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

Merra.

A blink, and Merra’s stomach ripped, the sound visceral enough to make Red’s gorge rise. Tree roots spilled from the hole, flowing out of the bloody cavity in a mess of gore.

Merra’s corpse stayed still a moment. Then it let loose a sound that could’ve been a cackle or a scream, standing again, hands outstretched toward Eammon in a posture of near-surrender. Skin decayed into forest; moss ate at fingers formed of wrong bones.

It shook Eammon loose from whatever horror had held him frozen. Mouth twisted, he lurched forward, swiping at the creature not with the dagger but with his bleeding hand. The girl-shaped thing laughed again, a thin, reedy sound this time, and crumbled apart at his blow. Eammon turned and rushed toward the tree, running over raised roots like stones in a river, dagger slicing into his palm anew.

But the creature wasn’t gone, not yet— like as long as the breach remained open, it could regenerate itself. It melted out of Merra’s shape, churning its bones and leaves to make amalgamations of more faces, half forming and falling away. One feminine, heart-shaped, sweetness turned to terrible. Another narrow-chinned and full-lipped. A woman with Eammon’s amber eyes, a man with his angular jaw.

“Why even try?” The thing turned to watch Eammon, making sure he saw every facet of its changing face. “A forest in your bones, a graveyard beneath your feet. There are no heroes here.”

Eammon snarled, teeth bared as his palm wept the same too-dark, green-threaded blood Red had seen when he took her wound in the library. He slapped his hand against the tree trunk, pressed until blood seeped between his fingers, dripped down his knuckles. The tree was half sunken now, the branches nearly scraping the top of his head.

Slowly, the rot receded, fading down the tree and back into its roots, like Eammon’s blood was something it had to escape, then out of the roots and back into the ground. The sinking reversed as the rot disappeared, the tree righting itself by incremental degrees. Eammon bled and bled, his eyes closing, knees beginning to buckle.

The creature twitched, melting as the tree regrew, features running back into forest and shadow. “You know what happens to heroes, Wolf-pup?” The thing reared back, no longer trying at human shapes, just a lick of darkness studded in bones and twigs. “They die.”

Eammon’s eyes opened as the creature surged forward. He turned and slammed into it with his bleeding palm.

The thing pooled into the spongy, rotten dirt. Eammon kept his hand pressed against it as it shrank down, jaw clenched like holding it there took monumental effort, the rot on the ground disappearing at the same rate as the white tree behind him grew. Finally, the creature disappeared into the earth, and Eammon’s hand touched only the forest floor. The cuts on his palms didn’t drip when he lifted them away from the now-healed breach.

Still kneeling, Eammon looked up, met Red’s eyes. For a moment that felt like years, they stared across the gulf between them, and neither had the words to fill it.

Eammon stood on shaking legs. He edged past her, careful not to touch, and stalked into the Wilderwood.

Red stood gape-mouthed, staring at the now-healed tree. The rot was gone, chased out by Eammon’s blood. But when she looked down at the roots cutting through the ground, she thought she could see minuscule threads of darkness already creeping back up the pale bark. The Shadowlands, pressing through again.

She whirled, following the Wolf into the gloom.

He didn’t speak, their silence growing colder the longer it lingered. Red pulled his coat around her again, wafting the scent of books and coffee and leaves. “Who was that?”

“A shadow-creature. The breach got big enough for it to slip through. Ten minutes, and that sentinel tree would’ve shown up as a sapling at the Keep, and it would’ve needed far more blood to send it back to where it’s supposed to be. Healing them before they move is far easier, if you can catch them.”

He was rambling, trying to change the nature of her question by overwhelming it with other answers. “You know what I mean.” Red picked at the hem of his coat. “I recognized Merra. Who were the others?”

A long moment of silence, long enough to make her wonder if he’d answer her true question at all. When he did, his voice was clarion-clear and stripped of emotion. “Kaldenore,” he said, finally. “Then Sayetha. Then Gaya. Then Ciaran.”

A parade of death. Red bit her lip. “The Second Daughters, and . . . and Gaya . . . the Wilderwood drained them.”

He nodded, one jerk of his chin.

“What about Ciaran?” She kept it to names, not titles. If Eammon avoided saying mother and father, she assumed it best if she did, too.

The Wolf pushed aside a branch from the path, harshly enough that it nearly cracked. “Wilderwood drained him, too.”

The gate rose out of the fog; Eammon laced his fingers through the bars, nearly leaning against them as the opening bloomed. He paused for a moment when the iron swung inward, as if he had to gather the energy to step forward. Too much blood, he’d said before, and he moved like it.

When the gate was safely sealed behind them, Eammon turned, eyes glinting. “Back there,” he said carefully. “When the Wilderwood . . . came for you. How did you make it stop?”

“The same way I’ve been doing for four years.” She wanted it to come out accusing, but it was thin and hollow in the cold air. Red avoided his eyes, staring instead at a hole one of the thorns had torn in the sleeve of his coat.

“The Wilderwood had you. I didn’t get to you in time.” She couldn’t tell if he meant it as a confession or an accusation. “It’s desperate enough that it should’ve drained you in moments, but it didn’t, because

you stopped it.