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

his arm, unspoken comfort. Then the two of them drifted through the library doors out into a sun-filled hall.

Neve wasn’t exactly sure why she’d suggested the gardens. She and the red-haired priestess had cleared the mess she’d made, and she’d assured Neve no one would notice. Still, it was probably wise for Neve to keep a wide berth of the Shrine, at least for a few days. But she felt drawn out there, like probing a bruise to see how badly she could make it hurt.

As they turned the corner, the glass double doors to the gardens opened, emitting a procession of white-robed Order priestesses.

Most of them had left by now. After the midnight vigils, when it became clear the Kings weren’t returning, the priestesses who’d traveled to see Red’s sacrifice departed, back to their own less revered Temples. Neve had seen them file out of the Shrine that morning, after she’d woken from scant hours of broken sleep, the remnants of scarlet candles in their hands as the sun blushed the sky.

The vigil stopped at sunrise and it was now well past noon, but this group of priestesses had the dark-circled eyes of people just released from prayer. There weren’t many of them, fewer than twenty arranged in double lines. At their front, a tall, thin woman with ember-colored hair.

The priestess from last night. Her odd branch-shard necklace was nowhere to be seen.

Neve didn’t recognize all the faces with her— some of them didn’t hail from Valleyda, must’ve stayed behind when the rest of their sisters departed. The fact made a vague, unformed disquiet coil in her chest.

The red-haired priestess’s eyes flickered over her, but she showed no sign of recognition. Instead she turned and spoke with one of the other sisters behind her, too low for Neve to hear, before walking away down a different branching corridor.

Relief made her stomach swoop, though she wasn’t quite sure why. Still, Neve frowned after the redhead. The only thing down that hallway was another door into the gardens, and hadn’t she just come from there?

The rest of the priestesses walked slowly past them, and Neve moved on instinct. She grabbed the closest one’s arm in a grip tight enough to bruise.

“Neve,” Raffe whispered.

To her credit, the priestess showed no emotion other than a widening of her eyes. “Highness?”

“What were you doing out there?” Neve had no patience for pleasantries, not today. “The vigils are over. Clearly, the Kings aren’t returning.”

Halfway to blasphemy, but again, all she got was a slight widening of eyes. “The official vigils are over, yes,” the priestess conceded. “But a small number of us have kept up our prayers.”

“Why?” It was nearly a snarl. “Why keep praying to something that doesn’t hear you? Your gods aren’t coming back.”

Oh, she was fully heretical now, but Neve couldn’t bring herself to care. Beside her, Raffe stood rock-still.

The priestess smiled mildly, as if the First Daughter of Valleyda wasn’t seconds from clapping hands around her throat. “Perhaps not. The Wilderwood holds them fast.” A pause. “Help may be required for it to let them go.”

Words from last night slithered in Neve’s mind, like pieces of a dream. The Wilderwood is only as strong as we let it be.

Confusion cooled her anger, made her clenching fingers fall open. Unfazed, the priestess inclined her head, a movement echoed by the others behind her. Then they glided away.

“Well, that will end poorly.” Raffe ran a nervous hand over his mouth. “She’s going to tell the High Priestess—”

“She won’t.” Neve knew it. The same way she knew the redheaded priestess wouldn’t tell anyone she’d wrecked the Shrine. Something about that branch-shard necklace, the way they spoke of the Wilderwood almost as an enemy rather than a holy site, told her that nothing about this would ever reach Zophia’s ears.

Raffe looked at her through narrowed eyes but remained silent.

Gently, Neve pulled her arm from his and walked to the double glass doors of the garden. She didn’t look to see if Raffe followed, but she heard the clip of his boots across the floor, heard him shut the doors behind her.

When they were outside, Raffe took a deep breath, rubbing a hand over his close-shorn hair. “Listen. I know you’re upset—”

“They sacrificed her.” Neve turned, chin tilted. Raffe was closer than she’d thought, his full lips only inches away. Her breath felt like a razor. “They sacrificed her for nothing.”

“Maybe it wasn’t for nothing, even without the Kings returning.” He said it carefully, a blade to carve a silver lining. “The tale of the monsters, before Kaldenore—”

“It’s horseshit, Raffe. If the monsters were real, we would’ve seen them that night.”

No need to clarify which night. The night of rocks and matches and a Wilderwood impervious to both. The night of the men that followed them, that were horribly slain by . . . by something.

Neve didn’t actually remember most of it, after the thieves arrived. She’d passed out when one of them hit her in the temple with a dagger hilt, and hadn’t woken up until they were back in the capital and under heavy guard.

But Red remembered. And Red thought it was her fault.

Guilt iced her spine, guilt and cold certainty. Whatever had happened, whatever Neve couldn’t remember, was part of what drove her sister into the Wilderwood.

“It was for nothing,” she repeated softly.

This time, Raffe had no response.

Neve walked down the path, trailing her fingers over the blooming hedges, letting the points of sharp leaves catch her skin. One pricked hard enough to bring a bead of blood to her fingertip.

Behind her, a sigh. Raffe’s footsteps echoed on the stone as he walked away.

She closed her eyes against early-summer sun, the light illuminating veins and capillaries, making her vision look veiled in blood.

“What about a bargain?” The voice was hushed and hoarse, like the speaker hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in a week. There was something familiar in it, but it was too quiet to be sure.

The voice came from beside her,