For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten (freda ebook reader .txt) 📕

Her sister was warm beside her, the scent of her hair familiar and comforting. Still, when Red blinked, she saw Eammon’s dirt-streaked face, saw green-and-amber eyes.

“Come.” Neve pulled her toward the door. “I’ll have dinner brought to my chambers. You look exhausted.”

Right before the door closed, Red glanced over her shoulder. Kiri’s face was calm, but her clenched jaw spoke of something deeper than displeasure. Her eyes met Red’s, blue and cold enough to burn, then the door slammed shut.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

R ed’s cloak drew all the attention she’d feared and more as they moved through the halls. Servants and nobles alike stopped to peer, then outright stare as they recognized her. The Second Daughter, returned from the Wilderwood.

Neve paid no mind, tugging Red along by the hand like the girls they’d been before, not the Queen and the Lady Wolf. She gestured to a passing handmaiden. “Have dinner brought to my rooms, please. For three.”

The handmaiden gaped even as she nodded. “Queen Neverah . . . and, um, your . . . Redarys . . .”

“My sister has returned.” Neve’s voice was achingly sincere. “Well and whole.”

Well and whole. Red tried to smile, but the pressure of these familiar halls was almost a physical weight. The atmosphere buzzed over her skin, a frequency at odds with the rhythm of her heartbeat, like Valleyda itself recognized she didn’t belong anymore.

The handmaiden’s mouth worked soundlessly. “That’s . . . that’s wonderful.” She could have exchanged wonderful for terrifying without altering her tone.

Neve didn’t notice. “Tell Arick to meet us.” She swirled away in a froth of skirts and silver.

“I’m not particularly hungry,” Red said, pulled along behind her. “I was wondering if maybe we could go to the Shrine, before dinner?”

That made Neve stop. She turned, brows knit. “You want to go to the Shrine?”

Neve had always been the cunning one, and Red only blunt. She shrugged. “It’s been a long time.”

Her twin’s dark eyes narrowed, the corner of her bottom lip disappearing between her teeth, and Red thought of that strange exchange in the Temple. Kiri and Neve, united in whatever they were doing to the Wilderwood.

She’d known this wouldn’t be as simple as showing her sister she was fine and asking her nicely to stop, but now that the reality stared her down, Red’s spine felt like a sapling buried under frost.

Neve stared at her a moment longer. “Not now,” she said finally, turning to hurry down the hallway. “Tomorrow, maybe.”

She didn’t know how to do this. Red was no stranger to keeping secrets from her sister, but the careful modulation, the hemming of truths— they weren’t things that came naturally, especially not now. Part of her wanted to spill the whole story, to spell out the history and what was happening and how Neve had to stop. But then she thought of what she’d seen in the mirror, of Kiri’s words only moments ago, about plans and fruition and how Red was only part of it. The path here was complex, littered with traps, and putting a foot wrong could bloody them both.

The best plan seemed to be to get to the Shrine. To see exactly what Neve had done.

More courtiers and servants passed them by, more wide eyes and shapeless whispers. Red’s shoulders hunched toward her ears, like she could make herself smaller.

“They seem surprised.” Red wasn’t sure what reaction she’d expected. She wasn’t sure what anything she’d expected. All her thoughts were bent only toward stopping the disappearing sentinels, toward helping Eammon. Now it felt like she was stumbling along to keep up, everything rushing and tangling too quickly to make sense of.

“Of course they do.” Neve pushed open the door to the same rooms she’d had since they moved from the nursery. “They thought you were dead.” Her voice was brittle. “But we knew you were alive. Arick and I knew.”

Arick. His name should’ve been a comfort, but instead disquiet curled around Red’s spine. When she tried to remember his face, it was still the shadowy thing that had come for her at the Keep’s gate, and her memories of his body had narrowed to only his possessive hold on her wrists the night of the ball.

The sunlight through the window highlighted the hollows in Neve’s cheeks, the jut of her collarbone. Her hands went to the silver circlet, all but wrenching it from her hair; she set it on the dressing table and rubbed at her forehead as if it pained her. Shadow pooled along the circlet’s curve, warping the room’s reflection. It was similar to the one she’d worn as the First Daughter, but more ornate— delicately filigreed, inset with tiny diamonds. Red remembered Isla wearing it, and the thought was a lurch in her chest.

“I’m so sorry,” Red murmured. “Neve, I’m so sorry you had to go through it alone.”

Neve’s distorted reflection in the circlet went rigid. “It was . . .” Her mouth worked like she might say more, but nothing came out. She tucked a stray lock of black hair behind her ear as she folded into the chair at her desk. “It was difficult.”

The chambers had a sitting room off to the side that Neve never used; Red pulled over one of the heavy, brocaded chairs to sit next to Neve’s desk instead. For a moment, they sat in silence, two sisters and the ghost of a mother. Neve looked at the carpet instead of Red, a slight indentation in her skin where the circlet had weighed heavy.

“I’m glad to be Queen.” She said it like a confession. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop feeling guilty for that.” Her spine straightened, eyes raising. “But you’re here now. I saved you. That makes it all worth it.”

It made Red’s skin feel too small, this declaration that she needed saving. She knows she needs me to disentangle you fully.

“How did you do it?” Kings, she could barely keep her face schooled to mere curiosity,