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

do to change it, and maybe there was comfort to be had there, if she could feign piety. A balm for the ache of it.

There wasn’t. The Shrine was nothing but a stone room full of candles and branches. No comfort. No absolution.

And the way Red looked at her, those two weeks she’d tried religion. Like she was watching the digging of her own grave.

So now, as she stalked toward the Shrine in her mourning black, she knew it was pointless. Any words she could say, any candles she could light, would do nothing to fill the gnawing empty place her twin had left. But grief was like gravel in her slipper, and she felt it more when she was standing still.

The Shrine would at least give her a private place to cry.

Neve walked beneath the flowered arbor into the shadows of the stone room beyond. Then she stopped, eyes wide and glassy, the sobs she’d wanted to let free frozen in her throat.

Not empty. Three priestesses stood around the statue of Gaya, red prayer candles guttering in their hands. Still in their customary white robes, but no cloaks. Those were only for the ceremony that blessed Red as a sacrifice.

The priestess closest to the wall carved in Second Daughters saw her first. Some muted emotion flickered across her face— pity, but a faint kind, like one might have for a child who’d lost a pet.

Neve’s fingers balled into fists at her sides.

Gently, the priestess placed her candle by Gaya’s feet, anchoring it in the already-puddled wax of other prayers. She clasped her hands before her as she approached. “First Daughter.”

A gentle accent, her r’s touched with a burr. Ryltish, probably, one who’d trekked across the sea for the privilege of praying here, of seeing the historic sacrifice of a Second Daughter. Neve said nothing, her nails pressing crescents into her palms.

The other two priestesses exchanged glances before turning back to their prayer candles. Smart. They could read the wish on Neve’s face, the hope that one of them would say something to stoke the fire in her chest to a blaze.

If the Ryltish priestess realized the error she’d made in approaching, she didn’t show it. The faint pity on her face deepened, pulling down her lips. “It’s a great honor, Highness,” she said quietly. An ember of fervor shone in her green eyes. “For your sister to go to the sacred wood, to appease the Wolf and bring us safety from his monsters. We have great hopes she’ll be the one to make him release the Kings. And an honor for you, too, to one day rule over a land that shares the sacred wood’s border. The Queen of Valleyda is the Queen most loved by our gods.”

Neve couldn’t stop her snort, loud and undignified in this place of stone and quiet flames. “An honor,” she repeated, her brow arching incredulously. “Yes, what a great honor, that my sister was murdered for the possible return of the Kings you’ve decided are gods.” The snort became a laugh, half-mad and sharp, bursting from between her teeth and making her breath come short. “How blessed I am, to hold sway over a barren, frozen land on the edge of a haunted forest.”

The Ryltish priestess seemed to finally recognize her mistake. Her eyes were wide, pretty face frozen and pale. Behind her, the other two priestesses stood still as the statue they prayed to, wax dripping over motionless hands.

She didn’t realize she’d advanced a step until the priestess lurched backward, trying to keep distance between them. Neve’s lips curled back from her teeth. “You have it so easy,” she murmured. “All you Order priestesses from far away. Safe behind your borders, miles from your sacred wood.”

The Ryltish priestess almost lost her balance when her calf bumped against Gaya’s stone feet. Crimson wax marred her hem. Still, her eyes didn’t leave Neve’s, and her cheeks were nearly the same color as her robe.

“It’s almost pathetic.” Neve cocked her head, the barest curve of an acidic smile touching her mouth but not her eyes. “Your religion asks nothing of you. You throw a girl in white and black and red into the Wilderwood every few centuries, when a Second Daughter comes around, but nothing you do is enough to bring back the Kings. Maybe they don’t want to come back to such cowardly penitents, who never do anything but send pointless sacrifices and light pointless candles.”

All three priestesses watched her silently, three pairs of wide eyes fixed on her face. The wax dripping down their fingers had to be scalding, but it wasn’t enough to make them move, wasn’t enough to break them from the terrible spell of her sadness and how it made her cruel.

Neve forced her fingers straight, uncurling them from fists. “Get out.”

They obliged without a word, taking their prayer candles with them.

Finally alone, Neve slumped, like her anger had been the only thing holding her up. She caught herself right before she leaned on Gaya’s statue. She refused to look for any kind of comfort there.

Instead, Neve walked through the dark gauzy curtain behind the stone effigy into the second room of the Shrine.

She’d been here only once before. When she was officially named as the heir to the throne on her tenth birthday, they’d wrapped her in the coronation cloak, embroidered with the names of the former Valleydan queens, and brought her here to be prayed over. To her child’s eyes, the white branches had seemed tall as trees themselves, casting needle-edged shadows on the stone walls.

That’s what she expected when she walked through the curtain— a forest like the one that had devoured her sister. But it was only a room. A room filled with branches cast in marble bases, most no higher than her shoulders. A Wilderwood in miniature. Nothing like what she’d seen when she and Red raced toward its border four years ago. Nothing like what Red had just disappeared into.

Neve’s chest burned, too heavy