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

Thin, snaking roots wormed their way in through the cracks in the stone wall, slithering out to latch onto the spot of blood on the cover. They stretched through the canvas, through the pages, seeping down the rest of the stack like it was the soil they were planted in.

Cursing hoarsely, Red stumbled away. But the roots were still, as if momentarily satisfied, and her heart slowly migrated back behind her ribs.

Her books. That’s why she was here. Her books, not the one she’d inadvertently marked with blood, another thing lost to this cursed, encroaching forest.

The leather bag was on the other side of the desk, hidden just outside the ring of unflickering candlelight. Red looped the strap over her shoulder, hurrying to the door.

She crouched before she pushed it open to riffle through the bag. After all that running on her twentieth birthday, she wasn’t sure if all her books had made it. One, in particular, she wanted to make sure hadn’t been lost.

A sigh of relief as her fingers closed over the familiar leather binding. Red pulled it from the bag, running her palm over the flaking gilt. A book of poems. The only gift she could ever remember receiving from her mother.

She’d been ten, already a voracious reader. It was days past her birthday when Isla entered her room, alone, no retinue to accompany her. “Here.” It hadn’t been wrapped, and Isla hadn’t quite met her eye. “This seemed like something you would like.”

It hadn’t been. Not at first. But when Isla left, nearly as soon as Red closed her hands on the book, she’d sat down at her window and read the whole thing through twice.

The poems were childish, and she knew them by heart now. She hadn’t opened the book to actually read it in years. But she liked to keep it close. Proof of one moment of warmth.

Red packed the books back in her bag and started up the stairs.

She stopped short at the sight of the figure in the hall.

A shock of reddish hair was his most identifying feature, and vaguely familiar. He knelt before the sapling she’d noticed that morning, peering at its roots. One white-skinned hand he kept tucked close to his middle, marked with violent lines of scar tissue.

This must be Fife, then.

He muttered a quiet curse, tugging something from his pocket— another vial of blood— and reached toward the tree.

“Careful!” The sight of flesh so near something she’d seen bare its teeth pulled the warning out of her before she could call it back. He lived in the Wilderwood, of course he knew he should be careful.

The figure froze before turning his head, arm still outstretched. A ginger brow raised.

Red shifted on her feet. “Sorry, I just . . . they bite, sometimes.”

The brow climbed higher. “They only bite you, Second Daughter.”

If that was meant to be comforting, it missed the mark by a mile.

Forest detritus had already grown up around the tree, vines and flowering bushes. Carefully, Fife peeled them back, peering at the base of the sapling beneath.

“Kings.” He sat back on his heels. “This is the second one in as many days to come into the Keep.” With a practiced motion, Fife uncorked his vial with one hand, the scarred and withered one still held close to his middle, and poured the blood over the roots of the sapling. Nothing changed, not that Red could see, but he took no further action. His eyes darted to her. “Did you do anything to it this morning?”

“To what? The tree?”

“Yes, the tree. Did Eammon tell you to do anything?”

“No.” Incredulity made the word sharper than she meant it. “He told me to stay away from it. From all of them, I mean. All the white trees.”

Fife’s lips pressed together, regarding her for an unreadable second before turning back to the sapling. “Well, that should hold until Eammon can get to it.” He pressed up from the floor. “Since he is apparently still determined to do this on his own.”

Red’s brows drew together, looking from Fife’s retreating back to the sentinel sapling. A twist of her lips, and she turned to follow him down the corridor. “I’m Redarys. But you knew that.”

“Correct.”

“And you’re Fife.”

“Two for two.”

“So your blood doesn’t just kill shadow-creatures, then. It does something to the trees?” Lyra had mentioned that in the kitchen, something about holding saplings steady.

The question finally made him stop his march down the hall, giving Red a sidelong glance. “Keeps them stable,” he answered after a laden moment. “Holds off the worst of the shadow-rot until Eammon can move them back where they’re supposed to go.” The march to the foyer resumed.

Red followed, though the quick look he gave her said he wished she wouldn’t. “Thank you for breakfast,” she ventured, dropping her bag of books at the corner.

“Best cook in the Keep.” Fife headed for a door behind the once-grand staircase. “Not that it’s saying much. Eammon thinks bread and cheese are acceptable for every meal, and Lyra’s culinary skills begin and end at tea.”

He reached up to push the door open. As he did, his sleeve fell back from his arm. Another Mark, the mirror image of Lyra’s.

Fife saw her looking. “We all have one around here. Gaya and Ciaran weren’t the only ones foolish enough to make bargains.”

Red’s hand drifted to her own Mark, hidden beneath her dark-blue sleeve. “I made no bargain.”

“Neither did Eammon.” He shoved open the door. “But the original Wolf and Second Daughter are gone, so the Wilderwood makes do with the next best thing.”

The door spilled them into the back courtyard, with its crumbling stone wall and strange forest-wreathed tower. Fife went left, following the path of Red’s broken corridor. Three more white saplings pushed up from the rubble at the end, stretching into the fog.

She hung back as Fife approached them. “I take it those aren’t supposed to be here, either?”

“A quick study, aren’t you?” Fife peered closely at the sapling’s