For the Wolf (The Wilderwood Books Book 1)

It took her nearly four days, as best she could count in the perpetual twilight of the Wilderwood, to work out a plan. Red spent the time mostly in her room, surrounded by her books, letting the familiar passages be an escape. She was good at escaping.

Strange and nebulous though her days felt, there was at least somewhat of a rhythm to them. Three meals in the tiny kitchen behind the seldom-used dining room, sometimes with Fife or Lyra, sometimes alone. The cupboard was well stocked with simple fare, and though her culinary skills were next to nonexistent, she was in no danger of starving. Fife was mostly silent, and Lyra was cordial but distant.

And when the sky darkened toward violet, if she was anywhere near the foyer, she’d see Eammon.

The first time was an accident, the day after he saved her from the shadow-creature that looked like Arick. Having read through most of the books she brought, Red went down to the library to look for more. The venture was successful— a shelf in the back corner was stacked with novels and poetry books, all with the scuffed covers and dog-eared pages that spoke of frequent use.

She was carefully climbing the stairs with her hoard when she saw him.

He stood just inside the still-open door, limned in darkening light. The Wolf’s head bowed forward, exhaustion in the slump of his shoulders, hair unbound and shadowing his eyes. One hand held his dagger, the other covered in cuts that wept some slow blood but mostly a thin, greenish sap. Bark covered the skin right above his wristbone. Though bent, she could still tell he was taller. Magic twined around him like a wreath.

Red stayed silent, but still his eyes snapped to her, like the atmosphere changed with her presence. Eammon straightened, his sliced-up hand pressing to his middle, lips lifting back from his teeth in a grimace of pain as he sheathed his dagger. His eyes glittered, rung by dark circles, the whites shaded emerald. It looked like he might collapse where he stood, like refusal to look weak in front of Red was the only thing keeping him standing.

Maybe she should’ve said something, but Red had no idea what words would be right. What was she supposed to do, ask him how his evening was going?

Connected gazes, unreadable emotions flickering across two faces. Then Eammon jerked his chin, a truncated greeting and dismissal in one, and slowly climbed the stairs up to the second floor of the Keep.

The next morning, there’d been three new sentinel saplings in the corridor. The sign of three new breaches opening in the Wilderwood, three new opportunities for monsters to escape. Three new places for Eammon to bleed as he tried to hold all the tattered edges of the forest closed.

That’d been the moment her plan started to form.

Now, in what passed for very early morning, she stood at the door to the back courtyard, her hand against the wood but not quite pushing it open. She’d briefly considered attempting this experiment with one of the saplings inside the Keep, but then she might be seen.

And Eammon had been so insistent about her not bleeding.

Her stomach churned as she finally strode out into the swirling fog, toward the crumbled end of the corridor where saplings stretched bony branches into the pale-lavender sky. The glass vial she’d nicked from the storage closet in the kitchen was slick in her hand. At the bottom, scarlet as the cloak in her closet, three drops of blood.

It wasn’t much. There’d been no weapons in her room, so Red just worked at a hangnail until she’d torn it off, squeezing her finger to drip the scant blood into the vial.

Just enough to see if it made a difference. Just enough to see if there was any other recourse than trying to use the magic that had almost killed her sister.

The memory of the Wilderwood chasing her after the thorn cut her cheek still made her pulse thunder. But, she rationalized, that blood had been straight from the vein— the only way the Wilderwood would accept blood from the Wolf, according to Lyra. And Eammon was part of the forest, tangled up in it . . . maybe giving blood the same way he did was what made the Wilderwood come for her, what made it try to worm its way beneath her skin. If she bled first into the vial, there’d be no wound for the forest to try to invade.

And she had to do something. Eammon was clearly at the end of a fraying rope; the thought of shadow-creatures breaking free of the forest was unconscionable.

Her magic wasn’t something that could be used, of that she was convinced. Fear drowned her, fear had its claws deep in her heart. Magic was a dead end, but surely there was something else she could do. There had to be.

Red stopped in front of the sentinel farthest from the gate. Mossy rock shored around its roots, mist tangled like ribbon in the thin beginnings of its branches. She didn’t touch it, but she drew closer than she had to any of the other sentinels she’d seen, and something about being close made the atmosphere change. The air seemed to hum against her skin, strange but not unpleasant, and when she blinked, she saw golden light behind her eyelids.

A deep breath. A straightened spine. It took her a couple of tries to uncork the vial, and when she did, the coppery scent of blood seemed stronger than it had right to. With a steady hand, Red held it over the roots of the sapling.

“What are you doing?”

His voice was soft. She looked over her shoulder.

