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

shimmered into view, like they’d been hidden in the center of the grove until this moment.

Priestesses. Five of them that Red could count, through the strange, shivery clarity that hovered above her pain. Something about the number seemed portentous, awful in a way she couldn’t quite put together yet.

She thrashed in Solmir’s grip, but he held on vise-tight. Kiri walked beside them, smooth and unhurried, hands tucked primly into her sleeves.

A strained roar— Eammon, lurching across the Wilderwood’s border, pain blanching his face and raising tendons in his neck. His dagger slashed out, but Solmir jerked easily away. Kiri stepped aside with a small sound of distaste, as if Eammon was a minor inconvenience, a gnat that needed swatting.

Another lunge, but something snapped Eammon back, as if he’d hit an invisible wall. His neck twisted toward his shoulder, so far it looked like it might break, and Red’s scream had nothing to do with the way Solmir threw her aside like a cloak he’d grown tired of wearing.

“It’s to be this, then?” He sounded nearly weary. “Pointless heroics?”

Teeth bared, Eammon launched at him. One punch landed on the King’s chin, the grind of Solmir’s jaw audible as his head snapped up. The dagger in Eammon’s fist flipped sideways in his grip, then slashed out, opened Solmir’s arm.

But Solmir just stood there. Like he was waiting.

Eammon tried to lash out again, when a spasm racked through his whole body. His spine locked, bent almost backward. Strained silence, like he was holding it back, then an agonized scream burst from behind his teeth.

Vines slithered from the Wilderwood and hooked around Eammon’s arms, his ankles, his boots leaving runnels in the dirt as they dragged him backward. He called Red’s name through a throat that sounded razored, fought himself forward, but the Wilderwood pulled his thrashing body back and back and back, toward the border of the ruined forest.

Something almost like pity lit Solmir’s face. “It’s too tangled in you to let you go,” he said quietly. “The Wilderwood protects itself first.”

“Like what happened to my mother?” Eammon snarled, straining against the border and the Wilderwood’s hold. Vines wound around his legs, branches bent like fingers on his shoulders. Gentle, but inescapable. “When she tried to open the Shadowlands for you?”

Solmir’s eyes were unreadable. “Exactly.”

Kiri was halfway to the twisted grove now, a smear of white against the night-colors of the field. Something glittered in her hand. A dagger.

And another glint of silver, closer— Valdrek. Slowly, he crept toward the Wilderwood, keeping low to the dark ground between the twisted grove and the edge of the forest. His sword was drawn and at the ready, his eyes trained on Solmir’s back.

Satisfied that Eammon was held, Solmir turned to Red, eyes admonishing. “Things would’ve been over and done by now if it weren’t for you.” Solmir shook his head. His long hair shifted in the night breeze, and the moonlight caught the raised ridges of small scars on his brow, equidistant and deliberate looking. “If you’d stayed in Valleyda, he would’ve given up.”

“He wouldn’t.” Red tried to push up from the ground, but her body wouldn’t obey. “He didn’t give up before me. He wouldn’t give up after.”

His expression was one she hadn’t seen him wear before, no longer anger or boredom or contempt. It was almost sorrow, and she hated him for it.

Something shot past his head— Lyra’s tor. She and Fife had joined Eammon at the edge of the Wilderwood, as unable to leave it as he was. Lyra’s face was a snarl, her teeth bared.

“That was foolish.” Solmir sighed. “Once the Kings arrive, you’ll want a weapon.”

The Kings. Five of them, including Solmir. Five priestesses in the grove. And Kiri, headed toward them with a knife in her fist.

“Keep her from killing them!” Red yelled to whoever would listen, craning her head back just in time to see Kiri slip between the inverted trees. “You have to keep her from killing them!”

Her voice, hoarse from pain, might as well have been a whisper. But still, it was enough to make Solmir turn, enough to make his eyes scan the tall grass. Enough to make him notice Valdrek, crouched and waiting for an opening.

Valdrek didn’t hesitate, once he knew he was caught. The silver rings in his hair glinted as he leapt, roaring, swinging wildly.

Almost casually, Solmir lifted his dagger and punched the hilt against Valdrek’s temple.

Eammon lunged against the Wilderwood, shouting, but it held him fast. Red tried to get up, tried to struggle toward Valdrek, but something that felt like a wall of ice slammed her back down.

Tears trailed into her hair, her back pressed flat to the ground. It was the same cold Kiri had attacked her with in Valleyda, that made her organs feel iced and her throat rimed in frost, but stronger and heavier, born of years in darkness rather than blood on branches— Shadowlands magic, all that power twisted up into a prison, leaching into him as he served his sentence. The same magic he’d tried to use against her in the dungeon, and this time she wasn’t full enough of golden light to fight it back.

Pain still roared through her, agonizing, contorting her muscles as the Wilderwood fell and fell. She cried out, though her mouth tried to clamp around it.

“It’s not so tangled in her as it is in you.” Solmir spoke casually, voice pitched to carry over the yards between him and Eammon as if it was a tavern table. “The forest in your Lady is new, easy to uproot. You know how to fix this. How to stop her pain.”

“No!” Red arched up off the ground, nearly in half, craning so her eyes could meet Eammon’s. “No.”

A rumble, a deep reverberation that make her teeth clatter together. Red tried to aim her blurry eyes toward the grove, just enough to make out a white-robed figure falling to the ground, trailing scarlet.

The first priestess, dead. Four to go.

“She’ll die if you don’t.” Solmir