thrash, and the monster was gone.
Slowly, Red straightened her fingers, and as she did, the Wilderwood sheathed its weapons. Thorns shrank, branches bent back, vines slithered into the underbrush. The forest settled and was silent.
The shadow-pit still marred the ground, but nothing rippled beneath it. Next to the edge, Eammon slumped on his knees, eyes wide. But then he looked to her, and pushed himself up, and walked across the forest floor like he was a compass needle with her as north star.
Her whole body felt numb. Red nearly swayed toward Eammon’s waiting warmth, caught herself. “What was that?”
“I told you to run.” His bloody hand raised, like he might touch her, then fell away empty. “You don’t know what could’ve happened, you could—”
Red grabbed his sliced hand, jerked it toward her so he would follow. “And leave you alone? You keep asking me to do that, and I won’t, Eammon.”
His eyes on her mouth, his non-bloodied hand curling to touch her cheek, like his body couldn’t keep up with his words. “It’s for your own good.”
“I won’t,” she murmured again, and there was so little space between them that she barely had to move to press her lips to his.
One beat of surprise, both of them frozen. Then they melted together, easy as water running downhill, as breath pulled into waiting lungs.
One of Eammon’s hands gripped her hip, the other coming up to cup the back of her neck. She pulled his bottom lip between her teeth like it was something she could claim; he made a low noise in his throat, arm cinching around her waist, pulling her so close there was no room for light between. Red’s fingers sank into his hair, pulling it loose from its knot to sweep softly against her wrists. When her nails brushed his scalp, his breath hitched.
Red pressed as close as she could, something deep and desperate pulling at her. She’d kissed and more than kissed, but never with this need— like they were two pieces fitting back together, like her edges were meant for his hollows. His fingers dug into her hips, the ground fell away, then her back pressed against tree bark. Her only lucid thought was sharp disappointment when his mouth briefly left hers, and savage satisfaction when it came back.
Then— a harsh breath against her collarbone as Eammon straightened. “No.”
Confusion pushed through the warm muddle of her thoughts. Her feet were on the ground again, and she had no memory of how it happened. Her lips felt tender, his blood was in her hair. Around them, the growth of the forest seemed to arch in their direction, the edges of ferns and leaves greening.
Eammon’s jacket lay on the ground; he bent to pick it up, his back to her. His hand hung by his side, the palm still lacerated, but his fingers bent in and outward, casting off the memory of her skin.
“Why?” Her throat felt tight, only enough space for one word.
He looked back, just once, eyes full of guilt and something else.
“Trust me.”
Eammon swung his jacket over his shoulders, ran a hand through his mussed hair, and turned to march into the Wilderwood. Cheeks burning, Red followed. They stayed carefully apart, and silent.
Later, Red stood at the door to the tower, frowning up into the open windows.
Neither she nor Eammon had spoken when they reached the Keep, though they’d stood in the foyer a moment, silent and watching. Eammon had turned away first, headed toward the library, and Red had watched him until even his shadow was gone.
She’d taken her bag of new clothes up to their room. There were two gowns, a few shirts, and thick leggings, and as Red packed them into the drawer, she’d made up her mind.
Now, standing at the tower door, she still wore Eammon’s shirt.
That first time the mirror had shown her Neve kept tugging at her thoughts, the strange conversation she’d overheard— something about escape, something about weakening. She couldn’t shake the notion it might have something to do with the Wilderwood.
Shoulders set, Red pushed the door open.
The stairs were dark and cold, the room above colder still. Red’s breath fogged as she walked to the mirror against the wall, its surface matte and gray.
She yanked a hair from her braid, touched with dirt from their earlier battle, tangled from Eammon’s hands. Red wound the strand around the whorls of the frame, sat back on her knees, and waited.
For a heartbeat, nothing. Then, that silver shine, that roll of smoke, that feeling of pressi
ng up against a window. The mirror showed one clear figure in a blurred landscape.
Neve.
Her twin sat on a bench, staring at something in her hand. A flower, large as a dinner plate. A twitch of motion, and the flower wilted, petals sagging, brown decay threading through them.
Neve dropped the bloom, peering at her palm. Crystals of frost clung to the edges of her fingers, and across her hand, a slash bisected life and love and heart lines, not quite scabbed over. The veins in her wrist shaded dark before clearing, quick enough to almost be a trick of the light.