Eammon stood just behind her, fog eddying around his boots and in the tendrils of his loose, too-long hair. His face betrayed nothing, eyes dark and inscrutable, full lips slightly parted.

The vial stayed steady in her hand, but she didn’t pour it out. “I think you were lying to me before,” Red said. “I think my blood can kill shadow-creatures and heal the sentinels. If Fife’s and Lyra’s and yours can because of the Mark, then so can mine, no matter how . . . how different I am from the other Second Daughters.”

She expected him to refute her again, to stick by his lie. But Eammon didn’t move, other than the tic of his throat as he swallowed. “It’s not quite that simple, but you’re right. Your blood can do those things.” Still soft-voiced, still calm and stoic as the trees around them. “But the price is more than I’m willing to let you pay, Redarys. If you give the Wilderwood blood, it won’t stop there. It can’t.”

The shadow-creature forming itself into Merra’s corpse, roots spilling from her ripped stomach. Gaya, dead and forest-tangled. The other Second Daughters, disappearing into the trees, called into the darkness. Tied to the Wilderwood, but in a different way than Red was. A difference Eammon wouldn’t fully explain, other than it had to do with the awful, destructive power growing in her bloodstream like a vine.

This ends in roots and bones.

Red glared at him, the hand holding the vial beginning, slightly, to tremor. “Maybe I’m willing to pay it. Maybe I’d rather bleed on your trees and face whatever the consequences are than try to use this damn magic.”

Incredulity in his tone now, but also a sadness that plucked at a chord in her middle and made her hand shake more. “You fear yourself that much?”

“You were there.” It was nearly a whisper. “You saw how terrible it made me.”

“I only saw part. I was concentrated on . . . on other things. But I know this power is volatile, especially at first. Whatever happened, I’m sure it’s not as terrible as you remember it.” A tentative step forward, a scarred hand stretching toward her. “You aren’t terrible.”

Their eyes locked across the moss-and-fog-covered ground. Finally, slowly, Red let the hand holding the vial drop to her side. Then she reached out, placed it in his outstretched palm. Her eyes stung, her breath came with a sharp sound, but the Wolf was kind enough to pretend not to notice.

His fingers brushed hers as he took the vial, scars rough against her skin. “Is that why you were so insistent on staying here? Because of that night, what happened?”

She nodded, not trusting herself to fit words into the space between them.

Eammon sighed, pocketing the vial of her blood and running a hand through his hair. “I’ve been trying to think of alternatives. Something else we could do, something that would—”

Bound.

A quiet rustle of underbrush, a clatter of branches shaping a word. On one of the rocks near Red’s foot, moss browned, withered.

Must be bound. Must be two. Like before.

More moss dying, curling into brittle tangles. The Wilderwood’s price for speech.

Two. Gaya and Ciaran. A Wolf and a Second Daughter, bound together.

Magic is stronger when there are two.

This came quieter, like the forest was tired. Grass died beneath Red’s feet, went brittle. Quickly, she backed away, and almost knocked into Eammon.

His hand landed on her shoulder, steadying and warm, scored by cuts that weren’t quite healed yet. Red’s feet felt clumsy as she stepped back, crossing her arms to stave off a chill.

He looked at her, eyes made dark by the shadow of his hair, mouth pressed to a line. His hand hung in the air for an abbreviated moment, still where her shoulder had been, before falling, making the mist eddy around them. The Wolf’s eyes tracked thoughtfully over her face, like an answer to some silent riddle was written on her skin.

Then he turned, striding away into the mist, leaving her alone.

Night was so judged by tiredness and the sky somewhat darkening from lavender to plum, though it seemed Red was the only one in the Keep trying to structure time by an absent sun. Lyra was patrolling again, tor on her back and vials of blood in her pockets. Fife was in the kitchen, having taken on cleanup duty after dinner.

She didn’t know where Eammon was. But she’d be going to find him soon. As soon as she worked up the nerve.

Red paced before her fireplace, thumbnail between her teeth. She still wore the dress she’d changed into before eating with Fife and Lyra, burgundy and thus far free of dirt or blood. Fife remained standoffish, but Lyra tied them together, folding them into a fragile but pleasant camaraderie. Clearly, she and Fife had known each other for untold years, and time and circumstance had born a strong connection. Red felt out of place next to them, an interloper, and found herself wondering if the other Second Daughters before her had felt the same.

Not that either of them mentioned the other Second Daughters, or sentinels, or magic threaded in blood. They never did. Still, such things gnawed at the back of Red’s mind even as Fife and Lyra talked lightly of other things.

You fear yourself that much?

