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

fist into Solmir’s jaw. Bark and leaves burst from the contact, Solmir’s head snapping sideways even as a sharp, exulting grin curved his lips.

“You could’ve had such a peaceful death.” Solmir wiped blood from his mouth with the back of a shadow-gauntleted wrist. “Wolves die easier than gods do.”

Lyra stood at the edge of the forest, eyes wide and disbelieving. Then, snarling, she rushed forward and snatched her tor from the ground, no longer held back by the border of a Wilderwood that wasn’t there. Fife followed her with no hesitation. Trees still stretched behind them, but they were different— the colors muted, the sky above star-strewn, the colors of night instead of twilight.

Just a forest, like any other forest. Everything that made it the Wilderwood was in Eammon now.

The bodies of the priestesses lay in white-robed, scarlet-stained huddles between the inverted sentinels in the twisted grove, their blood leaking onto the roots. Kiri was nowhere to be seen. Lear had roused, inching away from the trees with a gash in his forehead that dripped steadily into his eyes.

The gulf of shadow that ringed the grove grew wider and wider, darkness eddying into the air like smoke. The earth around it rumbled, the rattling of a locked door.

A door that would soon be forced open.

Eammon’s hands shot forward, and trunks erupted spear-sharp from the ground. They passed through Solmir like he was smoke, darkness curling away and curling back. Solmir’s fingers crooked, and shadows shackled around Eammon’s arm, twisting it behind his back. A roar, a sound like cracking branches, like a forest burning. When Eammon wrenched free of the shadow’s grip, dark burn marks scored his skin.

Despite the emptiness in her chest, the knowledge that every trace of the Wilderwood was gone from her, Red’s fingers still curled into claws. She shot up from the ground, stumbled toward the warring gods.

It wasn’t shadow that threw her back. It was a vine, blooming, wrapping her waist to set her gently but firmly down. Inhuman eyes she didn’t know peered at her, in a face she’d kissed. There was no recognition in them.

She stayed still on the ground, every breath feeling like a swallowed knife.

A slight form, rushing over the ground. Lyra, tor gripped in her fist and teeth glinting moonlight. The blade sliced through Solmir’s shadow-sheathed leg, a blow that should’ve left a stump, but his body dissipated and came together again. Sneering, he batted Lyra away, sending her flying. She landed next to Red and was still.

“Lyra!” Behind her, Fife screamed it full-throated. His dagger was in his hand as he turned to Solmir, dwarfed by his shadow-wreathed height.

“Fife, don’t!” Red crawled to Lyra, put shaking fingers against her neck. Her pulse was light but steady, her breath shallow but there. “It’s pointless!”

She could see in his snarl that he knew it, and also that he didn’t care. Solmir hurt Lyra, so he’d hurt Solmir, an easy equation. But it couldn’t be now. A strangled roar, and he sheathed his dagger, rushing over to where they lay.

Behind him, Eammon and Solmir raged on, oblivious, a cosmic battle in microcosm.

“She’s alive,” Red said as Fife stumbled forward, moving her hand on Lyra’s pulse so his could replace it. “She’s breathing.”

A sob of relief as he felt her heartbeat, his head bowing low enough for sandy-red curls to brush Lyra’s forehead. Made clumsy by fear, Fife pulled off his jacket to tuck it around her, like it could be a shield.

Then sat frozen, eyes glued to his now-bared forearm.

To what wasn’t there.

“The Mark.” He stopped, swallowed. Then, gently, he pushed up Lyra’s sleeve. Brown, unmarked skin where the Bargainer’s Mark had been, gilded in starlight and unblemished by roots.

His eyes met Red’s, wide with wonder and no small bit of fear.

A weight on her shoulders, a heavy regard that pricked the skin of her neck. Red looked over her shoulder, throat tight, knowing what she’d see.

Eammon—not Eammon— gazed at her with luminous green-and-amber eyes for half a second, almost puzzled. Then the heavy gaze went to Fife. One nod, perfunctory and business-like.

“Shit.” Fife’s hand closed around his forearm.

The forest-god turned back to his battle, the whole pause taking barely a breath. Jagged branches grew from his fingers, sweeping for Solmir’s face.

The dark giant Solmir had become didn’t try to dodge. The branches swept through him like he was shadow, and he coalesced back into form in their wake.

Shadow.

Red’s mind tripped over the thought, then latched. When she’d seen Arick outside the Shrine, Arick who was Solmir, there’d been no shadow on the ground behind him. And Kiri’s words in the dungeon—one the man, one the shadow.

Five priestesses lay dead, five lives to free five kings. Solmir, already half here, should be condensing into flesh, should be using the sacrifice to manifest fully in this world. But still he held on to the connection with Arick, staying the shadow as long as he fought Eammon.

As long as Solmir fought Eammon, Arick would stay the man.

Fife crouched between Lyra and the war between shadow and forest, hand on his dagger. When he spoke, it was with his characteristic bluntness. “I don’t know what your next move is. But I’m staying with Lyra.”

“I’d never ask you to do anything different.”

Still brusque, but with affection in it. “I know.”

Red knew what had to happen now. But it was a heavy weight in her middle, one she didn’t want to look at too closely. Not until it was clear there was no other choice.

The choice would have to be made quickly. Eammon couldn’t fight a shadow forever.

She pushed herself up on shaking legs. “I’m going to the grove.”

Fife met her eyes. Nodded.

Red took off running.

Lear met her at the edge of the sweeping shadows ringing the grove, swiping blood from his face. “Tried to stop them.” He waved his scarlet-streaked hand to the priestesses’ bodies, nearly hidden in writhing darkness. “Kept begging them to run. None of them listened, and the redhead knocked me a good