Even in the suspended state the mirror left her in, Red’s stomach dropped. Something about Neve’s hand— the cold, the bleeding line— echoed her own magic. An inverse, a dark reflection.
“The more trees we pull out of the Wilderwood, the more power we can harness from the Shadowlands. And the weaker the forest’s hold will become.” The voice was as blurry as the figure it came from, barely clear enough to make out the words. Red could see only a flash of white, a smudge of auburn.
“And she should be able to escape?” Neve glanced at her companion. “The Shrine is full of these experiments, Kiri, and yet my sister still isn’t here.”
“That is not our only goal, Neverah.” Exasperated, like this had been repeated over and over. “And we should exercise caution. If she comes—”
“When she comes.”
No response.
More smoke, and the mirror was flat and gray again.
Red’s breath burned when she pulled it in, like she’d been sprinting rather than sitting. When she stood, her knees creaked against the cold.
The curl of unease in her gut had been right. Neve was the reason for the missing sentinels. She wasn’t quite sure how, not positive of the mechanics, but what she’d seen was enough to know it was true.
Her sister was still trying to bring her home. And she was killing the Wilderwood to do it.
Red stumbled from the tower on numb legs. She pushed open the door to the Keep, staring blankly ahead, mind stuttering over plans that came together and broke apart.
Neve.
Lyra strode from beneath the broken arch of the dining room, a steaming bowl and a crust of bread in her hands. She arched a slender brow. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
It felt like she had. “Where’s Eammon?”
“Your room, I think.” Lyra took a bite of bread. “Fife says thank you for getting sweet bread instead of the usual. In his words, it tastes more like food and less like a brick.”
“He should thank Loreth.” Red gave Lyra a tiny smile before mounting the stairs, doing her best not to run.
In their room, Eammon leaned over a book on his desk, brow in hand, fingers stained with ink. He looked up when she topped the stairs, eyes underscored by dark circles.
The sight of him was enough to scatter her thoughts again. The kiss she’d pushed to the back of her mind rushed forward, memories of hands and mouths and warm, ragged breath. He gripped the pen like he’d gripped her hair, the line of his body bent over the table like he’d bent over her.
It made it harder to tell him she had to leave.
Red cleared her throat. “Is this what you’re always doing in the library?”
“Mostly.” He put down his pen, pushed his hair away. A streak of ink marred his forehead. “I’m translating from old Meducian.”
“For fun?”
“We all have our own ideas of fun, Redarys.”
She quirked a smile at that, though it fell before she could finish the curve. “Why’d you bring it up here?”
His eyes pinned her in place. “You rarely come to the library when I’m in it.”
Heat curled low in her stomach.
Eammon took a deep breath, leaned forward like he might stand. “Red, I—” A wince interrupted him as his hand moved carelessly across the desk, leaving a trail of that thin, sap-like blood.
Worry eclipsed the warmth, worry and the memory of the mirror. Her voice came bare and fumbling. “I have to go back.”
Eammon froze. Then his eyes pressed shut, and he sank back into his chair, resignation tightening the line of his jaw. “I understand. You should—”
“No, you don’t understand.” The words cracked, graceless. She wanted to tell him it had nothing to do with that kiss, but it wasn’t quite the truth. It did have to with that kiss, but not the way he thought. Not in any way that even resembled regret. “You think I wouldn’t have left before if that’s what I wanted? You think I wouldn’t have tried to run already?”
“You came here because you had no choice.” He said it to the desk, to the paper now crumpled in his hand. “Because you were forced to. I should’ve made you leave the minute you—”
“I came here because I thought I had to save the people I loved from myself. I came here because I thought the power I had was something evil. You showed me it wasn’t, that it’s not good or bad, it just is.” She swallowed. “I’ve known the whole time you wouldn’t stop me, Eammon. Every moment I have spent here, I’ve chosen to.”
He said nothing. But his fist closed tighter, like he had to restrain it from reaching.
Red sank to the edge of the bed. “I looked in the mirror.” Changing course, leaving all the reasons for staying and leaving and choices hanging in the air. “It was just a hunch, to see if Neve might have something to do with . . . with what’s been happening.”
His brows lowered.
