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

roots. Black rot boiled over them, though the surrounding earth still looked solid, not like the rotten sponginess she’d seen the night before. “He’ll have to heal these first,” he muttered, uncorking another vial of blood and pouring it over the ground. The rot receded incrementally, so small a difference Red wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been watching. “They’re already weakening. The one inside can wait, it isn’t shadow-rotted yet.”

“Shadow-rotted?”

Another arch look, like her questions irritated him. But Fife pointed through the fog, to the forest beyond the gate. “See that?”

Right at the edge of the tree line was a black spot on the forest floor— the same dark, damp ground that produced the creature from last night. Red nodded.

“That,” said Fife, “is an empty place where one of these sentinels is supposed to be. It felt the Shadowlands pushing through, so it came loose and regrew here, closer to Eammon, so he could heal it. Only the stronger ones can do that. The others just rot where they stand, leaving breaches we have to find and close.”

“Like the one last night. It was rotting when we found it, but he said it would’ve ended up at the Keep in ten more minutes.”

Hazel eyes snapped to hers. “He let you go with him?”

Incredulity in his voice, thick enough that Red wondered if she shouldn’t have said anything. She shrugged. “He wasn’t happy about it, but yes.”

“Hmm.” Fife studied her a moment longer, brow furrowed, before facing the forest again. “He must’ve really wanted to convince you of his trustworthiness, then.”

Red shifted on her feet.

Fife gestured to the lines of rot on the sapling’s trunk. “The more the shadow-rot eats through the saplings once they’re here, the harder they are to send back. Sentinels are like bricks in a wall, each placed strategically. Move one, and the whole thing gets weaker.”

“The whole what?”

“The whole Wilderwood.”

Red tightened her arms over her chest, peering nervously at the still, white trees. The sentinels. They looked like shards of bone thrust into the earth. “So they’re . . . good.”

“The sentinels aren’t good.” He said it like the notion was ridiculous. “But they aren’t bad, either. The Wilderwood has a job to do, and it takes what it has to in order to do it.”

“And what it has to take is blood.”

A covert glance. “Right now,” Fife said carefully, “yes.”

“Why everyone’s blood? It seems like the Wolf’s is the only thing that does much.”

Another pause, another unreadable look. “Eammon has the strongest connection to the forest,” he said after a moment, weighing out his words. “Only his blood can heal the breaches, his blood or his magic. Whichever he feels safest using at the time.”

She thought of last night, how Eammon had put his hands to the ground before resorting to his dagger, the bark edging through his skin, his veins running green. Magic, and it changed him, tipped the balance of his body more toward forest than man.

Dread spiked in her stomach, though she wasn’t sure exactly why.

“Lyra and I have connections to the forest, by virtue of this damn thing”— Fife pointed his chin at his Mark— “but it’s weak. We can slow shadow-creatures down, kill them if they’re weak enough, stabilize the sentinels until Eammon can get to them. But he’s the only one who can really fix anything.” A quick flicker of his eyes. “Him, and you.”

Red swallowed. Tension weighed in the air, as palpable as the fog around their feet.

She turned away, facing the tower and the Keep. “Where is Eammon?” She’d expected to run into him at some point; it wasn’t like there were many places to hide in the crumbling ruin. The fact that she hadn’t made something almost like worry itch at her, especially after what she’d seen last night.

“He went out to heal another breach Lyra found this morning. He’ll be back.”

If Eammon was already healing more breaches, he must be in fine enough shape. The faint itch of worry faded, though not completely.

They reached the Keep door at the top of the sloping hill. It creaked when Fife pushed it open. “I’m going to find some food.” Almost begrudgingly, he added: “Do you want to come?”

A split-second decision, and Red shook her head.

He looked at her a moment, brows drawn down. “Stay within the gate,” he finally cautioned before pulling the door shut with a snap.

She probably should’ve followed. But now that she was outside, the idea of being within those ruined walls again was suffocating. Red turned away, wandered farther into the courtyard.

The air of the Wilderwood was chilly, and fog coiled low over the ground, crawling up her skirt. The sky was a wide expanse of lavender, clear of moon and star and cloud. Pretty, in a strange, uncanny way. Giving the saplings at the bottom of the hill another wary glance, Red walked in the opposite direction, vaulting over the short stone wall to go around the Keep’s side. Piles of stone rose out of the fog, sleeping giants.

Something caught her eye beyond the gate. A shape, rising from the mist, falling back into fog before she could quite make sense of it. Red stopped, narrowing her eyes.

The shape bobbed up again, like someone who’d stumbled forcing themselves back to their feet. Cautiously, Red stepped forward, her feet silent on the mossy ground.

The figure rose once more, close enough now for her to make out a face. High cheekbones, aquiline nose. Eyes green as summer.

Her breath went icy in her lungs, her heart paused in her chest. Surely not. None but the Second Daughter could pass into the Wilderwood, none but her could cross over. Impossible, but—

The fog eddied around a form she knew.

Red was in control of herself enough not to run, but only just. She wound through the mist and the broken stones of the fallen Keep like someone in a trance, scarcely daring to breathe until she was an arm’s length away, looking down on a familiar dark