She did. Four years now of constant, low-level anxiety, churning at the very base of her mind, replaying that night in snatches when she slipped enough to allow it. How her magic, freshly splintered from the Wilderwood, had ripped people into pieces, left a sea of blood on the leaves. How she hadn’t been able to control it.

How it almost killed Neve.

But maybe . . . maybe it didn’t have to be like that. Eammon had said the power was volatile at first, so maybe now that it’d coiled in her for years, it would be easier to harness. To direct. She’d have him there to help, as close to an expert in Wilderwood magic as she could get.

And that image of him entering the Keep, bent and bloodied, forest edging through him— that stuck with her. He kept spilling himself into the Wilderwood and letting the Wilderwood spill into him, doing everything he could to hold it on his own. Not pushing her. Giving her time, even when the waiting ran him into the ground. A week she’d been here, and her presence hadn’t helped Eammon or the forest at all.

She owed it to him to try. She owed it to Neve. In the end, wasn’t this just one more step in keeping her sister safe? Making sure the monsters she now knew for certain were real didn’t escape the Shadowlands? The horse was bought, no sense letting it founder now.

Pacing halted, deep breath taken. Then she turned from the hearth and strode purposefully toward the door.

A knock stopped her short. Red froze.

A muttered curse precluded another knock, this one sharper.

Red fetched up her voice from the back of her throat. “Yes?”

“May I come in?” He’d shaped his low rumble to try to sound accommodating, but it didn’t quite fit.

“It’s your Keep.”

“It’s your room.”

A moment of hesitation, laced with surprise. Then Red opened the door.

The Wolf had to slump to look under the lintel. He’d tied up his hair since this morning, made a messy knot of it at the back of his neck, though black strands still waved against his collarbones. Ink-stained fingers pulled nervously at his sleeves, but there was no trace of nervousness in his face, sharp-jawed and hard-planed as always. White bandages wrapped both his hands.

Red motioned him in. Eammon ducked past, stopping just inside the threshold. Her room looked smaller with him in it.

Silence, growing heavier the longer it was left. Red gestured to his hands. “Will they heal?”

His brow furrowed, like he didn’t know what she meant, then he looked down. A rueful noise in the back of his throat. “As much as they ever do.”

“I’m glad you’re here, actually.” Red swallowed. “I was just coming to . . .”

But then his bandaged hand turned, and the firelight caught on something shining silver in his grip. Dagger.

Red lurched backward, eyes wide and mind tangling. Maybe he was finally tired of her hedging, maybe he’d decided draining her himself would help him more than her magic would, how many vials would every drop of blood in her body fill—

Eammon looked at her like she’d gone mad before following her gaze to the blade. He held up his hands in surrender. “I’m not going to stab you.”

“Are there other uses for daggers?”

High flags of color on his cheekbones. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Tension prepared for violence ebbed away. Red’s pulse regulated to a proper rhythm, though something in his eyes made each beat hit like a hammer.

Eammon ran one of his bandaged hands through his hair, looking at the fire in the grate instead of at her. “I . . .” He stopped, sighed, spoke again in a rush that ran the words together. “Have you heard of a thread bond?”

It took her a moment to organize the words into meanings, the question was so unexpected. “I think so. It’s a binding ceremony, right? A folk marriage. Where you don’t need a witness or a blessing.”

“Yes.” It was clipped, and his eyes didn’t leave the fire. “You each give a part of yourself— hair is customary— and bind it around a piece of your new, shared home.” The hand that didn’t hold the dagger fished in his pocket and pulled out a shard of wood, bone-pale. Sentinel bark.

Bound, the Wilderwood had said. Must be bound. Must be two.

Understanding was a slow bloom of heat in her chest. “Is this a proposal?”

Eammon didn’t answer, pushing back his hair again. The tips of his ears burned scarlet. “The Wilderwood is trying to re-create what it had before, with Gaya and Ciaran. We can’t give it that, not exactly, but we can get as close as possible.” He flipped the dagger nervously between his fingers. “A marriage like they had would be a good step. And I think it might make your magic . . . easier to manage.”

Red’s mouth worked, but she wasn’t sure how to shape the knot in her middle into language. “Oh” was all she could muster.

Another, heavier silence hung, and in those few seconds, Red’s life up to this point crashed lightning-quick through her head. When Neve first bled, and their mother began speaking of betrothals and alliances. When Red did, a few weeks later, and none of the same conversations happened— she was spoken for, had been since she first drew breath, and no suitors would be coming for her. Those first few desperate times with Arick, thinking it was as close to cherished as she could get. Her life had been a house of cards, pieces stacked delicately on top of one another more by ease of construct than by a choice truly made, because weren’t things hard enough without her making them any harder?

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.”