“I was right. She’s the cause of it. The missing sentinels. I don’t know how, but it’s her.”
“That’s impossible.”
“The mirror showed me the truth before, it’s showing me the truth now. I have to find out what she’s doing, see if I can stop it. And maybe if she sees me, sees I’m fine, she’ll reverse the damage somehow.” Her fingers knotted in the hem of his shirt she wore. “I have to try, especially if I can’t do anything else. If you won’t let me do anything else. The last thing I want to do is leave you alone, but—”
“I’ve been alone a long time.” Low, roughened. Almost pleading.
She bit the corner of her lip like she could still taste him on it. “But you don’t have to be.”
A moment, iron-heavy, glass-fragile. Finally, Eammon looked away, shattering it into something that didn’t shine so brightly. “When will you leave?”
“A few days. I’d like to practice some more first. Make sure I have my power under control.” She swallowed. “Getting married helped, but it seems like I can only make it do what I want when . . . when I’m close to you.”
Something unnamed flickered in Eammon’s eyes. “Is that so?”
“From my observations, yes.”
There was a challenge in the gaze they shared— each daring the other to talk about it. To attempt naming the warmth between them.
“We’ll practice tomorrow, then.” Eammon jerked his chin toward the bed. “But first, sleep.”
He broke eye contact, turning toward his crumpled blanket against the wall. Even with the fire, the air was cold, and a shiver rolled through his shoulders.
“You don’t have to sleep all the way over there.”
Eammon’s spine locked.
Red hadn’t meant to speak the thought, and she blinked hard, hands tightening on her sheets. Too late to take it back, and Eammon’s shoulders kept ratcheting up, the intention to flee in every line—
“I mean,” she said quickly, “if you want to pull the blanket over by the fire, you can. It’s cold. No sense in freezing.”
She cursed herself silently, sure she’d shattered everything they’d built—whatever it was they’d managed to piece together—with her careless want. After the way he’d stopped their kiss, the way he’d kept such careful distance, she wasn’t sure where she stood with him anymore.
There’s not much of me left to give to another person, he’d said. After today, she wasn’t sure how to tell him she’d take what she could get. Wasn’t sure when the knowing crept up on her, somewhere bet
ween their odd marriage and magic lessons and a swapping back and forth of saving each other.
Maybe, if she could go to Neve— if she could find out what her sister was doing, find out how to stop it, hem the frayed edges of their sisterhood— after, she and Eammon could figure out what this was. What it could be.
Eammon’s head turned in that way he had, just enough to fix her in place with one eye. Then he grabbed the edge of his blanket.
He pulled it between the bed and the fireplace, closer to the latter than the former. Red busied herself with climbing beneath her covers, aware of his every movement— how he shifted his head to find a comfortable angle, how his long, scarred fingers folded on his chest.
“I’m coming back,” Red said to the ceiling, because it was the only thing she could fit her tangled emotions to. “I don’t want to stay in Valleyda.”
Eammon didn’t respond. Slowly, she drifted, eyes closing, time stretching languid.
“Maybe you should,” Eammon murmured in the dark.
Chapter Twenty-Two
H e was gone when she woke, blanket crumpled, a note in his messy script perched on the desk. Tower.
Red dressed quickly— her leggings, his shirt, because old habits weren’t easy to break— and ran her fingers through her hair, working out tangles but leaving it loose. Gingerly, she walked down the stairs, concentrating so she wouldn’t slip on their moss-blunted edges. Lavender light bathed the tangle of branches and stone that used to be the corridor, made it almost beautiful.
When she reached the tower, shivering in the morning chill, Eammon leaned against a carved windowsill with a mug in one hand and a book in the other. He didn’t acknowledge her, other than flicking his eyes up from the book, but his grip on the mug tightened.
He’d poured her a cup, even added cream. Red lifted it to her lips as she slid into the chair. A lone tree branch sat in the middle of the table, twigs curled like claws. Bands of silver paint had been hastily drawn where the twigs split off from the limb’s main shaft. “Art project?”
His book snapped closed; Eammon tucked it beneath his arm. “Not quite.” When he lifted his cup to his mouth, his shirt rode up, exposing a line of pale, scarred skin.
For the Wolf (The Wilderwood Books Book 1) Page 27
