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

Chapter Eight

T he sky dimmed toward violet, casting the Wilderwood around them in shades of black and deep blue. The yellow light from within the Keep extended only inches into the gloom before being swallowed by shadow, like the forest wouldn’t permit too much illumination.

“Keep up.” Eammon’s stride was one to two of hers, and he didn’t seem inclined to slow. The violet light caught the edge of a dagger at his waist.

Red walked quickly, staying close to his back. The sleeves of his coat were long enough to completely hide her hands, and she balled the worn fabric into her fists as she pulled it tighter. It was damn cold in whatever passed for night around here, but if Eammon felt the chill, he didn’t show it. She supposed he was used to it by now.

“Don’t touch anything.” Fog swirled over the gate ahead of them, deepened the shadows around Eammon’s shoulders. “Stay within reach of me at all times.” He turned just enough for her to see a fierce one-eyed glare. “And remember, no bleeding.”

“Not planning on it.”

“Good.”

Eammon touched the gate. As it had when Red entered, the split in the metal bloomed from the ground, traveling up the iron until the door swung open. The Wolf stepped into the thicker fog beyond, sending it eddying around his feet.

The trees seemed to press closer as she followed him into the forest. White branches swooped through the gloom above their heads, scythes waiting for the word. Red eyed them as she inched closer behind Eammon, near enough to feel wafts of his warmth and see the work of muscle under his shirt. “We’re looking for a Shadowlands breach, correct?”

An affirmative grunt.

“And what does a breach look like, exactly?”

“Darkness.” Eammon pushed aside a tree branch; from the corner of Red’s eye, it looked like the twigs curled inward, fingers toward a fist. “Like a pool of black mud, either on its own or around a white tree, if we get to it quick enough. A place where the Wilderwood didn’t hold strong enough and the Shadowlands pushed through.”

“I think I may have seen one.” The ring of darkness around the rotting white tree she’d seen when she crossed the border, the one at the very edge of the Wilderwood— that matched Eammon’s description. “When I first . . . first arrived.”

“Probably.” It was terse. “They aren’t exactly uncommon anymore.”

Red carefully stepped over knotting roots, around strange flowers and reaching thorns as she followed the Wolf through the shadows of the Wilderwood. She could almost hear the forest breathe, hear it in the rustle of branches and the slither of vines, and her skin prickled with the sense of being watched. This forest was alive, alive and sentient.

She stepped closer to Eammon’s back again.

His outstretched arm was next to invisible in the gloom, and Red ran right into it, a line of solid warmth across her chest. Her feet skidded on leaves, and she grabbed his hand to steady herself. His scars were rough under her fingers before he pulled away, shooting her a dark, unfathomable look.

A white tree stretched into the deep-violet sky before them, wide enough that three people couldn’t hold hands around it, crowned with bone-white branches. Its roots cut through the earth, threaded with black, shadowy rot, the infection climbing the trunk like rising floodwater. In a perfect circle around the roots, the earth was dark and soft, spongy, like long-dead flesh.

“Far gone,” Eammon said under his breath, “but at least we got to it before the sentinel ended up at the Keep.” He stepped up to the ring of infected ground, fingers twitching toward the dagger at his belt, as if checking to make sure it was still there. “Stay back,” he ordered as he crouched at the dark edge of the rot. “Do not move.”

Red nodded. She might not trust him, not quite yet, but that wasn’t enough to make her venture into the Wilderwood alone.

The Wolf reached for the dagger again, but his fingers faltered this time. “Too much blood today already,” he muttered to himself, drawing his hand away from the blade with a sigh. His head tipped forward, eyes closing. “Magic it is, then. Dammit.”

Eammon pushed up his sleeves, and in the dim, Red thought she saw an etching of green along the veins of his forearm, deepening as he took a breath, fading as he let it out. Slowly, some of the tightness in his shoulders bled away.

She hadn’t noticed just how tense he looked until she saw him relaxed— like he’d carried a heavy burden, and now laid it down.

Nothing moved, but Red felt as if the Wilderwood leaned closer. She crossed her arms, warily eyeing the trees. Earlier, when she’d pelted through them fear-blind and bloody, she’d had the sense of the forest as something shackled, held back.

Now she had the sense of shackles loosening.

Eammon placed his hands right at the edge of the breach, fingertips a hairbreadth away from the spongy, rotten ground. His head bowed forward, all his concentration diverted to the task at hand. Another flaring of green in his veins, this time in his neck as well as his forearms. Something dark edged through the skin of his wrists, right above the bone. It looked almost like bark.

So distracted was she by the changes, Red didn’t notice the root snaking out of the underbrush until it hooked around her ankle.

Her startled cry was quick and strangled as she hit the ground, shins barking against rocks and raised roots. Vines studded in thorns wrapped her viper-quick, tying her to the forest floor. Deep in Red’s chest, the shard of magic the forest had left in her bloomed steadily, inexorably outward.

The Wilderwood hesitated a moment, all those white trees poised and waiting. Then they dove.

The thorns lashing Red down bit deep, bringing up blood. White roots burst from the ground around her, arched toward the ragged wounds the thorns opened in